Europe’s Islam Haters Say We Told You So
Barbie Latza Nadeau ("The Daily Beast," January 8, 2015)
ROME — Two days before the deadly terrorist attacks on a French satirical
newspaper, more than 18,000 people took to the streets in Dresden, Germany
to protest Islam. An additional 12,000 took to the streets in other German
towns. The marches were organized by the Patriotic Europeans Against
Islamization of the West, known as PEGIDA, a four-month-old group whose
leaders
coached demonstrators to wave signs with slogans like, “If you go to sleep in
a democracy, you wake up in a dictatorship” and “Beware Ali Baba and his
400 drug dealers.”
Before Wednesday’s shooting, the PEGIDA protests, along with a spate of
hate crimes including mosque burnings in Sweden starting on Christmas Day,
were interpreted largely as anti-immigration rants as Europe struggles with
how to integrate the more than 200,000 irregular migrants and Syrian refugees
who landed in 2014, of whom the vast majority are Muslim. The call to the
streets was met with scorn by moderate European leaders, including German
chancellor Angela Merkel, who used a television address to call on Germans
not to join the group, which she said was “full of prejudice, a chilliness,
even hatred.”
After the tragedy in Paris, PEGIDA says it feels vindicated, posting on its
Facebook page: “The Islamists, against which PEGIDA has warned for the
last 12 weeks, have shown today in France that they are not capable of
democracy but rather rely on violence and death as a solution.” And the
anti-Islam
sentiment that has been bubbling below the surface of many of Europe’s
extreme political parties has risen to the surface. (Several Muslim sites in
France, including mosques have been attacked or vandalized since the Charlie
Hebdo massacre.)
Italy’s right-leaning Libero newspaper ran the now-infamous image of the
masked gunman pointing his Kalashnikov at a police officer moments before he
shot him in the head, under the headline: “This Is Islam.” It was followed
by several told-you-so articles with titles like “Have No Illusion: Islam
Is the Enemy.”
Il Giornale, owned by the Silvio Berlusconi dynasty, ran the same photo
under the headline “Islamic Butchers” with its own series of anti-Islamic
articles, mostly blaming uncontrolled immigration. Italian interior minister
Angelino Alfano called for parliament to institute emergency measures that
include the right to stop any “suspect” Muslims from leaving the country.
He also sought to curtail freedom of speech on the Internet by blocking
certain Islamic websites and he insisted that pushing the boundaries of
privacy
was necessary to allow authorities to investigate anyone who searched for
those sites. Italy’s more moderate papers refrained from references to
Islam in their titles.
In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party leaders also used the
French massacre to back up their anti-Islamic stance, telling their faithful
on Facebook that it proved Islam equates to violence. “This bloodbath
proves wrong those who laughed or ignored the fears of so many people about a
looming danger of Islamism,” Alexander Gauland, a regional AfD leader told
reporters according to a report by Reuters. “This gives new clout to PEGIDA
demands.”
The Netherlands’ xenophobic PVV party, led by Geert Wilders, retains its
popularity even though Wilders is on trial for racial hatred. He has been one
of Europe’s most vocal anti-immigration, anti-Islam leaders, whose party
was accused of calling for attacks on mosques in Holland just days before
the French attacks. On the day of the attacks he insinuated that the attacks
meant it was time for discussion with Holland’s ruling class. “Islam is
still peace and love?,” he tweeted.
In the wake of the massacre, moderate European leaders called for calm even
as the gunmen remained at large, staging protests in most European capital
cities in support of the French victims and Europe’s vast Muslim
communities. But there is an underlying feeling that the worst is yet to come.
“
Europe is in the grip of so much tension over the question of Islam and
immigration,” Shada Islam, director of policy at the Friends of Europe
advisory
group in Brussels, told Bloomberg News. “There is the danger in the immediate
aftermath that this is going to strengthen the anti-immigration campaigns,
but you have to have a longer-term strategy when the emotions subside.”
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