Migrants to the West #5

Limited freedom

In Islamic countries is the trend going on of limiting people in their freedom; This has not so much to do with the religion of the followers of Muhammed. The example we can find about the female Turkish writer activist, Rabia Kazan in the article Bestselling Turkish Writer is receiving death threats, after she took her veil off is worthwhile to take in consideration, for guidance in awareness and treatment of those who would like to impose more rules than really dictated by the prophet Muhammed. It are those falls teachers who try to get the power over people whom we see tyrannising women in Afghanistan and other Eastern Islamic countries. It are the Western governments who should take care that such extremist teachings do not get funding grounds in the West.

In the end there is nothing left to cover

Islamophobia

We should not get islamophobic but could learn from some warnings of some Islamophobes but we should not get into an attitude of the crusade period.

Painting by Edwin Lord Weeks (circa 1880) depicts an old Moor preaching the holy war against the Christians at the mosque in Spain. – The Walters Art Museum.

That there would have been no “social values” in Islamic countries is not right. For years they had even better values than in certain so called Christian countries and they had a very intellectual uprising and high standard culture. Look for example to the Moors in Spain or Muslim Iberians. The mixed Arab, Spanish, and Berber population living in the South of Europe created the great Arab Andalusian civilization in such cities as Córdoba, Toledo, Granada, and Sevilla. The ‘alien’ and ‘non-Christian’  who conquered Visigothic Christian Hispania, in a certain way liberated the people from a more barbarous group of people. Many native Iberian inhabitants converted to Islam because they found it a better way of live, more according to the Laws of the One and only One God, without doing such idolatry the Visigoth were doing.

Those against the witnessing of Muslims and certain battles they did forget that next to the Islamic conquests there where the Roman Catholic conquests with a lot of bloodshed and the horrible barbarian actions of the Inquisition. {The grand inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada was responsible for burning about 2,000 heretics at the stake.}

Believe in Allah

Allah in Arabic (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not only Muslims believe in Allah. Many good Christians have Allah, or God, as their Guide and prefer to live according to His Will instead of to adhere to the tradition of men. Those who want to Observe the commandments and becoming doers of the Word would not agree with a lot of people their lifestyle in the West. This is also one of the reasons why in the last few years we can see so many people looking for an alternative for their slipped down church. It is the responsibility of the Christian churches or communities to offer a good value and to present the real Judeo-Christian values according to the Law of God.

Rich culture

Muslim troops leaving Narbonne to Pepin le Bref in 759. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It were Muslim Arab scholars who translated all scientific and philosophic Greek texts we still use today. Thanks to the many Muslim scholars the west got a rich library of scientific and mathematical books. {Arabic books translated in Toledo in Spain into Latin were taken to a place called Cambridge where they formed a house of learning.} We also not forget that the Jewish European and Asian knowledge including that of the Greeks Romans and Persians were gathered and compiled by the Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars in  Baytul ghikma. Without Muslim scholars, working closely with Jewish and Christian scholars in the 9th through 12th centuries, much of what was discovered by the Greeks and Romans would have been lost to modern Europe and it’s descendant the US during the Dark Ages that followed the fall of Rome.

Conquerors

In Europe there is such a mixture of people from different conquerors of the past and living in such young countries that you may question if they really have one identity? The Cultural Detective recognises that we have an increasingly global and interconnected economy. They look at the multicoloured Dutch society and how they manage to combine royal glitter and soberness, place their King in the middle of the egalitarian society and together they guarantee freedom and democracy.

Royal Glitter in the Sober Dutch Egalitarian Culture agrees that some people came to the Netherlands for the cannabis and perhaps forget the cheap sex. Over the centuries people from all continents have come to the Netherlands in search of jobs, education, freedom of speech, a strong social system, and tolerance of race, religion and sexual orientation.

Holland and Belgium are a melting pot of people and languages, but also of different religions with many denominations. In Belgium there are five state religions and next to them we can see that even in the Muslim population there are so many different groups, of which some are even very strongly opposed to each other. The same opposition can be found in the many different Christian groups, were the Roman Catholics saw their members going fast away the last few years, because of the many scandals in that church.

The Dutch, Belgians, Luxembourgians and French may  believe in equal rights, equal responsibilities and equal treatment – with the law as the authority – no matter who you are, but I do believe there has to be done a lot of work on that equality element.
Like other Northern European countries, the Dutch trust the ability of their national institutions and the government to function well. Favouritism or bribing is punished severely in Holland and Belgium. It is this trust which makes the social economic climate of the northern countries pleasant and predictable.

Autochthonous coming in minority

In the Low Countries (Holland and Belgium) people live very reasonably, though there is a serious increase of the poor by the autochthonic population. The well being by many is felt to be becoming in danger by the increase of unemployment and the continuous flood of people from Africa and the East of Europe coming into the country. The fear for those ‘invaders’ is more based on the economical aspects than on the religious aspect.

Concerning the fear of the Islam, strangely enough the most radical groups seem to be made off by people from local origin and not so much from immigrants. The Belgian radical Salafist organisation Sharia4Belgium is formed by a Belgian and gets also many Belgian youngsters in their regions, to become enthusiast to go fighting in Syria for example. (20 Flemish boys went to the battlefield as warrior for freedom but also for the jihad.) The organisation denounces democracy and calls to reform Belgium into an Islamic state.

Fouad Belcacem a Belgian – Photo Gazet van Antwerpen

The Belgian leader Belkacem was sentenced in Morocco for possession of illegal drugs, but incomprehensible Belgium did not want to deliver him to Morocco because he is a Belgian and do not want to take away his citizenship because in Belgium there is the right of free speech and democracy. The city of Antwerp, which oversees the safety and respect for the law, including human rights, can not accept that freedom of expression is undermined and that is particularly what Fouad Belkacem does. To prevent such occurrences in the future the city now spans a lawsuit against Sharia4Belgium. In that interim measures Antwerp claim that all attacks on freedom of expression, the anti-discrimination legislation or anti terrorism law are punishable by a fine of 25,000 Euro, according to the aldermen. Though it took many years before the imams took a stand publicly against such fundamentalist organisation, many foreign Muslims found that Belgian Islamic organisation more a treat than a blessing to the Muslim world.

Bringing closer to or further away from God

That the West would be a culture of greed and nepotism as well as a decadent society may perhaps be true. But not everyone in the Benelux behaves indecent and most of the people in those three countries will not hesitate to still know how to behave and manage to maintain ethical standards. No doubt that many inhabitants of the Low Countries have drifted far from God, but neither the Sharia movement or any other fundamentalist Islamic or fundamentalist Christian group, which are also growing, will bring the people closer to God. I fear that they will achieve the contrary. Such fundamentalist groups call for an aversion of religion and give the idea to people that all religions use violence to get their ‘thing’ and to oppress people.

In Sharia een kwaad voor Islam I said already that Shariah4Belgium claims to be “composed of young Muslims in Belgium who want answers to the Command of Allah” They consider themselves as a group who answers at the calls to the good (Tawheed – Islamic Monotheism) and warns against the bad (i.e. Shirk – idolatry). “Sharia4Holland has the same Belgian leader and considers itself as a “group of young people from the Netherlands” willing “to fight for the law of Allah.” Also they write only to stop “until death will overtake, or flag of shariah will blow up the Royal Museum in The Hague us.”

The flutter of the Islam fundamentalism is laughed away by the Arabic Muslims in Belgium, while the Turkish Muslims are not so sure if those fundamentalist Muslims would be such an innocent mixed bag. I also do believe our capitalist world should be more afraid of what comes from within than for what comes from abroad.

Possibility to live in a big city

Nearly half of ethnic minorities – 4 million people in Great Britain– live in communities where native British make up less than half the population, the study by the Demos think-tank found. On the Flemish television we could see how the British capital is making it impossible for small-income families to stay there. Many areas in the capitals come to stand empty and derelict.  But this is not so much brought on by the Muslims entering the country. The Daily Mail wrote:

“More than 600,000 white British Londoners have left the capital in a decade, it was reported earlier this year. Census figures show that between 2001 and 2011 the level of ‘white flight’ reached 620,000.”

“It is the equivalent of a city the size of Glasgow – made up entirely of white Britons – moving out of the capital. The figures mean that for the first time, white Britons are in a minority in the country’s largest city.”

Xymalf who is unemployed and has a Site containing Satire which may offend some, writes in The death of London  that the report provides a shocking glimpse into the future. And I am afraid what he says shall be appropriate for more capitals in Europe. Our children or grand-children will be a minority in their own capital but I do not believe that they would be the minority in their own country. But the exclusion of the white people and the original habitants of those cities is more a matter of economics and of the expansion drift of those cities.

Recession and seed for nationalism

He understands that there is a recession raging at the moment, but is afraid that the campaign to ensure his children’s future and his nation’s survival continues regardless! He is willing like other British citizens to fund a modern, responsible patriotic political movement that claims to use the latest campaigning methods to fight the many injustices that are routinely inflicted on the British people who have, in effect, been left defenceless, voiceless and marginalised by the political ‘elite’.
He and his patriots with the same feeling show the bigger danger of the economical bad situation of Europe today.

It are not only English people who feel that they begin living a country which has not enough interest in the own population, the own history. He gets the feeling, it seems, that traditions and culture are effectively forbidden and systematically discouraged, because otherwise he would not support such a nationalistic movement.

In Flanders we saw the Flemish nationalist and right wing Vlaams Blok as Vlaams Belang loosing voters, but they mainly went to the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie, or New-Flemish Alliance NVA, because there they could find that the votes would be counting, having  became excluded undemocratic by the cordon sanitaire.

The Flemish centre-right political party, founded in the autumn of 2001 promotes civic nationalism and speaks about a confederate state instead of the Belgian Kingdom. As of the 2010 federal elections the party gained a substantial plurality in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium with 28% of the votes in Flanders and 17% of the national vote, becoming the largest party in both Flanders and Belgium altogether, but once again the public votes did not seem to count to get the division of seats, proving that there is something really wrong with the so called ‘democratic system’ in Belgium where the Roman Catholic Church and the Walloon conduct the whereabouts of the country. This was the first time in which a non-traditional political party dominated the outcome of a Belgian election.

Mixing people

Opposed to the far-right character of the Vlaams Belang the NVA does not seem to be so afraid of the mixing of people in their regions. They understand the economical importance of the mix and are convinced that when both Belgian communities separately would obtain more powers, all parties would benefit. According to that Flemish party the Flemish government has to overcome the crisis by saving the coming years and maximizing the Flemish competences. They also, like any reasonable thinking person in Belgium see that not much happens at the federal level: no savings, no asylum and migration policy, no energy policy, no judicial reform, no state reform.
On 13 June, the Flemish voter sends a clear signal that things can not go on. The N–VA convincing wins the federal election and the largest party in the country, but many other political parties made arrangements quickly so that the NVA  could not do much to seal the fate.

Christians facing discrimination

“A huge surge in migration has caused the number of foreigners living in the UK to almost double to 7.5 million in just 10 years.” writes xymalf in Immigration into UK.  In other key results, the number of Christians in Britain fell 4.1 million to 33.2 million while the number of Muslims went up almost 2 per cent to 4.8 per cent of the population.

Christianity in Britain is under ferocious assault: many Christians now face discrimination and persecution because of their beliefs in many areas such as employment, business, and adoption. But the writer forgets to see that a lot of discrimination of Christians also does come from English people, like we do see the same problem arising in the Low Countries where, especially in Belgium, certain Christians get it more difficult to receive respect at work. Bullying of Christians seems to have become a popular sport. But not by Muslims. First of all by those who call themselves Christians or more often by atheists. The non believing Belgian population considers religion the source of all evil. They also do not understand the difference between a Catholic and a Christian and confront all the believers with the terrible sexscandals and paedophile acts of the Catholic clergy.

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Preceding article: Migrants to the West #4

Respecting all different people, giving them the hand of love and peace

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Find also:

1. Migrants to the West #1
2. Migrants to the West #2
3. Migrants to the West #3
4. Mocking, Agitation and Religious Persecution
5. Attributes to God, titles ascribed to Him or Names given to JHWH, the God of gods
6. God of gods
7. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #4 Transitoriness #2 Purity
8. Greed more common than generosity
9. The Netherlands to Abandon Multiculturalism

Of interest:

1. Appeasing Islam.
   the policies and pronouncements of President Reagan led to the crumbling of the Iron Curtain. Calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire” brought rebukes from many government, media and academic elites—but history proved Reagan right.
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   In an era of high education and specialty degrees—from psychology to political science—perhaps it was inevitable for simple common sense to fall by the wayside. The embassy attacks across the Muslim world, especially the most savage in Egypt and Libya, are a testimony to this: U.S. policy towards these countries fundamentally exacerbated their wild reactions. To understand all this, one need only turn to the classic “schoolyard bully” paradigm, that any child can understand.
2. Muslim accused of beheading 2 Christians in U.S.
   Pamela Geller, who blogs about Islam at Atlas Shrugs, said it “appear have been a ritual killing, religious in nature.”
   “The victims were Coptic Christians and the murderer was Muslim (and we are painfully aware of the status and treatment of Coptic Christians under Muslim rule in Egypt),” she wrote.
   “The killing evokes this passage in the Quran: ‘When thy Lord was revealing to the angels, ‘I am with you; so confirm the believers. I shall cast into the unbelievers’ hearts terror; so smite above the necks, and smite every finger of them!” – Quran 8:12.”
3. Belkacem to remain in custody
4. Belgium heightens terror alert level
5. Fundamentalist spokesman detained
6. Sharia4Belgium under attack after Molenbeek riots
7. Prosecutor wants two years for Belkacem
8. Multiculturalism and its discontents
9. One man, no vote: British Muslims’ apathy
10. Will Islam conquer Europe

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In Dutch:

1. Wie of welke generatie verantwoordelijk
2. Sharia een kwaad voor Islam
3. Vader Belkacem: “Fouad is een Belg”
4. Fouad Belkacem
   inclusive: Extremisten bedreigen België opnieuw (video)
5. “Belkacem had contact met hem”
6. Belkacem voor rechter voor YouTubefilmpje
7. We kunnen Sharia4Belgium maar beter niet onderschatten
8. Vlaamse moslimextremist bedreigt Geert Wilders met de dood (video)
9. Kritiek op Israël niet gelijkstellen met antisemitisme

In French:

1. Fouad Belkacem reste sous les verrous
2. Belges en Syrie: Fouad Belkacem arrêté
3. Jeunes Belges en Syrie: De Crem se montre peu enclin à légiférer davantage

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  The prime characteristic of  Islam and Christianity is the denial of individual conscience. They are systems which are based on complete coercion. If you are not a Muslim or a Christian you will go to hell.