The Fjordman Report: Defeating Eurabia, Part 3

The Spanish and the Portuguese — Once and Future Dhimmis?

This essay was first published at the Gates of Vienna blog in June 2008. It is republished here with some additions.

In May 2008, the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, stated that Islam is part and parcel of Europe and condemned the concept of a clash of civilizations. “Islam today is part of Europe. It is important to understand this. One should not see Islam as outside Europe. We already have an important presence of Islam and Muslims among our citizens,” Barroso told a press conference after a dialogue between EU leaders and twenty high-level representatives of Christianity, Judaism and Islam in Europe. The Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dr. Mustafa Ceric, responded that Islam is indeed part of Europe but unfortunately Turkey is not yet part of Europe. “Following this logic Europe has to prove that Islam is part of Europe by not delaying the acceptance of Turkey to the EU,” he said.

I find this especially sad since Mr. Barroso, prior to becoming the unelected leader of the EU, was Prime Minister of Portugal, a country that was for centuries under the Islamic yoke. Do the Portuguese miss their past status as dhimmis? The reaction of the Nordic countries to mass immigration and Muslim intimidation, with the exception of Denmark, has been pathetic. I’m certainly not proud of it, but at the very least countries such as Norway, Finland and the Baltic nations have had little historical exposure to Muslims. The Portuguese and the Spanish do not have this excuse, after centuries of Islamic occupation and hard struggles to regain control over their lands, which makes their current actions all the more difficult to understand.

Some Portuguese readers assured me that the situation was worse in other Western European countries than in Portugal, partly because other nations have more developed welfare states and are thus more attractive for those seeking welfare payments. I admit I know less about the situation in Portugal than in Spain, which is why I will concentrate mainly on Spain here. I do of course not believe that all Portuguese are like Barroso, just like not all Spaniards are like Zapatero (thank God). If all Europeans were like are so-called leaders, we would already be lost. But on the other hand, I haven’t seen anything indicating that Portugal is immune from the problems of the rest of Western Europe.

Observer Soeren Kern thinks that “Since Spanish Socialists (more often than not) have trouble winning arguments on their own merit, the preferred tactic is to demonize their opponents instead.” He’s undoubtedly correct about that, although I do no see how that makes Spanish Socialists different from their counterparts elsewhere. According to Kern:

“Italian voters in April [2008] returned Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to a third term in office. The center-right leader was given a strong mandate to crack down on runaway immigration and spiraling street crime, two hot-button issues that are intrinsically linked, not just in the minds of Italians, but in those of many other Europeans too, especially in Spain. As a result, Spanish Socialists are (rightly) worried that Berlusconi’s get-tough approach will jeopardize their own fantastical vision of turning Europe into a post-modern multicultural utopia. It therefore comes as no big surprise that Spanish Socialist Deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, who is also commonly known as Spain’s high-priestess of political correctness, recently lashed out at the no-nonsense immigration policies of the new Italian government. Her pontifical rebuke declared that the Spanish executive ‘rejects violence, racism and xenophobia, and therefore cannot agree with what is happening in Italy.’“ Moreover, “By rewarding illegal immigrants with Spanish (and thus European) documentation, Zapatero has unleashed what is known as the ‘ call effect ‘ to people as far away as Kashmir who now believe that Spain is an easy gateway into Europe.”

Gustavo de Aristegui, the foreign affairs spokesman for the conservative (but in my view still a bit too soft) Popular Party, explains in his book The Jihad in Spain: The obsession to reconquer Al-Ándalus that, in schools throughout the Muslim world, maps are used with Spain and Portugal colored green because they are still considered part of dar al-Islam, or the House of Islam. According to antiterrorist sources, eight Jihadist groups have settled in Spain, located mostly in Catalonia, Madrid, Andalusia and Valencia. Their threat is real, since most of these sleeping cells “can be activated at any time and perpetrate criminal attacks.”
- - - - - - - - -
As AMDG from the blog La Yijad en Eurabia says: “The fact that Spain is one of the targets of the Third Jihad is not surprising. Muslims have the religious obligation to expand Islam — mostly political Islam; conversion can be forced later on in many ways — and in particular they have the compelling obligation to retrieve those lands on which Islam once ruled. Al Andalus — that is Spain, and not only the south of Spain, the modern Andalucía — was once under Mohammedan yoke and is therefore among the priorities of the Jihad. The answer by Spaniards to this threat cannot be more discouraging. Spanish government withdrew its troops from Iraq immediately after the first terrorist attack, even if they were not combat troops. Their next initiative was the proposal of the Alliance of Civilizations.”

The Socialist PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was swept to power by the Jihadist train bombings in Madrid in March 2004, the largest peacetime attacks in Spain’s modern history. He has been surrendering his country to Muslims every day since then. Zapatero, who has said that “sexual equality is a lot more effective against terrorism than military strength,” appointed a pregnant woman as Minister of Defense in April 2008, thus signaling to everybody that his country has no intentions of defending itself.

There are serious plans afoot to create a tunnel linking Spain (and thus Europe) physically to Morocco and Muslim North Africa. The great project of the tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar will be presented by the two countries to the European Union in mid-October 2008. The announcement was made by Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos at the end of a meeting held in Tangier with his Moroccan counterpart, Tayeb Fasi Fihri. The project presentation said that this was “a very ambitious project” which will unite Africa and Europe. According to the most optimistic forecasts, the first railway carriages might pass under the Strait by 2025. As soon as the project is approved by the EU, it is expected to be funded by the World Bank, the European Investment Bank and several Arab investment funds.

As usual in Western countries, Socialists who undermine their own countries are de facto allies with Big Business interests, the same business interests that have championed the borderless EU common market, who desire bigger markets and an abundant supply of cheap labor, and tend to view defended national borders as an obstacle to both. According to a study by the Group for Reflection and Proposal on Business and Immigration, Spain “needs” over two million new foreign workers until 2020, many of whom will undoubtedly be Muslims.

In June 2008, it was announced that an “ interfaith meeting “ sponsored by Saudi Arabia was to be held in Madrid. The dialogue would be held by the Saudi-based Muslim World League. “Prominent figures among followers of the divine messages will take part in dialogue concerning life in human societies, international cooperation, human rights, and issues of security, peace and living together in the world,” said a statement by the agency. Yet while the Saudi king promotes interfaith dialogue, Saudi school textbooks still teach hatred and intolerance of everything and everyone non-Islamic.

As the Middle East Media Research Institute ( MEMRI ) says, “According to an article in the London daily Al-Hayat, the Arabic language held sway during the Saudi-sponsored interfaith World Conference on Dialogue, held July 16-18, 2008 in Madrid. It is noteworthy that the conference brought Saudi Arabia to the center of the European and international political scene, after France had, one week previously, brought Syria and Qatar to the forefront of politics during the Mediterranean conference in Paris [proposing the creation of a Mediterranean Union; My note].”

Here are some excerpts from the Al-Hayat article:

“At Madrid’s international airport, the invitees to the international interfaith dialogue conference were greeted in Arabic; airport officials at passport control and security personnel at the Auditorium Hotel spoke fluent Arabic; [Arabic was spoken at] all conference activities and at the reception held for the occasion. It can [therefore] be said that the Spanish capital, Madrid, speaks Arabic… At the conference, [jointly] sponsored by Saudi King ‘Abdallah bin ‘Abd Al-’Aziz and Spanish King Juan Carlos, the language of the Koran held sway…The Muslim greeting al-salam ‘aleykum was the expression most frequently used by the participants, who were of all kinds and from all backgrounds. Over 250 Arabic speakers — senior officials, organizers, diplomats, members of the press — were present at the conference, organizing and running [its activities]. Spain has embraced the Arabs and espoused their culture and language. Dialogue, upon which people all over the world have pinned their hopes, may reshape the world.”

These people are obviously not interested in “mutual understanding” on equal terms; they are gloating over what they perceive as a European nation once again submitting to Islamic rule. As I’ve stated in my online essay Socratic Dialogue vs. Islamic Dialogue, Muslims understand the term “dialogue” in a way that differs sharply from that of Westerners. For them, “dialogue” does not mean an open-ended attempt to rationally debate a topic in order to arrive at the truth. Truth is already given: It’s called sharia, and the only “dialogue” that is acceptable is one that will lead to the implementation of sharia, one way or the other. When they invite to a “dialogue,” they mean that we should negotiate our surrender, or else…

According to Soeren Kern, the “interfaith conference” was organized by the Saudi-sponsored Muslim World League, which happens to be the principal agent for the propagation of Wahhabi Islam in Europe. Zapatero (like his Saudi counterparts, but for different reasons) “views Judeo-Christianity as public enemy number one because it is the main impediment to the realization of his vision for a socialist multicultural utopia in which everything goes. And he hopes his pact with Islam will accelerate Spanish history. Zapatero and his socialist advisors believe Muslims are the ‘useful idiots’ of the left. And Muslims believe Zapatero and his socialist friends are the ‘useful idiots’ of Islam. Such is the future of Spain.”

Poul E. Andersen, former dean of the church of Odense, Denmark, warns against false hopes of dialogue with Muslims. During a debate at the University of Aarhus, Ahmad Akkari, one of the Muslim participants, stated: “Islam has waged war where this was necessary and dialogue where this was possible. A dialogue can thus only be viewed as part of a missionary objective.” When Mr. Andersen raised the issue of dialogue with the Muslim World League in Denmark, the answer was: “To a Muslim, it is artificial to discuss Islam. In fact, you view any discussion as an expression of Western thinking.”

Since its inception, Islam has been waging an aggressive war against the rest of mankind with the purpose of bringing every single human being on earth under Islamic rule. Infidels have been presented with three options: Convert to Islam, die, or submit under Islamic rule as a dhimmi, a second-rate citizen in your own country subject to serious financial pressure, constant verbal humiliations and frequent physical abuse. Islam hasn’t changed much. Unless we are prepared to accept conversion or dhimmi status, we have to fight back. The Spanish and the Portuguese knew that once. One can only hope that they will remember it again.

Let me conclude by adding some words about infiltration of the democratic system. In July 2008, the congress of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) in Madrid was scheduled to approve a motion to propose voting rights to immigrants in local elections, organization secretary and second in the ranks of PSOE, Jose Blanco, said in an interview. According to PSOE’s calculations, quoted by El Pais, the measure will concern 1,300,000 immigrants coming from Muslim countries such Morocco and from Latin America. The new voters might change the political equilibriums in cities where they have a strong presence, like Madrid and Barcelona, and presumably tilt the scales permanently towards the Socialists.

There are setbacks to this strategy. In 2008, when a right-wing coalition brought PM Silvio Berlusconi back to power in Italy, the Northern League and its secretary Umberto Bossi said: “The workers don’t vote for the Left any more. The Northern League is the new workers’ party.” Nevertheless, it remains true that immigrants from developing countries vote overwhelmingly for left-wing parties that support a generous welfare state. Mass immigration has already tipped the scales in favor of Socialist parties in a number of European elections.

I described this phenomenon in my essay Electing a New People: The Leftist — Islamic Alliance. Since this was published in the spring of 2006, some of the specific details are outdated, but the general conclusion is not: In every single country I have surveyed, from Norway and Denmark via Britain, Germany, Holland and Belgium to Spain, immigrants lean heavily towards the political Left, which means that left-wing parties can simply import a new people to stay in power, at least until immigrants form parties of their own.

Bertolt Brecht (who was himself an apologist for Communist dictatorships) wrote a satirical poem after the 1953 East German risings:

“The solution
After the uprising of 17 June
The Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the People
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?”

At the beginning of the 21st century, electing a new people seems to be exactly what Socialist parties in Europe are doing. Perhaps the greatest idea of the left-wing parties after the Cold War was to re-invent themselves as Multicultural parties and start importing voters from abroad. In addition to this, they have managed to denounce the opposition as racists, bigots and extremists. A new alliance of convenience between Leftists and Muslim immigrants is taking shape. I think the deal is that the Leftist parties get a number of new clients, or voters, in return for giving Muslims privileges and subsidies, as well as keeping the borders more or less open for new Muslims to enter. As one Muslim put it: “I vote for the Socialists because they give me more money.” The Leftists are, in essence, electing a new people, replacing the one already there with one more supportive of their agenda.

There is, of course, nothing new in buying votes and “clients” by promising them access to other people’s money. This was the essence of Leftism in the first place. However, although this is probably a flaw in the democratic system, democracy has still functioned within the borders of stable nation states. This flaw gets a lot more dangerous when combined with massive immigration, where certain political parties import people from other nations, even vocal enemies of their country, to shore up their short-term support in elections. This will in the longer term breed resentment among the native population, who will in this way be forced to fund their own colonization. In the context of Europe, Muslim immigration could turn democracy into a self-defeating system that will eventually break down because native Europeans — correctly, I might add — no longer feel that it serves their interests.

Leftists and Muslims have a mutual short-term interest in keeping the Leftist parties in power, and a mutual long-term interest in weakening the traditional Christian culture of Europe, which Socialists at best view with indifference, at worst as an obstacle blocking the road to their Utopia. Besides, Socialists traditionally place little ideological importance on such trivial matters as national borders. I believe Lenin once said that borders between Soviet Republics were unimportant, as Socialism would transcend all national and religious boundaries and render them a thing of the past, anyway. The idea has never entirely disappeared.

The same collaboration happened in Iran, where popular “reformers” such as Ali Shariati in the years before the 1979 revolution infused Islam with aspects of Western thought and made the Marxists believe that they could coexist with Islam. So they cooperated in overthrowing the Shah — and then all the godless Socialists were the first ones to hang from lamp posts around the country when Khomeini and his Islamic cronies seized power. The secular Leftists in Europe know fully well that they do not agree with religious Muslims on some issues, but they believe they are the senior partners in the alliance and that they can “ride the tiger.” That may be true now, but for how long will the situation remain like this? Who is using whom?

In Denmark, writers Helle Merete Brix, Torben Hansen and Lars Hedegaard believe that the Muslim immigration and the increasing clashes we are witnessing are part of the third Islamic Jihad, a third attempt to conquer and subdue the West. The fist one came with the Arabs more than a thousand years ago, the second with the Turks in the early modern era. Will three times be the charm for Muslims? Will they succeed this time?

During the first Jihad, Charles Martel, “The Hammer,” founder of the Carolingian Empire, the first Western power after the fall of Rome, defeated the Arabs in the Battle of Tours in 732, thus saving Western civilization, and by extension much of the world, from Islam.

During the second Jihad, the Turks did manage to conquer Constantinople and much of south-eastern Europe, but Jan Sobieski, king of Poland, routed the Ottoman armies that had laid siege to Vienna in 1683. Leading a combined force of Polish, Austrian and German troops, Sobieski attacked a numerically superior Turkish army until their lines were broken and the Turks fled in confusion. This was the last time Muslims came close to threatening the West in traditional warfare. They now prefer demographic warfare through migration combined with terrorism, and they have in some ways been more successful at infiltrating the democratic West peacefully than they ever were at conquering the pre-democratic West by force. Muslims are already inside Vienna, quietly taking over, and no Sobieski is in sight. In Vienna, Austria in December 2006, Santa Claus was removed from kindergartens. Municipal officials insisted that the sight of a strange bearded figure would evoke fear in kids, but many observers accused them of kowtowing to a growing Muslim population.

The third Jihad started with the oil embargo, the influx of Saudi petrodollars and the beginnings of Eurabia and Muslim immigration to the West in the 1960s and early 70s. During the third Jihad, Leftists all over Europe seem to be opening the gates of Europe from within. “You want to conquer Europe? That’s ok. Just vote for us and help us get rid of capitalism and eradicate the Christian heritage of Europe, and we’ll let you in. In the meantime, you can enjoy some welfare goodies, and we will ban opposition to this undertaking as racism and hate speech.”

In addition to a destructive ideology of Globalism, the concept that all national borders should be erased and that this is a positive good, an ideology held only by the Western world, the situation is made worse by the fact that globalization of transportation has put severe pressure on our nations in a manner which was unthinkable only a few decades ago. When the Christian Gospels were written down at the end of the first century AD, the population of the Roman Empire was perhaps 60 million people, give or take a few million. This mirrors the annual global population growth in the early twenty-first century. In other words:

The global population grows by another Roman Empire every single year. Our current political and economic system wasn’t designed to cope with such numbers. It needs fundamental change, or it will soon collapse into civil wars or dictatorships or both.

We have a situation where some parties deliberately import Muslims because they vote overwhelmingly for left-wing parties. A political system where it pays to import enemies isn’t sustainable. Any political system must first and foremost ensure the survival and continued physical existence of the community and nation it serves. After that comes ensuring the prosperity and liberty of this community in the best possible way. However, when I look at the situation in Western countries today, I cannot see that democracy always ensures our liberty and prosperity, and in many cases it functions so poorly that it threatens our survival.

Currently, the democratic system is in my view not working properly in any Western country. It is more or less dead in Western Europe, where most of the real power has been transferred to the unelected organs of the European Union, anyway. Virtually all Western countries have lost control over their borders. This is not a sustainable situation. You can call your political system a democracy, a dictatorship, a republic, a monarchy or whatever you want, but a country that does not control its territory will eventually die.

The most important thing to realize is that democracy is a tool, a means we use to achieve an end. Too many people today confuse it with the end itself. “Democracy” has come to mean something that is good, something everybody wants, a bit like sex or chocolate. But there is no rational reason to assume that democracy of universal suffrage is uniformly good and can be applied with equal success in all circumstances, a huge mistake Americans made in a predominantly Muslims country such as Iraq, where “democracy” and majority rule simply means sharia and state-sponsored harassment of minorities.

Leading Islamic scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and others have hailed the coming Islamic conquest of Rome, just like Constantinople was conquered in 1453. “Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor, after being expelled from it twice. Islam entered Europe twice and left it… Perhaps we will conquer these lands without armies.” The Saudi Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-’Arifi, imam of the mosque of King Fahd Defense Academy, concurred: “We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. Yes, the Christians…will yet pay us the Jizya [poll tax paid by non-Muslims under Muslim rule], in humiliation, or they will convert to Islam…”

Unless native Europeans rebel against the unholy alliance of power-hungry left-wingers, selfish and short-sighted businessmen and treasonous EU elites who continue to import Muslims to our shores, Mr. Qaradawi could end up being right in his predictions.