"Unlike Kurt Vestergaard, I have never been chased around my house by a mad Islamist with an axe... But actually, it's not my home. I live in a government safe house, heavily guarded and bulletproof." That's how Geert Wilders began his book, whose party won an unprecedented 35 seats (out of 150) in the Dutch parliament last week. Westergaard is the Danish cartoonist who in 2006 depicted Mohammed wearing a turban with a bomb inside, sparking angry Muslim riots around the world. He survived at least five attempted murders.
No one was surprised by the number of votes Wilders garnered. In 2022, the Netherlands issued about 30,2016 visas to Muslim asylum seekers. In 35, the peak year of Muslim immigration to the Netherlands, nearly 2013,17 visas were issued. Since the beginning of the great migration wave in 5, the Netherlands has granted visas to nearly a quarter of a million Muslim migrants. Even in a kingdom of <>.<> million citizens, that's quite a bit.
But the Muslim community in the Netherlands was not only recently founded, nor was the clash between liberal and Muslim Dutch culture. Muslims began arriving in the Netherlands following various trade agreements in the 16th century, and the unofficial religion in the Netherlands is probably atheism. According to the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics, more than 55% of Dutch define themselves as having no religion. Less than 20 per cent define themselves as Catholics, and 8 per cent do not believe in God. Muslims consistently make up about 5% of the population, of whom almost all define themselves as Muslims. As in many places in Europe, tensions between the devout Muslim minority and the liberal European majority are rising.
The most shocking event in the relations between the Netherlands and its Muslim citizens occurred back in 2004, when a Muslim citizen murdered director Theo van Gogh, who produced the film "Surrender," which exposed violence against women in the Netherlands in the name of Islam. Van Gogh's body was attached to a five-page letter that included accusations and threats against the writer of the screenplay, Ian Hirsi Ali, a former member of the Dutch parliament, who came to the kingdom as a refugee from Somalia and became a prominent voice against Islam. But the woman who had been granted asylum that saved her from a forced marriage was forced to go underground, eventually leaving the Netherlands.
As the British writer Douglas Murray (who recently returned from a visit in support of Israel) wrote: "It was not the Muslim and non-Muslim persecutors of Ayaan Hirsi Ali who left the Netherlands – it was Ian Hirsi Ali who was forced to leave."
Before Hirsi Ali left, Dutch police had already managed to arrest two Dutch-Muslim assassins with two targets: Ian Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders. Wilders was forced to go underground.
In 2016, the peak year of Muslim immigration to the Netherlands, nearly 35,2013 visas were issued. Since the beginning of the great migration wave in 17, the Netherlands has granted visas to nearly a quarter of a million Muslim migrants. Even in a kingdom of 5.<> million citizens, that's quite a bit
Wilders devoted his political energies to right-wing economic policies and trying to expose what he perceives as Europe's most repressed truth: that the problem is not with "extremists," but with Islam itself. His speeches and articles repeat this point again and again. Wilders compares the difference between European and Muslim Judeo-Christian culture to the difference between a pen and an axe. Europeans resolve conflicts with a pen (at least since 1945, T.L.H.), and Muslims with an axe. Muslim "destruction," he says, is a feature, not a bug, and he tries to prove it by carefully reading verses from the Koran.
Is Geert Wilders good for Jews? It seems so. As a young man, he spent a year on an Israeli kibbutz in the Jordan Valley, and he has consistently expressed pro-Jewish and pro-Israel positions, including in recent weeks. Wilders will likely turn out to be a true friend of Israel, and we are left with two important questions: Will he succeed in forming a government and leading real policy, or is his power in his mouth alone? And in a country like ours, where Muslim citizens have tied their fate to the fate of the Jewish people, especially in recent weeks, can Israeli society offer a view of Islam that is on the one hand sober, and on the other hand does not push out some of our best people?
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us