Islamophobia!

The following exchange of views took place recently in the Dutch parliament. The principals were Nevin Özütok, a Turkish-Dutch politician for the GreenLeft, and Martin Bosma for the PVV (Geert Wilders’ party).

Many thanks to C for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

00:00   …unfortunately, many cases of discrimination, and minorities are often the victim of this,
00:06   finding that a monitor on anti-Semitic incidents is published yearly,
00:11   requests that the government, with input from stakeholders,
00:14   come to a yearly monitor on Islamophobia.
00:17   This proposal is co-signed by [GreenLeft politician] Mrs. Van Kooten-Arissen.
00:22   Is the submission of the proposal sufficiently supported? If so, it will be filed as part of this meeting.
00:27   [?] the meeting, finding that lobby groups. —Before you continue. Mr Bosma…?
00:32   Yes, I’d like to sign up for that. I’m very Islamophobic.
00:37   But Islam is an ideology which has created many victims over the course of 1400 years,
00:42   and is intolerant, and has people of different opinions killed;
00:47   that is required by Islam. Isn’t every sane person Islamophobic?
00:52   Mrs Öztürk. [DENK politician, so Freudian slip?] Özütok! —Özütok, yes, thank you, Madam Speaker.
00:58   [in broken Dutch] Um…. that’s a vision what Mr Bosma wields, and…
01:03   um, I stand there, completely on the opposite side. Islam is a religion like all these others,
01:08   and every religion also has, um, some terrorist sides, or compulsive sides.
01:16   That goes for all religions, so I’d like to leave it at that, Madam Speaker.
01:21   Mr Bosma. —No, that doesn’t go for all religions. Um…
01:24   Madam Özütok is now generalizing to squirm out of this.
01:28   If you read the Quran and the commandments found in it, if you look at how these are executed,
01:34   then you come to the conclusion that Islam is
01:37   a bloodthirsty and intolerant and anti-democratic ideology.
01:41   And isn’t it common sense to be against that ideology?
01:45   There are also people who are against national socialism, or against communism.
01:50   Isn’t it a fundamental human right to be against an ideology?
01:54   Why should we need a way to report people with a certain opinion?
01:57   Doesn’t that go against the liberal rule of law?
02:00   Mrs Özütok. —It seems to me Mr Bosma is mixing up many things here.
02:04   I keep regarding Islam as a religion,
02:07   so I’d like to leave it at that. And the freedom of everybody to subscribe to whatever religion.
02:12   Yes. Mr Bosma, this is a second term.
 

8 thoughts on “Islamophobia!

  1. The sane and the insane.
    Just who has the paranoia in that mad house of a Parliament?

    The infection of “islamophobia” is relative with the people infected by “islamophrenia” .

    islammophrenia:- is a filling of the mind with Islamic tenets and beliefs.

    Particularly one of the essential doctrines “Al-Walaa’ (Loyalty and Friendship) and Al-Baraa’ (Disavowal and Enmity)”, as some may see the latter part causing a major paranoia.

    Islamophrenia should be used much more, as defined it is very succinct.
    It will help expose the “islamic tenets and beliefs” and so makes it more understandable why many people have “islamophobia”. 🙂
    Islamophobia seems to be officially recognized and now a weaponized word, with its ill-defined definition.

    All inherent islamic beliefs & doctrines need to be much more open and with ongoing debate & discussion,
    Islam doctrines also censors criticism, & so shuts down this discussion, debate.
    This is aided and abetted by many believing in the sensitivity of multiculturalism, using political correctness.

    I would hope that free and easy discussion of the inter-linkage of islamophobia and islamophrenia, will keep the islamic tenets and beliefs at the fore front and exposure at many debates, and discussions. 🙂

    I have no problem being an islamophobe, as I do not like people with islamophrenia.

  2. Notwithstanding the presumption that Islam is a religion, rather than an ideology, we have another mistake here.

    To my knowledge, the Bible doesn’t enjoin its adherents to commit murder. Those passages in the Old Testament which describe draconian punishments and/or battles ordained by God relate HISTORY. It’s no different than reading Herodotus relating an account of battle. When we read Herodotus, we don’t (hopefully) feel compelled to ‘go get us some Persians,’ right? Similarly, when the Old Testament God tells the Israelites to slay the Canaanites, for instance, contemporary readers are not intended to be inspired to go hunting for Canaanites in the 21st century. Readers know that what they are reading is HISTORY.

    On the other hand, the Qur’an enjoins its adherents to kill NOW as part of their commitment to Islam. This is a significant difference. To those of you who are Biblical scholars, if I have this wrong, please, correct me.

    • Plum – I am not a Biblical or a Koranic scholar but we can all read and come to our own conclusions so I feel justified in suggesting a couple of corrections to your post, not about the Bible but about the Koran and Islam.

      1. This false dichotomy between religion and ideology bedevils discussion of Islam. Islam is both a religion and a political ideology because it provides a deen, a complete way of life, which encompasses both. In its religious aspect Islam could better be described as a cult and its political ideology, when fully practised, could most accurately be classified as a totalitarian theocracy.

      2. I agree about the OT instructions to exterminate rival tribes. When given they were prescriptive but, having been duly carried out, became mere history.

      3. Nowhere in the Koran are believers enjoined to kill NOW. If you study the passages surrounding the jihad verses you will find references to the specific wars Mohammed was conducting at the time (and to purely local places such as the Kaaba and customs such as the “sacred months”) but no instructions to fight indefinitely until the world is under Islam.

      Later Islamic tradition interpreted Mohammed’s ambitions as being “without limit of time and space” and with good reasons (such as the actions after Mohammed’s death of his companions, who presumably understood his intentions) but if the Hadiths, the Sira, the mediaeval commentaries and Sharia Law disappeared tomorrow I claim that the Koran itself would give no justification for jihad today.

      If anyone can find such in it I would be grateful to learn but, as usual when I raise these points, I expect only silence or ad hominem invective.

      • Very interesting, and very helpful indeed. After all, I don’t want to BE mistaken nor do I want to perpetuate mistakes.

        You’ve made a very helpful distinction between what, where, and when Islam enjoined/enjoins its adherents to kill. That is also an especially interesting point you make about taking away all of the ancillary texts and finding no justification for jihad. I’m still not sure how dar el harb and dar el Islam fit into that, but I need to read more.

        I’m going to keep this response for a while in order to refer to it periodically. As you can probably tell, I haven’t read the texts myself. I’m currently reading the Bible to get a handle on that. (Before the Bible I read the code of Hammurabi to get a handle on ancient secular law that clearly influenced the OT.)

        Thank you.

  3. This comment is from France.

    Good on you Mr Bosma. Your desciption of Islam is right on. This Turco-Dutch woman is trying to hide behind the mendacious veil ” Islam is a religion like the others”. But this veil is now full of holes, thanks to the internet and people all over learning the facts about the ” Religion of Peace”.

    Hopefully soon this veil of fallacy will be in tatters and the muslim hordes of invaders, finally unmasked, will be sent home.

    • What I’ve noticed however is often leftist positions are definitely disproven, and then the left just steps up it’s rhetoric with a shift of focus to repetition an DC emotional claims. The conservative logic and evidence are scorned and the emotion is ramped up even more. It seems to working. It mostly worked with climate change when they shifted to new 12 years left till culture catastrophe discourse and Greta Thunberg.

      It also worked with Brexit. The rational approach claimed the Leave voters had spoken and brexit must go ahead. The emotional reactions of Remain voters were focused on over & over — people are fearful, worried, confused etc, not over brexit itself but over the different proposed solutions. Those different proposals then became the opposed internal Leave camps: leave with clean break, leave with deal, cancel the whole process, have a 2nd referendum. Those camps will now split the Leave vote in the election, likely bringing in Labor as the new govt, which will simply cancel the whole Leave process. The left wins.

      In the USA the Impeachment circus is irrational, like streetvtheater from the French Revolution. The rational GOP rejection of this inquiry wins so far, yet the inquiry keeps going. Its real purpose is as a parallel election campaign to discredit Trump. That’s starting to work a bit.

  4. typical muslim chitchat: anti- semitism can be found in a hundred yards of history books. As far as I know, ” islamophobia” could be a topic in manuals of psychopathology, but it isn’t there. Why’s that? And of course, Ms.Özütok, we are all aware of the bloodshed that tibetan or franciscan monks generate among non- believers. As I have stated some time ago: discussing with a muslim equals trying to nail a blancmange to a wall.

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