Auster on Wilders

Sept 2008
Wilders interviewed by Beck

After his speech in New York City last Thursday Geert Wilders had a brief but punchy interview on the Glen Beck program. One stand-out moment: Beck said (close paraphrase), "Are you making no distinction between extremist Muslims and other Muslims, because I have a Muslim who works on this show, and he's a peace-loving guy." And Wilders said, "There are moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam, Islam is a fascist ideology." On the main point, which is the nature of Islam, he didn't given an inch. What he was really saying was, there may be individual Muslims who don't follow this ideology, but they don't matter. What matters is this ideology that threatens our existence. He then went on to describe the culture of Islam in the Netherlands as violent. So while reasonably acknowledging the existence of individual Muslims who are moderate, he made it clear, with a telegraphic minimum of words, that they are moderate because they don't adhere to the religion. He is unyielding in his characterization of Islam as inherently dangerous and destructive. He strikes no PC notes, and makes no bows to the liberal orthodoxy of non-discrimination. And this was on a mainstream American television program.

Thoughts on Wilders's important speech

Geert Wilders's recent speech to the Hudson Institute in New York City is exceptional. In it, he makes statements about the Islamic threat to Europe, about the European elites' support for the Islamization of Europe, and about the nature of Islam, that are more stark than anything I've seen him say before. For example, he doesn't just say that Islam is, an addition to being a religion, a political ideology; he says that Islam is in its essence a political ideology. He doesn't say, as he did in the movie Fitna, that certain passages in the Islamic scriptures mandate terrorism, or that the fascist parts of the Koran should be outlawed; he says that "the problem is Islam itself." Regretfully, he does not recommend what to do about Islam, but the speech is so powerful and cogent that somehow it doesn't matter. If Islam poses a mortal threat to Europe and the West, and if Islam is the problem, then whatever is to be done to save the West must go beyond the usual nostrums of trying harder to assimilate Muslims and to spread democracy. Of course, Wilders has elsewhere advocated the cessation of Muslim immigration into the Netherlands, and has proposed outlawing the fascist parts of the Koran. Even though it's not clear at this point what such a law would actually consist of, it would, if enforced, make the Netherlands seem so inhospitable to Muslims that at least some of them would start to leave on their own...