11/06/2012
At the end of October, Dutch political leader Geert Wilders traveled to Malmo, Sweden, for a speech sponsored by the Swedish Free Press Society. Malmo, the third-largest city in Sweden, has been particularly hard hit by Muslim immigration, a place where firemen insist on a police escort when entering an Islamic neighborhood because of the danger.
Even so, Geert Wilders faced down a rough crowd of Islamist hostiles throwing eggs and such to deliver his speech.
Following is a transcript of the talk, including Wilders’ usual admonition to stop Muslim immigration in order to save the West.
Speech Geert Wilders, Swedish Free Press Society, Malmö, October 27, 2012
[Video]
Dear friends, I am very happy to be in your midst today. Thank you, Ingrid, for inviting me to address the Swedish Free Press Society. No demonstrator will prevent me to speak in Sweden.
I love Sweden and its people. One of my great heroes, Raoul Wallenberg, was a compatriot of yours. Wallenberg embodies all that is good and generous in the Swedish people. He defended the freedom and dignity of others. He protected those who had been marked for death by an evil ideology. And he gave his own life for it.
Recently, your minister for Integration, Erik Ullenhag, was in The Hague on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Wallenberg’s birthday. He abused the occasion to attack my party, the Dutch Party for Freedom.
Minister Ullenhag said that in Sweden a party like mine would never be given the opportunity to influence politics. I wonder what these remarks had to do with Wallenberg. But I know that Mr Ullenhag is wrong: Like the Netherlands, Sweden, too, and all the Western countries need a party defending freedom.
Because Sweden has the same problem as the Netherlands, Denmark and the rest of the Western world. We are all in the same boat. Our freedoms are in danger. Our political and often leftist media establishment turns a blind eye to the largest threat to liberty in our present age. This threat is called Islam.
Islam commands its followers to establish a worldwide Islamic state, where everyone has to live according to the Sharia, the barbaric law of Islam. And where Islam’s opponents are being marked for death.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn used to say that the truth is “seldom sweet; it is almost invariably bitter.” But the truth should be heard. The bitter truth that Islam is the largest threat to freedom today. And the unpleasant truth that Islam is already all around us.
The sign of Islam’s presence is visible in all our European cities.
Also in Malmö. Especially in Malmö.
25% of the population here originates from Islamic countries — the highest rate in the whole of Scandinavia. That is why it is good to be here. In this great city, which deserves better than it currently gets.
Even the international media have written stories about the outbursts of violence, the gang warfare, the shootings and bombing of police stations in Malmö. In a city like this our message needs to be heard: Malmö should not succumb to Islam. Malmö should remain what it was throughout its history. A decent, peaceful and safe place for people to live, work and raise a family. A free city.
In Malmö we must turn the tide. And show the world that the Islamization process can be stopped. That is why I am here. It is a coincidence that today marks the final day of this year’s hadj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. This is a symbolic moment to tell you that it is time to turn the tide. And to tell you that it can be done. But in order to turn the tide, we must first stop pretending that there is no problem as so many journalists and politicians tell you. We must first face the truth. We must first speak the truth. So that others will know it too.
Before I continue, however, let me make one thing absolutely clear. Whenever I criticize Islam I am falsely accused by some people with false intentions of hating people. In order to avoid any misunderstandings, let me state clearly that I criticize an ideology, not people. I do not hate nor do I want to harm any human being. I totally reject the use of violence.
In fact, the most important reason why I reject Islam is its violent nature and the fact that it is harmful to people, including its own adherents, whom we should pity rather than hate, and whom we should help to liberate themselves from the evil monster which is Islam.
I have travelled the Islamic world extensively. I have visited countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia. In my book “Marked for Death” you can read how I was overwhelmed by the kindness, friendliness and helpfulness of many people there. They are often good people, but they are captives of Islam.
I always make a distinction between Muslims and Islam. Most Muslims are moderate, most Muslims are non-violent, but the ideology of Islam is dangerous. The moderates are the captives of the barbaric system of Islamofascism. There is no moderate Islam. Islam is only a religion to a very limited extent. It is predominantly a dangerous ideology. Islam is political rather than religious: It aims for an Islamic state. Islam is totalitarian. Islam is not voluntary. It orders that people who leave Islam must be killed. Contrary to real religions, it also lays obligations on non-members.
Islam is dangerous because it calls on its followers to imitate Muhammad, the so-called prophet, as closely as possible. The life and deeds of Muhammad are well known from contemporary sources.
Islam’s own sources tell us how evil Muhammad was. They show us that he was a liar, a rapist, a paedophile, a torturer, a mass murderer.
Because Muhammad abused women, some followers of Islam believe they are entitled to treat women in the same way.
Because Muhammad lied and cheated in order to advance Islam, some followers feel entitled to do the same. Islam even has a word for this kind of lying. It is called taqqiya.
Because Muhammad killed his opponents, some of his followers feel entitled to do the same.
Because Muhammad robbed non-Muslims, some of his followers feel they have the right to do the same. This is called jihad.
A few years ago, one of your Swedish newspapers interviewed the sociologist Petra Akesson after she had conducted a study of Islamic youths here in Malmö. Akesson pointed out that these youths have been raised in a culture that extols Islamic supremacy. As a consequence, a significant number of them regard their criminal activities against non-Muslim infidels as right, justified and permitted.
It is our duty to expose Muhammad, this 7th century barbarian who wrote a book which he said had been dictated to him by an angel from a book written by Allah in heaven. The people from his own hometown of Mecca knew Muhammad. They said he was crazy. An angry Muhammad emigrated to Medina which he conquered through taqqiya and jihad. Later he returned to Mecca and conquered it with his troops, eradicating its tradition of openness and religious tolerance.
Everywhere where Islam has gained a foothold, it has brought tremendous human suffering. Not all Islam’s followers behave like Muhammad would have done. But some of them do. The more Islam you get into your country, the more violent and intolerant it becomes, and the less freedom you will get.
Just take a short stroll and walk into Malmö’s Rosengard area. It is one of the areas in our Western nations where the authorities have lost power, where Sharia is replacing our legal system and where it is unsafe for non-Muslims to go.
Or come with me to the Netherlands, to the Kanaleneiland district in Utrecht. I used to live there for almost 20 years and I have seen the district degenerate.
Or let us go to Paris and visit the suburbs.
Or to Brussels where Islamic gangs with Kalashnikovs have chased the police from certain neighborhoods. And where the employees of the European Parliament complain that they cannot walk the streets at night.
“In each one of our cities” wrote the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci shortly before her death in 2006, “there is a second city, a state within the state, a government within the government. A Muslim city, a city ruled by the Koran.”
And one thing which you certainly should not do is to enter these Islamic enclaves if you are a Jew. Jews are fleeing Europe these days because they no longer feel safe. This is not just a bad omen. It is absolutely intolerable and must be stopped.
It reminds me of something Raoul Wallenberg once said. “I will never be able to go back to Sweden without knowing inside myself that I’d done all a man could do to save as many Jews as possible,” he said. Wallenberg cared about the Jews. So should we. Sweden, like the Netherlands, should be a safe place for Jews.
But the more Islamic our nations have become, the more hostile they have become to the Jewish community.
And, hence, while not all the believers in Allah and Muhammad turn violent, the truth is that some of them do. And they do so because Islam incites them to it. We should not close our eyes to this reality. If we do, we do so at our own peril.
The more Islam one gets in a society, the less civilized it becomes and the less free.
It is no coincidence that all the Islamic states in the world demand that freedom of speech be curtailed and that criticism of Islam and its prophet should be forbidden.
Because there is no such thing as a moderate Islam, the Islamization of our societies is a dangerous threat. This Islamization is driven by immigration from Islamic countries. Muhammad himself conquered Medina through the method of immigration. Or Hijra as it is called in Islam. We have to stop immigration from Islamic countries. We have to halt the process of Islamization.
All over Europe, mosques, Islamic centers and halal shops are proliferating. In any major West European city you will encounter women in headscarves and burqas. In the streets of Lars Hedegaard’s country, Denmark, you can even encounter escaped prisoners in a burqa! We should not accept this any longer!
Open the pages of our newspapers and you will read horrific stories of women being trampled, female genital mutilation and honor killings in our own back yards. We should not accept this any longer!
Winston Churchill, confronted with Nazi tyranny, said: “Never give in, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”
Churchill’s motto is also my motto. It should be the motto of the free world. It should be painted in bright letters on the wall of Malmö’s town hall: Never give in, in nothing, great or small!
Because if the free world gives in to the demands of Islam, it will perish and our freedoms will be extinguished.
Last month, a mosque in the Stockholm district of Botkyrka received permission to broadcast Islamic prayer calls from its 32-meter minaret. We should not accept this.
Ismail Okur, the chairman of the Botkyrka Islamic Association, said: “We want to have religious freedom.” But Islam is not a genuine religion. Islam itself does not allow religious freedom. It not even allows Muslims the choice to reject Islam. It orders that apostates should be killed.
The fact that the Islamic prayer call is not heard on the street does not in any way limit the freedom of Muslims. They are free to believe whatever they want. In countries like ours, they are free to say whatever they want. But this does not include the right to blast through loudspeakers over our cities for all of us to hear, even in the privacy of our own houses, that “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”
If they are allowed to shout this Islamic battle cry through loudspeakers, others should be allowed to shout through loudspeakers from their own highest towers for the whole world to hear, including in the privacy of their houses, that Allah is a false God, that Muhammad is a fraud and Islam is a threat.
You all know what would happen if someone would start shouting these truths from a roof top in nearby Rosengard. Some Muslims would take offense. You all know what happened to your countryman, the artist Lars Vilk who drew a cartoon of Muhammad. He was marked for death. Al-Qaeda offered $150,000 for his assassination. He was assaulted. His house was arsoned.
And an Islamic suicide bomber, who killed himself and injured two innocent people in Stockholm on December 11, 2010, said that all Swedes would be made to pay for their — I quote — “foolish support of the pig Vilks.”
Lars Vilks now lives under permanent police protection, just as I have been living for eight years under permanent police protection because the followers of Muhammad want to assassinate me for criticising Islam. That is why there is strict security in this room and why you were not able to get in without showing your ID documents.
Let no one tell you that Islam respects freedom. Freedom and Islam are incompatible.
Let no one tell you that Islam is a religion of peace. Islam is an ideology of violence.
Let no one tell you that you should tolerate the intolerant. We have done that enough. No more tolerance for the intolerant.
Listen to what Karl Popper, the great liberal philosopher, had to say. “Unlimited tolerance leads to the disappearance of tolerance,” he said. “If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”
We have to make a stand. We have to draw a line. We have to proclaim:
No more mosques! There are more than enough mosques already.
No more Islamic schools! They are centres of subversion.No more immigration from Islamic countries!
All criminal immigrants with dual nationality have to be expelled!
We have to draw a line. If you behave, if you assimilate, you are welcome to stay. If not, then there is no place here for you!
Today, Islam has the audacity and the arrogance to tell us that we, its victims, are not tolerant enough toward Islam. Islam is telling us that it we will not accept criticism of Islam anymore.
Recently, on 9/11, an American ambassador was tortured and murdered because one of his countrymen, a Coptic Egyptian-born American citizen, had made a movie about Muhammad.
Unfortunately, many Western leaders and media seem to be in the grip of a cowardly appeasement mentality which is harmful to our Western liberties.
Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, condemned — I quote — “not only the content, but also the distribution of such a movie.”
Mr Schulz will be one of the three EU leaders who will travel to Oslo shortly to accept this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
President Obama, another Nobel Peace Prize winner, called the movie “crude and disgusting.” And added — I quote — “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”
With their cowardly statements, the leaders who should be the leaders of the free world strengthen the resolve of Islamic leaders, such as the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, who are pressuring the United Nations for an international treaty against blasphemy by which they want to restrict our freedom of speech.
Instead of forcibly speaking out in favor of freedom of speech, instead of standing firm for our liberties, instead of following Churchill’s example by never giving in, in nothing, great or small, large or petty, Western politicians cower to Islamic sensitivities by stating how offended they personally felt by the movie of a private individual in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, a Pakistani government minister offered a bounty of 1 million U.S. dollars for killing the maker of the movie. We have not heard any Western leaders say anything about that.
When, last March, your organization, the Swedish Free Press Society, was established, Kaj Schueler, the editor of Dagbladet, criticized you. He wrote in his newspaper — I quote — “Since words are neither neutral nor innocent, there have to be limits to free speech.”
I am sorry, Mr Schueler, but as long as people do not call for violence, they should be allowed to say whatever they want. That is why I want our constitutions to include a clause similar to America’s first amendment.
I defend the right of every imam to express his disapproval of our liberties and democracy, of our freedom of speech, of Christianity and Judaism, of gays and women, of our culture, tradition and values. But, in return, I demand the right that everyone is allowed to express his opinion about Islam in whatever way he sees fit.
Since Islam does not want to grant us freedom, it should not be given the freedom to rob us of our liberties!
My friends, as I said, the truth is bitter and unpleasant. But we should not shirk from our responsibilites. We must say what we have to say and do what we have to do.
Because if we do, there is hope. We can still turn the tide of Islamization.
We can do so by appealing to the loyalty of our people to their identity and their national freedoms. We can stop Islam by rallying around our national flag and defending our national identity.
Our nation states are the embodiment of our liberties and freedom. Let us defend our liberties and freedoms by defending our nation-states.
Europe’s Islamization stems from the cultural relativism which during the past decades has undermined our national resolve. Cultural relativism dictates that all cultures are equally moral and valuable. If all cultures are equal, it follows that the state cannot promote any specific cultural values, even those of its own people.
Thus, cultural relativists deny that immigrants should assimilate, since that would champion European culture over the immigrants’ native cultures. They tell the Islamic newcomers who settle in our cities and villages: you are free to violate our norms and values, since your culture is just as good as ours. This is a lie; this is not true. Cultures are not equal. Our culture, based on Humanism, Christianity and Judaism, is far better than the barbaric Islamic culture. We should be proud to say this.
We should be more proud of our own culture and identity.
The cultural relativists are the facilitators of Islam. They parrot the Islamic taqqiya statements. They call us xenophobes and accuse us of hate speech. They drag us to court. People like myself, Lars Hedegaard in Denmark and many others have been subjected to endless time, energy and money consuming trials for speaking the truth about Islam. Luckily both Lars and I have both been acquitted, but others were not so lucky.
The combination of taqqiya and cultural relativism is a most dangerous threat to the West.
The cultural relativists are also transferring our national sovereignty to Brussels. They tell us that nation states are dangerous relicts from the past. They tell us that the European Union is needed in order to avoid war. Even the Oslo Nobel Committee is saying this.
The cause of the Second World War, however, was not the existence of nation states. The cause of the war was the disgusting Nazi ideology.
The remedy against totalitarianism is not building a European superstate. We cannot safeguard our liberties by robbing our countries of their sovereignty and transferring it to far-away Brussels.
You know what happens then. We get cultural relativists, such as your own Cecilia Malmström, who impose uniform policies on all our nations, for instance by throwing our borders open to ever more immigrants from other countries.
Mrs Malmström belongs to the same party as Minister Ullenhag. I wrote her a letter earlier this year inviting her to visit our immigration neighborhoods, but she did not answer. I can understand why you sent her to Brussels, but now we are stuck with her.
My friends, people like Malmström seem to want to rob us of our own identity.
But without an identity there can be no liberty. Without the nation-state there can be no real national political freedom. A soul needs a body. The spirit of political liberty cannot flourish outside the body of the nation-state. The nation-state is the political body in which we live. That is why we must preserve and cherish the nation-state. So that we can pass on the liberty and the democracy which we enjoy to our children.
If Sweden wants to survive, it should remain Sweden and proud to be Swedish.
We must be good patriots. Patriotism is branded as fascism by the cultural relativists. But patriotism is no fascism. On the contrary. Every democrat and defender of freedom must by definition be a patriot.
Europe is a cluster of nations. The strength of Europe is its diversity. Uniformity is a characteristic of Islam, but not of Europe. Islam eradicated the national identities of the peoples it conquered. The Coptic identity of Egypt, the Indian identity of Pakistan, the Assyrian identity of Iraq, the Persian identity of Iran, they were all wiped away, cracked down upon, or discriminated against until this very day. Islam wants all nations replaced by the so-called Ummah, the common identity of the Nation of Islam to which all have to be subservient and into which all national identities have to vanish.
Do not let the Swedish identity be swept away by the Ummah.
A national identity ties an individual to an inheritance, a tradition, a loyalty, and a culture. National identity is an inclusive identity: it considers everyone to be equal, whatever his religion or race, who is willing to assimilate into a nation by sharing the fate and future of a people.
The Brussels bureaucrats and the leftist intellectuals consider patriotism a dangerous relict from the past. They oppose Europe’s national identities. But so does Islam which does not want the faithful to assimilate and adopt another loyalty than the loyalty to Islam and the Umma. This is the problem of so many immigrants in our society.
This message, obviously, is one which the Eurocrats do not want to hear, but it is the truth.
Without self-governance, without self-determination, there will be no preservation of our identity.
My friends, we need to give political power back to the nation-state, in the name of democracy, in the name of freedom, in the name of human dignity. We need a resurgence of national pride, a love of country and institutions.
By defending the nation-states we defend our own identity and liberty.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, it is time to act. We must make haste. Time is running out for Sweden, for the Netherlands, for all the other great nations of Europe. As Ronald Reagan said: “We need to act today, to preserve tomorrow.”
Here is a short summary of five things which we need to do in order to preserve our freedoms.
First, we must defend freedom of speech. It is the most important of our liberties. We need an American-style First Amendment to be implemented in all European countries.
Second, we must end cultural relativism. In my own country I proposed that a clause be included in our constitution stating that the dominant culture in the Netherlands is based on Judeo-Christian and humanist principles. If we don’t know who we are, we can never find out what we are not.
Third, we must stop Islamization. More Islam means less freedom. There is enough Islam in Europe already. We must stop the immigration from Islamic countries.
Fourth, we must restore the supremacy and sovereignty of the nation-state. Finally, it is also our duty to help Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people. Israel is in jihad’s frontline. Israel is a beacon of light in an area of total darkness, Israel is fighting our fight. By helping Israel survive, we help ourselves.
My friends, if we stop speaking the truth, all will be lost.
In a speech at the UN Plaza Millennium Hotel in New York last September 11th, George Igler, the director of the British free speech think thank Discours, remembered his audience of what happened inside Flight 11, the plane that was hijacked by Mohammed Atta and his gang and flown into the North Tower of the WTC on the fateful morning of 9/11, 2001.
“Just be quiet and you will be okay,” Atta told the passengers on board of the hijacked plane.
My friends, we know from the terrible experience of the passengers on Flight 11, that we will not be okay if we remain quiet. On the contrary, we are doomed if we remain quiet. We must speak out, with all our might, against those who want to silence us. We have to tell the truth, loud and clear, about the true nature of Islam — this totalitarian ideology which wants to Islamize us all and impose its will on the entire world. We have to expose the lie which is cultural relativism.
We must struggle every single day against the rising tide of Islamization, even when the cultural relativists in media and governments succumb to it.
If we fail, we will lose everything: our freedom, our identity, our democracy, our rule of law, and all our liberties, beginning with the most important of all: our freedom of speech.
The West is in danger, but we can still prevail.
Even when we are insulted,
even when we are harassed and intimidated,
even when they take us to court for speaking the truth,
even when we are marked for death just for stating an opinion
– we must never be silenced.
Never, never, never.
Thank you. — And good luck to you all!
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