Killing Islam

I’m currently in Holland, a world away from Cuba (where, incidentally, there was a no-show from Fidel on May Day.) It’s a beautiful country, seemingly laid-back with a rich cultural heritage.

The Muslim population is a visible force and, of course, this seems to be upsetting the increasingly right-back European sensibilities. This news is therefore hardly surprising (and not merely on the fringes, either):

Freedom Party PVV faction leader Geert Wilders is arguing that all Islamic schools in the Netherlands should be shut down immediately. He says this measure is necessary in order to “protect children against the spread of Islamic doctrine.”

Wilders writes this in a column that appeared today on the website Nieuwnieuws.nl. “Islam is rapidly pushing our Western civilisation close to the edge of the abyss. We have too much Islam in the Netherlands. Islam is more a violent political ideology than a religion,” the MP writes.

He admits that he has taken a strong position in the debate on Islam. That is necessary, he says, because it is “the eleventh hour.”

Like with so many of these debates in the West, the profound ignorance about Islam is never far from the surface.