Europe to the barricades
By Tony Blankley

This Christmastime could be the moment when Western Europe finally joins our war on terrorism. Anti-Islamist fear and anger from the mouths of the European volk is breaking through the surface calm perpetuated by the elite European appeasers. The assassination and mutilation of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic fanatic — and the retaliatory firebombings of mosques by ethnic Dutchmen — have forced high European leaders and news outlets to begin to publicly face up to the implications of September 11, 2001 and the migration of Muslims in large and hostile numbers into the heart of Europe.
 
     From Holland's leading newspaper, the Telegraaf, to Germany's liberal Berliner Zeitung and Der Spiegel (roughly, the European equivalents of the The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time Magazine) has come the same heated prose that could be found in the United States in the aftermath of September 11. And here in the United States, even the liberal National Public Radio Network's "All Things Considered" is beginning to seriously report European volkish fury the way they usually report breathlessly on the latest developments in Brazilian rainforest depletion.
     Der Spiegel wrote: "The veil of multiculturalism has been lifted, revealing parallel societies where the law of the state does not apply." The Berliner Zeitung headlined their story: "Fear is spreading." In Holland the very dignified Telegraaf wrote: "magazines and papers which include incitements should be suppressed, unsuitable mosques should be shut down and imams who encourage illegal acts should be thrown out of the country." Earlier this week NPR's "All Things Considered" reported on the findings of German television's ZDF-TV after they had secretly placed a camera inside a German Islamic Mosque. The Imam is heard saying (in translation): "Those Germans, those atheists, they don't shave their armpits. Their sweat spreads evil smells. They stink. They are atheists. What good do they do to us? And since they are unbelievers, in the afterlife, they can only burn in hell." Obviously, this did not go down well when the German public saw and heard such things.
     Later in the NPR report they quoted from other communications by German Islamists now being revealed to the German public. A teacher at the Riksdorfer Elementary School — a German government school that under German court ruling three years ago must teach its mostly Muslim students Muslim curriculum — read an anonymous letter he received: "Germany is an Islamic country. Islam is in the home, in schools. Germans will be outnumbered. We [Muslims] will say what we want. We'll live how we want. It's outrageous that Germans demand we speak their language. Our children will have our language, our laws, our culture."
     It is just such inflammatory events that led Der Spiegel this week to report that "A debate on the integration of Muslims is raging in Germany." The article went on to report that: "Computer keyboards across the country are smoking as editorialists pontificate on the pros and cons of multiculturalism. It is heated and on the verge of becoming poisoned."
     Heating the German national broth is the re-emergence of a call for German "Leitkultur," the term for the dominant and guiding culture. Der Spiegel quotes Christian Democratic leader Joerg Schoenbohm: "In the Middle Ages, ghettos were founded to marginalize the Jews. Today, some of the foreigners who live with us in Germany have founded their own ghettos because they scorn us Germans. Those who come here have to adopt the German Leitkultur. Our history has developed over a thousand years. We cannot allow that this basis of our commonality be destroyed by foreigners."
    Edmund Stoibel, the Bavarian Christian