The mosque, which is to be built in the medieval town of Salemi in southwestern Sicily, is being paid for by the oil-rich Persian Gulf Emirate of Qatar. Supporters of the mosque hope it will become a reference point for Muslims in Sicily as well as the rest of Italy.

Construction of the mosque reflects the growing influence of Islam in Italy, which is now home to an estimated 1.5 million Muslims.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the mayor of Salemi, Vittorio Sgarbi, said: “Sicily is excited about hosting Islam. Nothing is more important than finding common feelings and beliefs in the different religions that believe in a single God. This is one of the reasons that, just as our cities have Christian places of worship, I think it is important for a mosque to be built in Salemi for citizens of Arab culture and language. History imposes it upon us.”

Sicily is, of course, a highly symbolic location for Italy’s multiculturalists, who often tout the island as the quintessential interfaith utopia. Never mind that Christians and Jews were famously persecuted during the two centuries that Sicily was dominated by Muslim rule.

The Muslim occupation of Sicily came to an end in 1222, when the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II de-Islamicized the island in response to an ill-conceived revolt by Ibn Ibbad, the last Emir of Sicily.

Muslims began returning en masse in the 1970s, thanks to immigration from North Africa and the Middle East. They also began building mosques.

In 1980, Catania, a city on the eastern coast of Sicily, became home to Italy’s first modern mosque. Also known as the Omar mosque, the mosque in Catania was financed by Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

The Catania mosque was followed by the mosque in Segrate near Milan (1988), which is run by the Muslim brotherhood. That was followed by the mega-mosque in Rome (1994), which was financed by Saudi Arabia.

The Mosque of Rome, which can accommodate more than 12,000 people, is one of the largest mosques in Europe. The imam of the mosque, an Egyptian Islamist unable to speak Italian was suspended after preaching Jihad to Rome’s 90,000 Muslims.

Fast forward to 2012, and there are now an estimated 500 mosques in the country, not to mention thousands of informal Islamic prayer centers and Koranic schools, most of which are housed in basements, garages and warehouses.

Many of the mosque projects in Italy have been promoted by leftwing politicians, who are waging an ideological war with the Roman Catholic Church. As in many other European countries, multiculturalists in Italy hope that by promoting Islam, they will eventually succeed in destroying the country’s Judeo-Christian heritage.

Not surprisingly, most Italians are opposed to the idea of turning Italy into an Islamic republic. Polls show that many Italians view mosques as a “symbol of occupation” and more than a third do not want a mosque in their neighborhood.

Public backlash over the construction of mosques picked up steam in 2006, when the multicultural mayor of Colle di Val d’Elsa, a picturesque Tuscan town situated on the road between Florence and Siena, decided his town would be the perfect location for Italy’s second-biggest mosque.

The town council, dominated by leftwing do-gooders, donated the land for the mosque, which is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Funding to the tune of €500,000 ($650,000) came from Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the oldest bank in Italy.

Local residents were livid and have repeatedly succeeded in postponing the opening of the mosque. The activism prompted citizens in other parts of Italy to block the construction of dozens of new mosques in towns and cities across the country.

In 2007, the mayor of the northern Italian city Bologna postponed the construction of a mega-mosque (described as a “massive 6,000 square meter mosque inside a 52,000 square meter Islamic citadel”) after it emerged that it was being financed by L’Unione delle Comunità e Organizzazioni Islamiche in Italia (UCOII), the largest Muslim Brotherhood organization in Italy.

After it was revealed that an estimated 60% of the mosques in Italy are controlled either directly or indirectly by the Muslim Brotherhood, Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni called for a moratorium on the building of new mosques until a new national law could be written to regulate the phenomenon.

According to Manes Bernardini, a politician with the Northern League in Bologna, “Mosques are springing up like mushrooms, and mayors can do nothing about it because there is no national law to regulate the proliferation of these structures.”

After years of complaints from local residents, the Italian government in July 2008 ordered the closure of the infamous Viale Jenner mosque in central Milan. Thousands of Muslims attending Friday prayers spilled out onto the streets, creating an “unsustainable situation.”

Although the mosque’s imam, the Egyptian-born Abu Imad, was jailed on terrorism charges in April 2010, the mosque remains open.

In another act of defiance described by some as “an incredible provocation,” more than 5,000 Muslim immigrants occupied the central piazza in front of the Duomo of Milan to pray toward Mecca.

According to Mario Borghezio, an Italian MEP, “The prayer to Allah recited by thousands of fanatical Muslims is an act of intimidation, a slap in the face for the city of Milan, which must remain Christian.”

Many Muslims do not see it that way. In 2010, a group calling itself the Association of Italian Muslim Sisters sponsored a conference called “Islam in Italy: Fulfilling the Prophecy” which focused on Islamic eschatology and the belief that Islam will one day conquer Rome.

Another reason why Italy’s anti-mosque activism is unlikely to succeed over the long-term is that Italy no longer has enough Italians.

Speaking at a conference in Rome in July 2011, Emma Bonino, a leftwing Italian politician and militant euthanasia activist who founded the Milan-based Information Center on Sterilization and Abortion, said (without a hint of irony) that in order “to respond to the demographic decline, Italy will need at least 260,000 immigrants per year over the next ten years, almost three million new immigrants by 2020.”

Most of these new immigrants will be Muslims.

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Originally published by the Stonegate Institute on February 3, 2012

Neeson, who was born into a Roman Catholic family in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, told the London-based newspaper The Sun that he was impressed by the religious atmosphere in Istanbul while filming a movie in the city.

He said: “The [Islamic] call to prayer happens five times a day, and for the first week, it drives you crazy, and then it just gets into your spirit, and it’s the most beautiful, beautiful thing. There are 4,000 mosques in the city. Some are just stunning, and it really makes me think about becoming a Muslim.”

Neeson is just one of hundreds of thousands of Europeans who are trading their Christian heritage for the supposed exoticism of Islam. The surge in conversions is contributing to the mainstreaming of Islam in Europe and contributing to the Islamization of the continent.

In Britain, the number of Muslim converts recently passed the 100,000 mark, according to a survey conducted by an inter-faith group called Faith Matters. The survey revealed that nearly two thirds of the converts were women, more than 70% were white and the average age at conversion was just 27.

The survey, conducted by Kevin Brice from Swansea University in Wales, asked converts for their views on the negative aspects of British culture. They identified alcohol and drunkenness, a “lack of morality and sexual permissiveness” and “unrestrained consumerism.”

More than one in four acknowledged there was a “natural conflict” between being a devout Muslim and living in Britain. Nine out of ten women converts said their change of religion had led to them dressing more conservatively. More than half started wearing a head scarf and 5% had worn the burka.

Separately, government authorities revealed that an increasing number of inmates at British prisons are converting to Islam. For example, one-third of the inmates at one of Britain’s most notorious youth jails are Muslims and the religion is attracting a large number of converts.

There are 229 Muslims out of a total of 686 youngsters detained at Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution in West London, according to Ministry of Justice figures. There are now so many worshippers at Friday prayers that they have to be split between Feltham’s mosque and its gym.

Prison insiders say most non-Muslims are locked up during Friday prayers because so many guards are needed to monitor the lunchtime service. As a consequence, many disillusioned youngsters are becoming attracted to Islam by the prospect of getting better food and superior treatment at the prison.

One of the more prominent Britons to convert to Islam is Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Booth, who converted after feeling a “shot of spiritual morphine” on a trip to Iran, now wears a hijab head covering whenever she leaves her home and prays five times a day.

In France, an estimated 70,000 French citizens have converted to Islam in recent years, according to a report by France 3 public television. As in Britain, the majority of converts to Islam in France are young women who say they are disenchanted with materialism.

Conversions to Islam are also rife in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway (and here and here), Poland, Portugal and Spain.

In Italy, Ambassador Alfredo Maiolese, an Italian MP, recently became a Muslim and now dedicates his time trying to improving the image of Islam in the West. In Sweden, there are now at least 5,000 converts to Islam.

In Germany, at least 20,000 people have converted to Islam in recent years, according to a report by RTL television. Some of these converts are playing a growing role in jihad in Germany. In 2010, for example, two German converts to Islam who were found guilty of plotting to create what a judge called a “monstrous blood bath” by carrying out terrorist attacks against American targets in Germany.

“This trend has taken on a very threatening quality toward our security, and while not every convert is a potential terrorist, we are facing a sort of homegrown terrorism that has sprouted in our own backyard,” according to Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

In fact, many European coverts to Islam become much more pious than Muslims who were born into Islam. Such converts, taking an absolutist approach, are often easily led into extremism.

In Belgium, for example, Muriel Degauque, a woman from Charleroi and a convert to Islam, committed a suicide car bomb attack in November 2005 against American troops in Iraq. A bakery worker, Degaugue married a Muslim man and quickly became radical in her religious views.

In Switzerland, young converts to Islam are a potential threat to the country’s security, according to Alard du Bois-Reymond, who was head of the Swiss Migration Office until he was removed for his politically incorrect observations.

Du Bois-Reymond told the German-language newspaper NZZ am Sonntag that Swiss converts include people who want a “radically different society” and are “resistant to dialogue.” He described the Central Islamic Council of Switzerland, which was founded and is run by Swiss converts to Islam, as “the most radical group in Switzerland.”

Also in Switzerland, Daniel Streich, a former member of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) who rose to fame for his campaign against the construction of minarets for mosques, converted to Islam. He now says Switzerland needs more mosques.

In Spain, at least 50,000 native Spaniards have converted to Islam in recent years, many of them women. Webislam.net, a Spanish-language website devoted to propagating Islam in Spain, recently published an article that encourages Spanish women to wed Muslim men. The article describes marriage to a Muslim this way: “Multiculturalism is a rewarding experience for all concerned.”

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Originally published by Stonegate Institute on January 27, 2012

The announcement comes less than one month after the United States hosted its own Istanbul Process conference in Washington, DC.

The Istanbul Process – its explicit aim is to enshrine in international law a global ban on all critical scrutiny of Islam and/or Islamic Sharia law – is being spearheaded by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a bloc of 57 Muslim countries.

Based in Saudi Arabia, the OIC has long pressed the European Union and the United States to impose limits on free speech and expression about Islam.

But the OIC has now redoubled its efforts and is engaged in a determined diplomatic offensive to persuade Western democracies to implement United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) Resolution 16/18, which calls on all countries to combat “intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of … religion and belief.” (Analysis of the OIC’s war on free speech can be found here and here.)

Resolution 16/18, which was adopted at HRC headquarters in Geneva in March 2011, is widely viewed as a significant step forward in OIC efforts to advance the international legal concept of defaming Islam.

However, the HRC resolution – as well as the OIC-sponsored Resolution 66/167, which was quietly approved by the 193-member UN General Assembly on December 19, 2011 – remains ineffectual as long as it lacks strong support in the West.

Hence, the OIC scored a diplomatic coup when the Obama Administration agreed to host a three-day Istanbul Process conference in Washington, DC on December 12-14, 2011. In doing so, the United States gave the OIC the political legitimacy it has been seeking to globalize its initiative to ban criticism of Islam.

Following the Obama Administration’s lead, the European Union now wants to get in on the action by hosting the next Istanbul Process summit, tentatively scheduled for July 2012.

Up until now, the European Union has kept the OIC initiative at arms-length. But Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the OIC, says the EU’s offer to host the meeting represents a “qualitative shift in action against the phenomenon of Islamophobia,” according to the International Islamic News Agency (IINA), the OIC’s official news/propaganda organ.

According to the IINA, “The phenomenon of Islamophobia is found in the West in general, but is growing in European countries in particular and in a manner different than that in the US, which had contributed to drafting Resolution 16/18. The new European position represents the beginning of the shift from their previous reserve over the years over the attempts by the OIC to counter ‘defamation of religions’ in the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations.

The IINA report continues: “Officials in the Cultural Affairs Department of the OIC said that the European Union’s offer to host the third meeting (the first was in Istanbul in July and the second in Washington, DC in December) is considered a promising new possibility of solving this problem. The ‘Istanbul Process’ will have an added momentum by holding the meeting in Europe, which is more affected by the phenomenon of Islamophobia and hostility towards Islam.”

The OIC is especially angry over its inability to silence a growing number of democratically elected politicians in Europe who have voiced concerns over the refusal of Muslim immigrants to integrate into their host countries and the consequent establishment of parallel Islamic societies in many parts of Europe.

According to the IINA, “Ihsanoglu said that the growing role of the extreme right in politics in several European countries has become stronger than the capacity of the Organization [OIC], explaining that the extreme right, who [sic] hates Muslims, became leverage in the hands of politicians. He added that the rise of the extreme right through elections has become an issue that cannot be countered, considering the democratic way in which these extremists reach their positions. He pointed out to the referendum held in Switzerland, as an example, which resulted in suspending the construction of minarets there following a vote by the Swiss people.”

In other words, the OIC is now seeking the support of non-elected bureaucrats at the headquarters of the European Union in Brussels to enact pan-European hate speech legislation to limit by fiat what 500 million European citizens – including democratically elected politicians – can and cannot say about Islam.

To be sure, many individual European countries that lack First Amendment protections like those in the United States have already enacted hate speech laws that effectively serve as proxies for the all-encompassing blasphemy legislation the OIC is seeking to impose on the European Union as a whole.

In Austria, for example, an appellate court in December 2011 upheld the politically correct conviction of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a Viennese housewife and anti-Jihad activist, for “denigrating religious beliefs” after she gave a series of seminars about the dangers of radical Islam. The ruling showed that while Judaism and Christianity can be disparaged with impunity in postmodern multicultural Austria, speaking the truth about Islam is subject to swift and hefty legal penalties.

Also in Austria, Susanne Winter, an Austrian politician and Member of Parliament, was convicted in January 2009 for the “crime” of saying that “in today’s system” the Islamic prophet Mohammed would be considered a “child molester,” referring to his marriage to Aisha. Winter was also convicted of “incitement” for saying that Austria faces an “Islamic immigration tsunami.” Winters was ordered to pay a fine of €24,000 ($31,000), and received a suspended three-month prison sentence.

In Denmark, Lars Hedegaard, the president of the International Free Press Society, was found guilty by a Danish court in May 2011 of “hate speech” for saying in a taped interview that there was a high incidence of child rape and domestic violence in areas dominated by Muslim culture.

Hedegaard’s comments, which called attention to the horrific living conditions of millions of Muslim women, violated Denmark’s infamous Article 266b of the penal code, a catch-all provision that Danish elites use to enforce politically correct speech codes. Hedegaard has appealed his conviction to the Danish Supreme Court, where the case is now pending.

Also in Denmark, Jesper Langballe, a Danish politician and Member of Parliament, was found guilty of hate speech in December 2010 for saying that honor killings and sexual abuse take place in Muslim families.

Langballe was denied the opportunity to prove his assertions because under Danish law it is immaterial whether a statement is true or false. All that is needed for a conviction is for someone to feel offended. Langballe was summarily sentenced to pay a fine of 5,000 Danish Kroner ($850) or spend ten days in jail.

In Finland, Jussi Kristian Halla-aho, a politician and well-known political commentator, was taken to court in March 2009 on charges of “incitement against an ethnic group” and “breach of the sanctity of religion” for saying that Islam is a religion of pedophilia. A Helsinki court later dropped the charges of blasphemy but ordered Halla-aho to pay a fine of €330 ($450) for disturbing religious worship. The Finnish public prosecutor, incensed at the court’s dismissal of the blasphemy charges, appealed the case to the Finnish Supreme Court, where it is now being reviewed.

In France, novelist Michel Houellebecq was taken to court by Islamic authorities in the French cities of Paris and Lyon for calling Islam “the stupidest religion” and for saying the Koran is “badly written.” In court, Houellebecq (pronounced Wellbeck) told the judges that although he had never despised Muslims, he did feel contempt for Islam. He was acquitted in October 2002.

Also in France, Brigitte Bardot, the legendary actress turned animal rights crusader, was convicted in June 2008 for “inciting racial hatred” after demanding that Muslims anaesthetize animals before slaughtering them.

In Holland, Geert Wilders – the leader of the Dutch Freedom Party who had denounced the threat to Western values posed by unassimilated Muslim immigrants – was recently acquitted of five charges of inciting religious hatred against Muslims for comments he made that were critical of Islam. The landmark verdict brought to a close a highly-public, two-year legal odyssey.

Also in Holland, Gregorius Nekschot, the pseudonym of a Dutch cartoonist who is a vocal critic of Islamic female circumcision and often mocks Dutch multiculturalism, was arrested at his home in Amsterdam in May 2008 for drawing cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims. Nekschot (which literally means “shot in the neck,” a method used, according to the cartoonist, by “fascists and communists to get rid of their opponents”) was released after 30 hours of interrogation by Dutch law enforcement officials.

Nekschot was charged for eight cartoons that “attribute negative qualities to certain groups of people,” and, as such, are insulting and constitute the crimes of discrimination and hate according to articles 137c and 137d of the Dutch Penal Code.

In an interview with the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, Nekschot said it was the first time in 800 years in the history of satire in the Netherlands that an artist was put in jail. (That interview has since been removed from the newspaper’s website.) Although the case against Nekschot was dismissed in September 2010, he ended his career as a cartoonist on December 31, 2011.

In Italy, the late Oriana Fallaci, a journalist and author, was taken to court for writing that Islam “brings hate instead of love and slavery instead of freedom.” In November 2002, a judge in Switzerland, acting on a lawsuit brought by Islamic Center of Geneva, issued an arrest warrant for Fallaci for violations of Article 261 of the Swiss criminal code; the judge asked the Italian government either to prosecute or extradite her. The Italian Justice Ministry rejected this request on the grounds that the Italian Constitution protects freedom of speech.

But in May 2005, the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII), linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, filed a lawsuit against Fallaci, charging that “some of the things she said in her book ‘The Force of Reason’ are offensive to Islam.” An Italian judge ordered Fallaci to stand trial in Bergamo on charges of “defaming Islam.” Fallaci died of cancer in September 2006, just months after the start of her trial.

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Originally published by Stonegate Institute on January 6, 2012

Germany’s Federal Administrative Court found that although the right to pray at school is guaranteed by religious freedom under the constitution (Grundgesetz), students lose that right if a conflict is created in the process.

The court also ruled that schools are not obligated to accommodate Muslims by providing them with separate prayer rooms.

The ruling in the landmark case has both legal and political consequences. Not only do schools across Germany now have a legal basis for banning Muslim prayers, the widely-watched case also feeds into the larger debate about the role of Islam in Germany.

The case dates back to 2007, when a 14-year-old Muslim student and some of his peers at a high school in Berlin began a prayer session in the school corridor during a break from class.

The following day the principal informed the boy and his parents that praying was not permitted on the grounds of the school, which has students from 30 different countries and nearly all major religions. The principal said she feared for the peaceful running of the school.

The student had argued that because prayer times depend on the rising and setting of the sun, he had no other choice during the winter but to pray around midday while at school. He then filed a lawsuit in an effort to force his school into allowing him to pray at school. It became the first such case in German courts.

In September 2009, the highest court in the region, Berlin-Brandenburg, ruled that the student did have the right to pray on school grounds during his break from class. His high school subsequently granted him a special room for midday prayer, one of the five required daily prayers in Islam.

But the state of Berlin appealed the ruling out of concern that daily prayer would disturb the high school’s routine and jeopardize its religious neutrality.

Now the federal court in Leipzig has overturned the original confirmation of the student’s religious rights.

Capping a four-year legal battle, the Leipzig-based court ruled: “The court has decided that performing the prayer rite in the school corridor could exacerbate a threat which already exists to the peace of the school community. By ‘peace of the school community’ we mean an environment which is free of conflict and which allows lessons to take place in an orderly manner.”

The court also said the student “is not entitled to perform prayer during school outside of class when this can disrupt the running of the school.” It added that the “school was not able to organize a separate room for prayer.”

The judges noted that conflict had broken out among Muslim students themselves after accusations that the student’s prayer ritual was not in accordance with a particular teaching of the Islamic Koran.

The court stressed that the ruling did not mean that no student could pray at school. The decision should be made on a case by case basis.

Tilman Nagel, an expert in Islam who appeared as a witness at an earlier court hearing, said there is a big difference between how Muslims and Christians pray. He argued that the Islamic ritual of praying undertaken with sometimes very large groups of other people is very different from the Christian private act of praying, and was thus disruptive in a public space.

Ralph Ghadban, a Berlin-based expert on Islam, said Muslim groups are attempting to leverage German laws that guarantee religious freedom in an effort to Islamicize German schools. He argued that according to German law, the state has a duty to remain neutral but that Muslims were compromising that law by making the state show special favors for Islam.

Aiman Mazyek, the head of Germany’s Central Council of Muslims, said: “In the past, schools have been more pragmatic and laid-back about the issue, but now that has been pushed back. Now, we have reached the final legal stage and that is why it has now turned into a political debate.”

The court case has indeed become part of the larger debate over the question of Muslim immigration and the establishment of a parallel Islamic society in Germany, which is home to an estimated 4.3 million Muslims.

In November 2011, the German Federal Ministry of the Family released a 160-page report, “Forced Marriages in Germany: Numbers and Analysis of Counseling Cases,” which revealed that thousands of young women and girls in Germany are victims of forced marriages every year. Most of the victims come from Muslim families; many have been threatened with violence and even death.

In September 2011, a new book “Judges Without Law: Islamic Parallel Justice Endangers Our Constitutional State,” showed that Islamic Sharia courts are now operating in all of Germany’s big cities. The book argues that this “parallel justice system” is undermining the rule of law in Germany because Muslim arbiters/imams are settling criminal cases out of court without the involvement of German prosecutors or lawyers before law enforcement can bring the cases to a German court.

That same month, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich revealed that Germany is home to some 1,000 Islamic radicals who are potential terrorists. He said many of these home-grown Islamists are socially alienated Muslim youths who are being inflamed by German-language Islamist propaganda that promotes hatred of the West. In some cases, the extremists are being encouraged to join sleeper cells and to one day “awaken” and commit terrorist attacks in Germany and elsewhere.

In December 2010, an opinion survey, “Perception and Acceptance of Religious Diversity,” conducted by the sociology department of the University of Münster, in partnership with the prestigious TNS Emnid political polling firm, shows that fewer than 5% of Germans believe Islam is a peaceful religion and that more than 40% of Germans believe that the practice of Islam should be vigorously restricted. Significantly, more than 80% of Germans agree with the statement that “Muslims must adapt to our culture.”

In September 2010, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a think tank linked to the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), published a survey which found that many Germans believe their country is being “overrun” by Muslim immigrants. It also found that these views are not isolated at the extremes of German society, but are to a large degree “at the center of it.”

In August 2010, a book titled “Germany Does Away With Itself” analyzed the social changes that are transforming Germany due to the presence of millions of non-integrated Muslims in the country.

In July 2010, the late German magistrate Kirsten Heisig, in her book “The End of Patience,” warned: “The law is slipping out of our hands. It’s moving to the streets or into a parallel system where an imam or another representative of the Koran determines what must be done.”

In May 2009, Germany’s Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), the domestic intelligence agency, reported that there are an estimated 29 Islamist groups in Germany with 34,720 members or supporters who pose a major threat to homeland security. Many of them want to establish a “Koran-state” in Germany because they believe Islamic Sharia law is a divine ordinance that is to replace all other legal systems.

Originally published by Hudson NY on December 15, 2011

But the high profile summit – which was billed by many as the last chance to save the euro single currency – did little to resolve the immediate crisis at hand, namely the massive debt loads of most European countries and the spiraling costs of borrowing more money to pay off those debts.

Instead, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy (aka “Merkozy”) leveraged the crisis summit to secure a “historic” commitment from all of the 17 countries that use the euro single currency (aka “eurozone countries”) to transfer broad new economic and financial decision-making powers to unelected and unaccountable technocrats in Brussels, the administrative capital of the EU.

The new “fiscal compact” is a major step on the road to creating a single economic government in Europe. By giving Brussels more power to codify and enforce debt limits and impose central oversight of national budgets, the agreement takes the EU one step closer to consolidated and centralized fiscal authority in Europe. Among other features, the agreement also gives the European Court of Justice the right to strike down national laws that conflict with diktats issued by bureaucrats in Brussels, although EU legal experts are still unsure about how this can or will be enforced.

British Prime Minister David Cameron was the only EU leader who refused to go along with what many observers have described as an attempted European coup d’état.

Cameron vetoed the European power grab after Merkozy refused to give Britain – which uses the pound, not the euro – a written promise that the City of London would be exempt from heavy-handed EU rules and regulations that could damage its £46 billion (€54 billion; $72 billion) financial services sector.

In particular, Cameron had demanded that Britain be able to veto any usurpation of regulatory power over financial services from London to Brussels. He was especially keen on avoiding a move towards a Europe-wide financial transaction tax that would see London become a less attractive destination in which to do business.

In this context, Cameron had also insisted on measures that would prevent the eurozone countries from demanding that euro-denominated transactions be conducted in Frankfurt or Paris, something that would reduce the amount of business being done in the City of London.

Cameron’s veto will make life more complicated for Europe’s empire builders. In practical terms, rather than amending the existing Lisbon Treaty, which comprises the constitutional basis for the EU, the other 26 member countries of the EU will now have to forge a completely new “intergovernmental” treaty.

The agreement reached in Brussels on December 9 calls for the new treaty to be drafted within the next three months (by March 2012), even though in the past this process has taken many years. After that, the treaty will need to be ratified by each of the 26 countries. Some of them, such as Ireland, will also require holding public referendums.

Without Britain on board, the other 26 EU countries could also face potentially complicated legal obstacles, especially on how the new treaty will be enforced.

Moreover, Cameron says he will not allow the other 26 EU leaders from using the institutions of the 27-member EU to draft and police regulations for the 17 eurozone countries. Presumably, this would include the European Commission and the European Court of Justice, which Britain, as a member of the EU, helps to pay for through its annual contributions to the EU budget. He says the EU institutions are there to serve the interests of all 27 countries equally and not just a small group.

Cameron defended his veto by saying: “What was on offer wasn’t in British interests, so I didn’t agree to it.” And the majority of British voters agree with him. According to a poll published by the London Daily Mail on December 11, 62% of Britons agree that Cameron was right to veto the new European Union treaty; only 19% say he was wrong.

What’s more, 48% of Britons want Britain to quit the EU; 66% want a referendum on British ties to the EU; 66% want to renegotiate Britain’s ties to the EU and 65% believe the euro will collapse.

But European elites were infuriated by Cameron’s implacability. Sarkozy, who observers said needed to be “physically restrained” during the summit, said: “Very simply, in order to accept the reform of the treaty at 27, David Cameron asked for what we thought was unacceptable: a protocol to exonerate the UK from financial services regulation. We could not accept this as at least part of the problems [Europe is facing] came from this sector.”

Sarkozy’s comment reflects a mindset that pervades the EU as a whole, namely that the “Anglo-Saxon” economic model of free markets and capitalism is to blame for Europe’s problems, and not the “European Social Welfare” economic model of high taxes and heavy regulation. As a result, there are few things European elites would love as much as to see the destruction of the British economy.

In any case, the other 26 EU countries will now move ahead towards “fiscal union” without Britain, thus institutionalizing a “two-speed” Europe.

There is much debate over whether this would be good or bad for the United Kingdom.

On the one hand, there are those who argue that Britain – Europe’s third-largest economy after Germany and France – will be left on the periphery of Europe with little or no influence over how the continent evolves. The marginalization of Britain would be especially ironic considering the blood and treasure the United Kingdom invested in two world wars to keep Europe free, only to see the continent return to a more authoritarian political model.

From a geopolitical perspective, Britain historically has attempted to maintain a balance of power in continental Europe by forming shifting alliances with the main powers, usually France or Germany. Cameron now faces a Europe that is led by France and Germany and united against Britain.

On the other hand, other countries might follow Britain’s lead and begin to disengage from the EU. More immediately, a multi-speed Europe could potentially enable Britain to reclaim some of the powers that previous British governments ceded to the EU.

Although Cameron insists the United Kingdom will stay in the EU as long as “membership is in our interest,” some Europeans are already predicting a “great divorce.”

In the meantime, European leaders are likely to make Cameron (and Britain) the scapegoat for their own economic failings, especially if international investors begin to pull the rug out from under the EU’s shaky financial edifice.

Merkozy and friends hailed summit in Brussels as a “breakthrough” that would restore confidence in the future of the euro. But financial markets are likely to take issue with that assessment, especially because the institutional changes discussed in Brussels are focused on preventing future crises rather than resolving the current one.

In fact, European politicians have done little to alleviate the underlying problems facing the eurozone in the near term. Chief among these is slow growth.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), for example, projects that the EU-27 will grow only 0.6 percent in 2012 and 1.7 percent in 2013. The forecast for the 17 eurozone economy is even worse; it is expected to slip into recession in early 2012.

The European Central Bank (ECB) said on December 8 that the economy of the 17 eurozone countries is almost stagnant, growing just 0.2 percent in the third quarter of 2011, with unemployment at 10.3 percent. It also lowered its growth projections, saying that EU-17 output could fall as much as 0.4 percent in 2012. Declining output makes the debt crisis worse by cutting tax receipts.

Nor will the Brussels summit make investors more willing to buy European government bonds, especially from countries on the southern periphery. In particular, Italy and Spain – the eurozone’s third and fourth biggest economies – are facing a huge refinancing crunch in the first part of 2012. Rome alone has a massive €150 billion ($200 billion) in debt falling due between February and April 2012. Not surprisingly, southern European bond yields are sky-high.

Some economists argue that ultimately the ECB will have to intervene more aggressively by buying large quantities of bonds of large troubled countries, in order to prevent borrowing costs for Italy, Spain and other countries from becoming so high that they are unable to refinance their debt. But ECB President Mario Draghi says no such plan is in the works and that his only mandate is to prevent inflation.

In the final analysis, the deal announced in Brussels is unlikely to ease the financial pressures on the euro. The European debt crisis is far from over and the survival of the euro is far from certain.

But as long as the euro’s future hangs in the balance, expect European leaders to continue to exploit the crisis to consolidate more power in Brussels. They will argue: “There can be no currency union without fiscal union, and no fiscal union without political union.”

Originally published by PJ Media on December 12, 2011

In Dutch neighborhoods where the majority of residents are Moroccan immigrants, the youth crime rate reaches 50%. Moreover, juvenile delinquency among Moroccans is not limited to males; girls and young women are increasingly involved in criminal activities.

The “Dutch-Moroccan Monitor 2011” also reveals that most of the Moroccan youth involved in criminal activities were born in Holland. This implies that the children of Moroccan immigrants are not integrating into Dutch society, and confirms that the Netherlands is paying dearly for its failed multicultural approach to immigration.

The Netherlands is home to around 350,000 so-called Dutch-Moroccans (Moroccan immigrants to Holland and their descendants) or around 2% of the total Dutch population of 16.4 million. More than half of Dutch-Moroccans are persons of second-generation background.

The report, which was produced by the Rotterdam Institute for Social Policy Research (Risbo) at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, examines the extent and nature of crime among the Dutch-Moroccan population in 22 municipalities in the Netherlands. The data were taken from the Herkenningsdienstsysteem (HKS), a nationwide database where the Dutch police register criminal suspects.

The Dutch municipality with the highest incidence of Moroccan juvenile delinquency is the southern city of Den Bosch, where Moroccans comprise approximately 10% of the total population, and where 47.7% Moroccan males under the age of 24 have had a run-in with the law during the past five years.

Den Bosch is followed by the city of Zeist in central Netherlands with 47.3%, Gouda (46.3%), Veenendaal (44.9%) and Amersfoort (44.6%). The percentages in the municipalities of Den Haag, Ede, Leiden, Maassluis, Nijmegen, Oosterhout, Schiedam and Utrecht are also over 40.

The study also reveals Moroccan youth are substantially overrepresented (in comparison with other immigrant groups such as Antilleans or Turks, or native Dutch) in every stage of the Dutch criminal justice process system. In the Netherlands as a whole, Moroccan youth are overrepresented by 196%. In Den Hague, the overrepresentation rate is 150%; in Amsterdam it is 142% and in Rotterdam it is 135%.

In 9 of the 22 municipalities, however, the overrepresentation is greater than 300%. In Ede, a town in the center of the Netherlands, the overrepresentation is 481%; in Den Bosch it is 372%, in Veenendaal it is 368% and in Zeist it is 356%.

This data complements the conclusions of a classified report titled “Analysis of Moroccan Criminal Populations of Municipalities in the Netherlands” which was conducted by the Dutch national police (KLPD) in 2009 and leaked to the media in March 2010. The report examines 14,462 Moroccan criminals in 181 Dutch municipalities.

The report shows that in absolute numbers, Amsterdam has the most Moroccan criminals (2,497), followed by Rotterdam (1,798) and Den Haag (1,271). When taking into account recidivism, the western Dutch city of Gouda has the biggest Moroccan crime problem, followed by Utrecht and Den Haag.

The report also shows the percentage of Moroccans among the total number of arrested criminals: Gouda leads with 31%, followed by Utrecht (23.7%) and Culemborg (22.6%).

A separate study makes a direct link between criminality in the Netherlands and Muslim immigration. It is titled “Criminality, Migration and Ethnicity” and was published in June 2010 by the Amsterdam-based Journal of Criminology.

The authors of the study identified everyone who was born in the Netherlands since 1984 and tracked their criminal records until age 22. They found that in the Netherlands as a whole, 50% of Moroccan males committed a crime before they turned 22, and that one in three are repeat offenders with more than five incidents on their police records; this compares with 23% for the native Dutch. They also found that among Moroccans, The study also found that Moroccan girls commit three times as many crimes as native Dutch girls.

Taken together, all of this data shows that efforts by the Dutch government to tackle Moroccan youth criminality have failed.

The central government in January 2009 signed an agreement with 22 so-called “Moroccan municipalities” which are home to the highest numbers of Moroccan juvenile delinquents.

Over the past four years, these 22 municipalities received €32 million ($43 million) through a government program called “Moroccan Youth at Risk.” Far from reducing delinquency, however, the crime rates in many of these municipalities have increased.

In most cases, the municipalities failed to implement plans for tackling youth criminality in their areas because local politicians were afraid of or feared reprisals from Moroccans.

The government also hired so-called “family coaches” whose job it was to interact with families with delinquent children, as well as “street coaches” who were to counsel youth on the street.

As it turns out, these trainers were more committed to preserving multiculturalism than preventing crime; many of the coaches dedicated their time to helping Moroccan youth find ways to avoid paying the fines and penalties incurred by their criminal behavior.

So who is to blame for the failure of Moroccans to integrate into Dutch society and the attendant epidemic of Moroccan youth criminality?

According to Dutch journalist Fleur Jurgens in a book titled “The Moroccan Drama” (Het Marokkanendrama), the blame lies with two groups: the Moroccans, who say the Dutch are responsible for their circumstances, and leftwing multiculturalists, who have portrayed Moroccans as the defenseless victims of an unfair society.

In her book, Jurgens convincingly demolishes four multicultural myths that have been built up over the years, myths which have prevented the implementation of lasting solutions.

The first myth is that there is no Moroccan problem. Jurgens answers this myth with the following statistics: over 60% of Moroccan youths between 17 and 23 drop out of school without even a basic qualification; Moroccan youth unemployment in the Netherlands is around 40%; more than 60% of Moroccan males between ages 40 and 64 live on Dutch social welfare benefits.

The second myth is that Moroccans turn to crime because the Dutch labor market discriminates against them. Jurgens refutes this by pointing out that immigrants from many countries are working in the Netherlands.

The third myth is that Moroccan parents cannot control the conduct of their children because it is not part of their culture. Jurgens disproves this claim by showing that many Moroccan girls complain about the intense social control they face from their parents.

The fourth myth is that the Netherlands has a moral debt to the Moroccan immigrants because they were recruited as “guest workers” by the Dutch in Morocco. Jurgens demolishes this argument by showing that such recruitment was stopped in 1973 and at least half of the Moroccans who were recruited as guest workers eventually returned to Morocco. The present population is almost entirely comprised of Moroccans who immigrated to the Netherlands on their own initiative for economic reasons.

Jurgens concludes that Moroccan parents are to blame for the antisocial behavior of their children by teaching them at a young age to hate the Dutch and abhor their society.

Dutch politician Geert Wilders has taken Jurgens’ analysis one step further by arguing that Moroccans are not integrating because they do not want to. He has told Parliament that Moroccans are in the Netherlands not to integrate but rather to “subjugate the Dutch and to rule over them.” He said: “They happily accept our dole, houses and doctors, but not our rules and values.”

The Dutch government now says it will abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that has encouraged Moroccans and other Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society within the Netherlands.

A new integration bill (covering letter and 15-page action plan), which Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner presented to parliament in June, reads: “The government shares the social dissatisfaction over the multicultural society model and plans to shift priority to the values of the Dutch people. In the new integration system, the values of the Dutch society play a central role. With this change, the government steps away from the model of a multicultural society.”

The new integration policy will place more demands on immigrants, who will be required to learn Dutch. The government has also promised to take a tougher approach toward immigrants who ignore Dutch values or disobey Dutch law.

Is it all too little too late? Many native Dutch seem to think so.

Since 2004, when the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was assassinated by a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan, tens of thousands of native Dutch have moved to other countries in search of a better life.

This trend is picking up steam. During the first six months of 2011 alone, 58,000 people left the Netherlands. According to Statistics Netherlands, the increase in emigrants is largely due to native Dutch leaving the country to settle elsewhere.

Originally published by Hudson NY on November 28, 2011

The attack marks a serious escalation of a long-running Islamic war on free speech and expression in Europe. In recent years, Muslim immigrants and their leftwing multicultural supporters in Europe have used a combination of lawsuits, verbal and physical harassment and even murder to silence debate about the rise of Islam in Europe.

The editors of Charlie Hebdo magazine said Mohammed was named as “guest editor” to “honor” the recent electoral success of the Islamist Ennahda party in Tunisia and the announcement by the new leaders of Libya that Islamic Sharia law would be the basis for the country’s legal system.

The front cover of the offending issue portrayed a cartoonish man sporting a turban, white robe and beard and smiling broadly while saying “100 lashes if you don’t die laughing.”

Page two of the issue contains a series of cartoons featuring women in burqas, the face-covering robes. Page three has a tongue-in-cheek editorial — signed by “Mohammed” — which states that the true aim of Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda party (which won the country’s first free elections on October 23) is to impose Islam not democracy.

Every other page of the issue contains “a word from Mohammed” and spoofs the news by twisting it into the weekly’s current theme.

The magazine’s publisher, a cartoonist known as Charb, said the fire was caused by Molotov cocktails. He told police that some of his employees had received threatening letters and emails in an apparent effort to prevent the issue from reaching newsstands. Charb also said the magazine’s website had been hacked and that visitors were directed to an Islamist website.

But Charb rejected accusations that he was trying to provoke. “It was a joke where the topic was to imagine a world where Sharia would be applied,” Charb said. “But since everyone tells us not to worry about Libya or Tunisia, we wanted to explain what would be a soft version of Sharia, a Sharia applied in a soft manner. We feel we are just doing our job as usual. The only difference is that this week, Mohammed is on the cover and that is quite rare,” Charb said.

French Prime Minister François Fillon said “Freedom of expression is an inalienable value of our democracy. No cause can justify a violent action.”

Interior Minister Claude Guéant said “Everything will be done to find those behind this attack. If some think they can impose their way of thinking on the [French] Republic, they are mistaken, they will be fought.”

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë condemned “this demonstration of hate and intolerance” and promised to find new office space to help the magazine continue publishing after the blaze.

French Muslim leaders, while distancing themselves from the attack, said it was justified.

Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the French Council for the Muslim Faith, an umbrella group representing the more than 5 million Muslims in France, said his organization deplores “the very mocking tone of the paper toward Islam and its prophet but reaffirms with force its total opposition to all acts and all forms of violence.”

Dalil Boubakeur, who heads the Great Mosque of Paris, said he resented the “anxious European climate of Islamophobia” and the stigmatizing of Muslims through caricatures.

The incident is the latest salvo in a long-running effort to silence criticism of Islam in Europe, often through acts of violence.

In 2002, Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated for his views on Muslim immigration, and in 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was stabbed to death for producing a movie that criticized Islam.

In September 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a dozen cartoons of the Muslim prophet, including one depicting Mohammed wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse. The cartoons ignited violent protests across the Muslim world, resulting in more than 100 reported deaths.

In 2010, Kurt Westergaard, the Danish artist who drew the offending cartoons, narrowly escaped being assassinated by an axe-wielding Muslim in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city.

In many other cases, the preferred method of silencing contrary views of Islam in Europe has been lawfare, the malicious use of European courts.

In June 2011, a court in Amsterdam acquitted Geert Wilders — the leader of the Dutch Freedom Party who had denounced the threat to Western values posed by unassimilated Muslim immigrants — of charges of inciting religious hatred against Muslims for comments he made that were critical of Islam.

The charges against Wilders arose in part from a short film called “Fitna” (an Arabic word with connotations of upheaval or chaos) which he produced in 2008. The 17-minute documentary — which argues that the Koran incites its followers to carry out acts of violence and terrorism — prompted sundry leftist and Islamic groups to file more than 60 complaints with the Dutch police.

Also in the Netherlands, Gregorius Nekschot, the pseudonym of a Dutch cartoonist who has been a vocal critic of Islamic female circumcision and often mocks Dutch multiculturalism, was arrested at his home in Amsterdam in May 2008 for drawing cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims. Nekschot (which literally means “shot in the neck,” a method used, according to the cartoonist, by “fascists and communists to get rid of their opponents”) was released after 30 hours of interrogation by Dutch law enforcement officials.

In an interview with the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, Nekschot said it was the first time in 800 years of the history of satire in the Netherlands that an artist was put in jail. (That interview has since been removed from the newspaper’s website.)

Other recent assaults on Islam-related free speech in Europe include the show trials of: Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a housewife in Austria, Susanne Winter, a politician in Austria, Lars Hedegaard, a journalist in Denmark, Jesper Langballe, a politician in Denmark, Jussi Kristian Halla-aho, a politician in Finland, Brigitte Bardot, an animal rights activist in France, Michel Houellebecq, a novelist in France, and the late Oriana Fallaci, a journalist and author in Italy.

Back in France, the last page of the offending magazine features a turbaned and bearded man with a clown-like red nose who says: “Yes, Islam is compatible with humor.” Unfortunately for Charb the editor and many other champions of free speech in Europe, Islam is no joke.

Originally published by Hudson New York on November 3, 2011

The inquiry found that nearly half of all Italians say they feel no sympathy whatsoever toward the Jews. There has also been an exponential proliferation of anti-Semitic Internet websites and social networks in Italy. Moreover, the level of hatred against the State of Israel in many cases passes the limits of legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and aims to the destruction of the Jews.

“We have been attempting to understand the new aspects of this phenomenon, which is as aggressive and genocidal as it always was, but it is presently hiding itself by assuming new forms,” according to Fiamma Nirenstein, the Italian MP who chaired the inquiry.

The report says that Italians harbor varying degrees of hostility towards Jews, ranging from traditional anti-Jewish stereotypes to full-blown anti-Semitism. The report says Italians holding anti-Semitic views can be broken down into four general categories.

The first group, which comprises about 10% of the Italian population, holds what the report classifies as “traditional” anti-Jewish views. These include stereotypes such as “Jews are not fully Italian,” “You can never really trust them,” and “When it comes down to it, they have always lived at the expense of others.”

The report says the second group (11% of the population) holds what it classifies as “modern” anti-Semitic views. These include stereotypes such as “the Jews are rich and powerful,” “Jews control and direct politics, the media and the banks,” and “Jews are more faithful to Israel than to the country of their birth.”

A third group (12% of Italians) holds “contingent” anti-Semitic views such as “Jews use the Shoah [Holocaust] to justify Israeli policy,” “Jews talk too much about their own tragedies and disregard the tragedies of other people” and “The Jews behave like Nazis with the Palestinians.”

The report cites a fourth group, which it classifies as the “pure anti-Semites” (12% of Italians). Those classified within this group hold all of the elements of the other three forms of Italian anti-Semitism.

The inquiry says the Internet is partly responsible for fuelling an increase in Italian anti-Semitism. The document notes an “alarming increase” in anti-Semitic websites and social networks. In 2008, for example, there were 836 websites spreading anti-Semitic views in Italy. In 2009, this figure jumped to 1,172 such sites, an increase of 40%. Many of the owners of these websites manage to evade Italian authorities because they often register their domain names in other countries.

In July 2011, for example, an Italian website called for the “blacklisting” of more than 160 Jewish professors who teach at Italian universities. The website accused the Jewish professors of “manipulating the minds of students” and “seeking to control Italian universities.”

Other websites include blacklists that include names of Jewish magistrates who serve in Italian courts, as well as lists of businesses, restaurants, butcher shops and pastry shops owned by Italian Jews.

Anti-Semitism in Italy is also being fomented by Muslim immigrants who have established links with left-wing and right-wing extremists to carry out attacks on local Jewish communities, their synagogues, schools and cemeteries, according to the report.

In June 2011, for example, pro-Palestinian and left-wing activists threatened to “ignite” the city of Milan to protest an exhibit celebrating Israeli culture. The “Unexpected Israel” exhibition, which showcased Israeli culture, technology, agriculture, economics and art to present “the unfamiliar Israel” went ahead as planned on Milan’s Piazza Duomo central square. But city police refused to handle security for the event due to the threats of violence. Petitions issued by pro-Palestinian activists groups stated “No to the Israeli occupation of Milano.”

Also in June, the city of Turin hosted a “cultural festival” where the image of Israeli President Shimon Peres was used as a shoe-throwing target. For one euro, Italian students had the chance to hit the face of Israel’s president, who was fitted with a Nazi-style Jewish nose.

In other cases, Israeli students at the University of Genoa have been harassed and threatened with death by Arab students. Muslim students shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and “Itbach el Yahud” (slaughter the Jews). Israeli students at the University of Turin have been hiding their Jewish identity because they risk becoming a target.

The report also discusses the growing phenomenon of anti-Semitism disguised as criticism of the State of Israel. Boycotts of Israel are becoming commonplace in Italy.

For example, two Italian supermarkets recently announced they would stop selling Israeli products as they could not differentiate whether they came from Israel or the “occupied territories.”

The grocery chain Coop Italia issued a statement saying that they had a problem with “traceability, namely that the consumer is unable to verify whether or not the product in question comes from the occupied territories.” Anti-Israel activists said the boycott was “an important success for the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli apartheid.”

A group of Italian university professors has called for an academic boycott of Israel to protest “against university and cultural discrimination of the Palestinians.”

The report documents other cases of anti-Semitism in Italy and the Italian Observatory on Anti-Semitism also compiles copious data on the phenomenon.

The inquiry’s findings are in line with other research on Italian anti-Semitism.

A study recently published by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a think-tank affiliated with Germany’s Social Democratic Party, reveals high levels of anti-Semitism in Italy and a strong presence of anti-Semitism that is linked with Israel and is hidden behind criticism of Israel.

The April 2011 report titled “Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination: A European Report” questioned roughly 1,000 people in eight European countries. The study found that 37.6% of Italians believe “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Jews.” More than 40% of Italians believe “Jews try to take advantage of having been victims of the Nazi era.” More than 25% of Italians agree with the statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”

In June 2010, the Vienna-based European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights published an annual report stating that anti-Semitism has grown steadily in Italy over the past decade.

In May 2008, a national survey published by the Italian leftwing newspaper L’Unità found widespread negative attitudes towards Jews with 23% of the respondents stating that Jews cannot be considered “completely Italians,” 39% stating that Jews have a “special relationship with money,” and 11% stating that “Jews lie about the Holocaust.”

In May 2005, the New York-based Anti-Defamation League published a survey called “Attitudes Toward Jews in Twelve European Countries.” It found that 66% of Italians believe “Jews are more loyal to Israel than this country.” Nearly 50% of Italians said “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust.” More than 50% of Italians say their opinion of Jews is worse because of policies taken by the State of Israel.

A previous poll, “Iraq and Peace in the World,” commissioned by the European Union in November 2003, found that 48% of Italians consider Israel to be the greatest threat to world peace.

The findings are “very disturbing,” says Fiamma Nirenstein, the Italian MP who chaired the inquiry. She says it was a “shock for everybody to see how much anti-Semitism exists in Italy and Europe.”

Originally published by Hudson NY on October 27, 2011

In a September 18 interview with the Swiss newspaper Aargauer Zeitung, Petrusic said the cross has a Christian background and while the Christian roots of Switzerland should be respected, “it is necessary to separate church and state” because “Switzerland today has a great religious and cultural diversity. One has to ask if the State wants to continue building up a symbol in which many people no longer believe.”

In the interview, Petrusic said Switzerland needs new symbols with which everyone, including non-Christians, can identify. As an alternative to the current Swiss flag (see image here), Petrusic proposed the former flag of the Helvetic Republic (see image here) which was officially introduced in 1799 and consisted of green, red and yellow colors. “Those colors are similar to the current flags of Bolivia and Ghana and would represent a more progressive and open-minded Switzerland,” Petrusic said.

The proposal to change the Swiss flag has been met with outrage across the political spectrum and is sure to fuel anti-immigrant sentiments in Switzerland.

Sylvia Flückiger a councillor with the conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP) said the demands are: “Totally unacceptable. With our Swiss flag there is nothing to change. The next thing you know, they will demand even more, that we change our constitution.”

Marianne Binder, spokeswoman for the center-right Christian Democrats (CVP) said: “This is just what was missing, that we need to change our flag. The Swiss flag is part of Swiss identity, precisely because it is inviting for all to want to be involved…even the immigrants.”

Stefan Brupbacher, general secretary of the libertarian Free Democrats (FDP) said: “This is utter nonsense. The Swiss cross is an extremely successful and valuable global brand. It is a symbol of success and quality. We will tightly hold on to it, out of love for Switzerland.”

The issue of Muslim immigration to Switzerland has been a hotly debated topic in recent years and the flag controversy is sure to add fuel to the fire.

The Muslim population in Switzerland has more than quintupled since 1980, and now numbers about 400,000, or roughly 5% of the population. Most Muslims living in Switzerland are of Turkish or Balkan origin, with a smaller minority from the Arab world. Many of them are second- and third-generation immigrants who are now firmly establishing themselves in Switzerland.

The new Muslim demographic reality is raising tensions across large parts of Swiss society, especially as Muslims become more assertive in their demands for greater recognition of their Islamic faith.

The ensuing controversies are fuelling a debate over the role of Islam in Swiss society and how to reconcile Western values with a growing immigrant population determined to avoid assimilation.

Swiss courts have been jam-packed with Islam-related cases in recent years. In one case, Muslim parents won a lawsuit demanding that they be allowed to dress their children in full-body bathing suits dubbed ‘burkinis’ during co-ed swimming lessons. In another case, a group of Swiss supermarkets created a stir by banning Muslim employees from wearing headscarves.

In August 2009, the Swiss basketball association told a Muslim player she could not wear a headscarf during league games. In August 2010, five Muslim families in Basel were fined 350 Swiss Francs ($420) each for refusing to send their daughters to mixed-sex swimming lessons.

In September 2010, the secretary of the Muslim Community of Basel was acquitted of publicly inciting crime and violence. The charges were pressed after the 33-year-old made comments in a Swiss television documentary saying that Islamic Sharia law should be introduced in Switzerland and that unruly wives should be beaten. The judge said the defendant was protected by freedom of expression.

In November 2010, Swiss voters approved tough new regulations on the deportation of non-Swiss immigrants convicted of serious crimes. The measure calls for the automatic expulsion of non-Swiss offenders convicted of crimes ranging from murder to breaking and entry and social security fraud.

Also in November, Swiss Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said the approval or extension of residency permits should be closely linked to the efforts immigrants make to integrate themselves. “Compulsory schooling must be respected. Children should attend all courses and exceptions made on religious or other grounds, for example in swimming classes, should no longer be possible,” Sommaruga said.

In December 2010, the Federal Commission on Women’s Issues called for Islamic burqas and niqabs to be banned in government offices and in public schools. The government-appointed committee said the move would prevent gender discrimination.

In January 2011, a 66-year-old Turkish woman living in Bern was sentenced to three years and six months in prison for encouraging the father and brothers of her daughter-in-law to carry out an “honor” crime against her for her “risqué lifestyle.”

In May 2011, voters in canton Ticino, in Switzerland’s Italian-speaking region, collected enough signatures to be able to launch a referendum that would ban burqas, niqabs and other Islamic head dresses. If the referendum goes ahead, it will be the first time in Switzerland that citizens have been asked to express an opinion on burqas.

Also in May, Swiss Defence Minister Ueli Maurer said increasing numbers of Swiss Muslims are training in Islamic militant camps in countries like Somalia and Yemen. In an interview with the SonntagsZeitung newspaper, Maurer also said that under current Swiss laws it is difficult to prevent Islamists from raising funds.

Meanwhile, an administrative court in Bern is expected to rule on the fate of a minaret in the town of Langenthal. Minarets are the tower-like structures on mosques from which Muslims are often called to prayer.

Muslims in Langenthal, a town with a population of about 15,000, had been given permission to build a minaret five months before a constitutional ban on minarets took effect in November 2009, but opponents of the project say the earlier approval is now null and void. The case is still working its way through the Swiss legal system.

In November 2009 Switzerland held a referendum in which citizens approved an initiative to ban the construction of minarets. The initiative was approved 57.5% to 42.5% by some 2.67 million voters. Only four of Switzerland’s 26 cantons or states opposed the initiative, thereby granting the double approval that now makes the minaret ban part of the Swiss constitution.

In July 2011, the European Court of Human Rights rejected two cases brought by Muslims against Switzerland’s constitutional ban on building minarets.

A seven-judge panel at the Strasbourg-based court said that it would not consider the cases as the plaintiffs failed to show how the ban harmed their human rights and they therefore “cannot claim to be ‘victims’ of a violation” of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the court enforces.

The minaret ban represented a turning point in the debate about Islam in Switzerland.

The initiative was sponsored by the conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which says the minarets symbolize the growing self-confidence and intolerance of Switzerland’s Muslim community.

The SVP has described the minaret is a “symbol of a religious-political claim to power and dominance which threatens — in the name of alleged freedom of religion — the constitutional rights of others.”

The SVP has backed its claim by citing a remark by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has implied that the construction of mosques and minarets is part of a strategy to Islamisize Europe. The pro-Islamist Erdogan has bragged: “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.” Erdogan has also told Muslim immigrants in Europe that “assimilation is a crime against humanity.”

In recent years the number of mosques in Switzerland has mushroomed; there now are some 200 mosques and up to 1,000 prayer rooms dotted across the country. Critics fear the mosques are facilitating the establishment of a parallel Muslim society, one that is especially welcoming to Islamic fundamentalists.

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

The ban, which took effect on September 16, is the government’s response to growing public anger in France over the phenomenon of Muslim street prayers.

Every Friday, thousands of Muslims from Paris to Marseille and elsewhere close off streets and sidewalks (by doing so, they close down local businesses and trap non-Muslim residents in their homes and offices) to accommodate overflowing crowds for midday prayers. Some mosques have also begun broadcasting sermons and chants of “Allahu Akbar” via loudspeakers in the streets.

The weekly spectacles, which have been documented by dozens of videos posted on Youtube.com (here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), have provoked a mixture of anger, frustration and disbelief. But despite public complaints, local authorities have until now declined to intervene, largely because they have been afraid of sparking riots.

The issue of illegal street prayers was catapulted to the top of the French national political agenda in December 2010, when Marine Le Pen, the charismatic new leader of the far-right National Front party, denounced them as an “occupation without tanks or soldiers.”

During a gathering in the east central French city of Lyon on December 10, Le Pen compared Muslims praying in the streets to Nazi occupation. She said: “For those who want to talk a lot about World War II, if it is about occupation, then we could also talk about it [Muslim prayers in the streets], because that is occupation of territory. It is an occupation of sections of the territory, of districts in which religious laws apply. It is an occupation. There are of course no tanks, there are no soldiers but it is nevertheless an occupation and it weighs heavily on local residents.”

Many French voters agree. In fact, the issue of Muslim street prayers – and the broader question of the role of Islam in French society – has become a major issue ahead of the 2012 presidential elections.

According to a recent survey by Ifop for the France-Soir newspaper, nearly 40% of French voters agree with Len Pen’s views that Muslim prayer in the streets resembles an occupation.

Moreover, an opinion poll published by Le Parisien newspaper shows that voters view Le Pen, who has criss-crossed the country arguing that France has been invaded by Muslims and betrayed by its elite, as the candidate best suited to deal with the growing problem of runaway Muslim immigration.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose popularity is at record lows less than one year before the first round of next year’s presidential election, is worried about Le Pen’s advance in the opinion polls. He now seems determined not to allow Le Pen to monopolize the issue of Islam in France.

Sarkozy recently called Muslim prayers in the street “unacceptable” and said that the street cannot be allowed to become “an extension of the mosque.” He also warned that the overflow of Muslim faithful on to the streets at prayer time when mosques are packed to capacity risks undermining the French secular tradition separating state and religion.

French Interior Minister Claude Guéant told Le Figaro newspaper that Muslims who continue to pray in the street will be arrested: “My vigilance will be unflinching for the law to be applied. Praying in the street is not dignified for religious practice and violates the principles of secularism. If anyone happens to be recalcitrant we will put an end to it.”

At the same time, the French government has tried to appease angry Muslims by announcing that they can pray in an abandoned fire station in the Goutte d’Or district in Paris until a new, larger mosque is built in 2013.

According to the terms of the lease agreement, two mosques located in northern Paris will rent the 2,000 square meters (21,000 square feet) barracks on Boulevard Ney from the French state for €30,000 ($40,000) per year for a period of three years. Around 5,000 Muslim worshippers are expected to turn up for prayers there.

In any case, Islamic mosques are being built more often in France than Roman Catholic churches. Nearly 150 new mosques currently are under construction in France, home to the biggest Muslim community in Europe. The mosque-building projects are at various stages of completion, according to Mohammed Moussaoui, the president of the Muslim Council of France (CFCM), who provided the data in an August 2 interview with the French radio station RTL.

The total number of mosques in France has already doubled to more than 2,000 during just the past ten years, according to a research report “Constructing Mosques: The Governance of Islam in France and the Netherlands.”

France’s most prominent Muslim leader, Dalil Boubakeur, who is rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, recently called for the number of mosques in the country to be doubled again – to 4,000 – to meet growing demand.

Boubakeur said the construction of even more mosques – paid for by French taxpayers – would ease the “pressure, frustration and the sense of injustice” felt by many French Muslims. “Open a mosque and you close a prison,” Boubakeur said. About 70% of all inmates in the French prison system are Muslim.

In August, a new mega-mosque for 2,000 worshipers was inaugurated in Strasbourg, where the Muslim population has reached 15%. Construction also continues apace of a new mega-mosque in Marseille, France’s second-largest city where the Muslim population has reached 25% (or 250,000). The Grand Mosque – which at more than 8,300 square meters (92,000 square feet) will accommodate up to 7,000 worshippers in a vast prayer hall – is designed to be the biggest and most potent symbol of Islam’s place in modern France.

The ban on street prayer is the latest attempt by the French government to remove Islam from the public square, amid rising frustration that the estimated 6.5 million Muslims in France are not integrating into French society

In April 2011, for example, France’s much-debated “burqa ban” took effect. The new law prohibits the wearing of Islamic body-covering burqas and face-covering niqabs in all public spaces in France.

Also in April, Sarkozy’s center-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party held a controversial debate on the compatibility of Islam with the rules of the secular French Republic. The three-hour roundtable discussion, the title of which was altered to remove any reference to Islam, resulting in the anodyne “Secularism: To Live Better Together,” was held at the upscale hotel Pullman Paris Montparnasse in the presence of some 500 religious leaders, legislators and journalists.

Organized by UMP leader Jean-François Copé, attendees discussed 26 ideas aimed at preserving France’s secular character, enshrined in a 1905 law separating church and state. Participants discussed modern-day quandaries about issues such as halal food being served in schools and Muslim street prayers, as well as a proposal to enact a new law that would prohibit citizens from rejecting a public service employee because of their sex or religion.

Other proposals discussed at the event include: banning the wearing of religious symbols such as Muslim headscarves or prominent Christian crosses by day care personnel; preventing Muslim mothers from wearing headscarves when accompanying children on school field trips; and preventing parents from withdrawing their children from mandatory subjects including physical education and biology.

In February, Sarkozy denounced multiculturalism as a failure and said Muslims must assimilate into the French culture if they want to be welcomed in France. In a live-broadcast interview with French Channel One television, Sarkozy said: “I do not want a society where communities coexist side by side … France will not welcome people who do not agree to melt into a single community. We have been too busy with the identity of those who arrived and not enough with the identity of the country that accepted them.”

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.