Democracy as a Tram

Ahnaf Kalam

Erdogan, “the moderate”, said it clearly:

“Democracy is a tram, you take it as long as you need it and then you get off”.

Millions of Muslims in Europe, from where incredible videos arrive, must be thinking something along these lines.

You have to be afraid, very afraid. Maybe one day on Europe’s streets they will also flog women who don’t wear the veil?

“The Caliphate is the solution”, shout the Islamists who took to the streets in Hamburg. Muslims praised the Caliphate, chanted “Allahu Akbar”, waved flags depicting the Shahada and raised index finger, symbol of Islamists.

All perfectly legal. The police said that “calling for the advent of the Caliph is not a crime.”

Even in Essen, in the Ruhr, they march for the caliphate.

It’s the word of the moment: caliphate. It has a friendly sound. Like a memory from the Arabian Nights, a place where you dance and the plate of dates is never empty. The caliph will be a kind and wise man from a long-lost ruling house.

A beautiful fairy tale.

But caliphate means submission. There are Muslims and those who convert to Islam. Anyone who goes against Islam will be enslaved or killed.

“The Islamists of the Caliphate are dancing in our faces” writes the Bild.

“The West’s pathetic appeasement of Islamic extremists,” as Ayaan Hirsi Ali defines it. “Mass immigration on an unprecedented scale is transforming the demographics of European societies and accelerating the Islamization of the continent.”

And to think that Hamburg is the city of September 11th. “Mohammed Atta was not a terrorist when he came to Hamburg” his principal, Dittmar Machule, wrote in the Guardian. “He became a fanatic while he was here among us. I’m afraid it could happen again.” Hamburg, the most liberal of German cities, was an ideal environment. German officials will say they were reluctant to target mosques and risk accusations of racism and Islamophobia.

History repeats itself.

And it is no coincidence that in Hamburg there are already 50 mosques and 40 Catholic churches. The former Capernaum church is now a mosque.

It was a Jewish writer who escaped the Shoah, Ralph Giordano, who I had the fortune of interviewing shortly before his death, who first warned Germany against Islamization. “Have we ever wondered why mosques that grow like mushrooms are dedicated to the Ottoman conquerors?”.

Son of a German Jewish mother and a Sicilian father, Giordano was unable to finish his studies due to the regime of Hitler, but was saved together with the rest of the family by a woman from Hamburg, who hid them in the cellar. In an article for FAZ,

Giordano wrote:

“I want to be able to say that I don’t want to see burqas or chadors on the streets of Germany, any more than I want to hear the calls of muezzins from the minarets. Nor will I adapt my view of freedom of expression to a demon who interprets it as follows: ‘Everyone has the right to freely express his opinion in a way that is not contrary to Sharia law.’ No and three times no!”.

Speaking with the Bild, a state security manager has just raised the alarm: “More and more parents of German children are turning to counseling centers because Christian children want to convert to Islam so as to no longer be excluded in school. In schools in big cities the percentage of Muslim students is well over 80 percent: Berlin, Frankfurt, Offenbach, Duisburg, Essen”.

“Will we become a Muslim caliphate?”, asked one of the fathers of the Swedish Greens, Per Gahrton, in Aftonbladet. Now in the streets of Europe they are marching asking for precisely this under the noses of the authorities who are pleased with their tolerance.

Alexander Kissler sums it up well: “A country that tolerates repeated calls for an Islamic caliphate in public places is not tolerant, but decadent.”

And we know how decadent civilizations end. Like Erdogan’s tram without brakes that crashes against a wall.

Giulio Meotti, cultural editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author and a Middle East Forum Writing Fellow.

Giulio Meotti is a Rome-based journalist for Il Foglio national newspaper. He is the author of twenty books, including A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism, The Last Western Pope (translated into Spanish and Polish), The End of Europe (Prize Capri San Michele), and The Sweet Conquest (with a preface by Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal) about the creeping Islamization of Europe. He writes a weekly column for Arutz Sheva and has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, the Jerusalem Post, Gatestone Institute, and Die Weltwoche.
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