The far right spreads its wings over Europe

Good survey of the rise of intolerance and right-wing anti-immigration parties by Jonathan Manthorpe and his plea for perspective:

There’s no doubt at all that public fears of Islamist violence have been stoked by government alerts and alarmism — a trend that started before the 9-11 attacks. More recently, western governments — including our own — have seized on the psychopathic Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, warning that Muslim citizens recruited into IS will return with terrorist skills and cause havoc at home.

As with the Charlie Hebdo attack, the “lone wolf” killings of two Canadian soldiers in Quebec City and Ottawa in October have been held up as evidence of the threat of radicalized Muslims living in the West. What’s missing from these panic-fueled statements is anything like perspective.

Remember, just two Canadian misogynists — Robert Pickton and Marc Lepine — together accounted for the deaths of 63 people. And on any bad day, Canada’s warring drug gangs in greater Vancouver and Toronto notch up death tolls far outstripping anything Islamic terrorists can come up with. And most mass killings of Mounties in recent years — four at Mayerthorpe in 2005 and three in Moncton last June — have been perpetrated by mentally unstable Canadians with hunting rifles.

The far right spreads its wings over Europe (paywall)

And Gwynne Dyer on the situation in Germany:

Germany is taking in more immigrants than ever before: some 600,000 this year. That’s not an intolerable number for a country of 82 million, but it does mean that if current trends persist, the number of foreign-born residents will almost double to 15 million in just 10 years. That will take some getting used to—and there’s another thing. A high proportion of the new arrivals in Germany are Muslim refugees.

Two-thirds of those 600,000 newcomers in 2014 were people from other countries of the European Union where work is scarce or living standards are lower. They have the legal right to come under EU rules, and there’s really nothing Germany can do about it. Besides, few of the EU immigrants are Muslims.

The other 200,000, however, are almost all refugees who are seeking asylum in Germany. The number has almost doubled in the past year, and will certainly grow even larger this year. And the great majority of the asylum-seekers are Muslims.

This is not a Muslim plot to colonize Europe. It’s just that a large majority of the refugees in the world are Muslims. At least three-quarters of the world’s larger wars are civil wars in Muslim countries like Syria (by far the biggest source of new refugees), Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and Libya.

Asylum-seekers: The limits of tolerance in Europe

And a more encouraging story from Germany, that of Professor Mouhanad Khorchide:

In his lecture, the long conversation and a telephone call after the shootings on Wednesday at the office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, Mr. Khorchide was calm and optimistic, delivering insight with a Viennese lilt in his German.

He expressed fear that extremists on both sides would try to use the attack for their own ends. “The Muslim extremists will say, ‘Oh, look how strong and mighty we are,’ ” he said, “while those who fear Islam will say, ‘See, that is what Islam is, and what we were warning about all along.’ ”

He said he expected more attacks, but also more questioning from Muslims. “Such events force us to discuss openly about theological positions,” he said. “It is too simple to say, ‘No, no, that has nothing to do with Islam.’ These people,” he added of jihadists, “are referring to the Quran, and we must confront these passages in the Quran.”

His students, he said, were angry after the Paris shootings. In part, they were upset with Muslim extremists seeking to please what they consider a false idol. But they were also resentful that now “they must justify themselves: ‘We are peaceful,’ ” he said. “And this constant justifying and defending oneself is annoying.”

Europe’s populist current “whips up fears where no fears exist,” Mr. Khorchide said. “For instance, the Islamization of Europe: Demographic data shows that this is a fantasy.”

Furthermore, he noted, Muslim children born in Europe now tend to adopt its ways, the tiny minority who go off to fight in Iraq and Syria notwithstanding.

Teaching Islam’s ‘Forgotten’ Side as Germany Changes

Lastly, from the Netherlands, not surprising to see a spike in support for Geert Wilders.

But interesting that the Dutch PM declined to use the word “war” in favour of  a more nuanced expression, yet one that also communicates resolve:

Wilders, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, said after the Paris bloodshed that the West was “at war” with Islam, drawing a rebuke from Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Sunday.

If elections were held now, his party would be the single largest in the Netherlands, with 31 seats in the 150-member parliament, more than twice as many as it won in the last elections, according to a Sunday poll.

The governing Liberal and Labour parties, damaged by persistent sluggish growth, would have just 28 seats between them, compared to the 79 they held after the 2012 elections.

The Freedom Party was polling 30 seats just prior to the Jan. 7-9 Paris attacks, in which 17 people including journalists and policemen were killed by three Islamist gunmen who were later shot dead by French special forces.

Wilders this week called in an interview for measures against Islam: “If we don’t do anything, it will happen here,” he was quoted by the newspaper Het Parool as saying.

But speaking to Dutch public television shortly before leaving to attend a peace rally in Paris, the Dutch prime minister distanced himself from Wilders’s comments.

“I would never use the word ‘war,'” he said. “We are in a struggle with extremists who are using a belief as an excuse for attacks.”

More than 80 percent of respondents to the De Hond poll said people who left the Netherlands to wage jihad (holy war) in Syria should lose their Dutch citizenship and those returning from fighting in Syria or Iraq should face lengthy jail terms.

Paris attacks boost support for Dutch anti-Islam populist Wilders | Reuters.