Dear Frank, I found it disappointing right away when I discovered that you wrote a letter to one of your fraction members and publicized it immediately. It would have been fair if you had stated that it was a public letter just like I am doing now. Your action shows me that it doesn’t have much to do with how I react to this letter, rather that, for you, it deals much more with distancing yourself as quickly and publicly as possible from my positions and convictions.

(Open letter from René Stadtkewitz to Frank Henkel)

I find this unfortunate because I have had the privilege of experiencing much approval for my positions, especially in the presentations I have held these past months in various local chapters of the Berlin CDU. The subsequent debates were long and drawn out, and it was impressive to feel that even the members of the CDU also wanted to have a discussion about the political influences of Islam, the consequential refusal to integration with all of its relevant problems. But even more, they expect from us parliamentarian representatives that we engage ourselves in finding political solutions, or at least have sensible debate in the parliaments.

I am not accusing you of anything because you don’t know Geert Wilders, however I do fault you for using false statements from unchecked sources for alleged citations and building a destructive judgment from them. Thus you judge almost every fifth voter in our neighboring country in various regions who indeed in their free and democratic decision have voted to make out of the Party for Freedom, whose party and fraction chief Geert Wilders is, the third strongest political power in the Netherlands. It is part of political decency to respect these results, and it is part of political decency to join in the debates. We can be certain of this, that our neighbors who have been tolerant for so long wouldn’t have voted this way for a politician who — as you wrote — categorically writes off Muslims and arbitrarily suggests certain things about them, for precisely this is not something he does.

He does accurately differentiate between the Muslims and Islam. In turn, he distinguishes Islam between its religious part and its politically instrumentalized, societal part. This differentiation is necessary since we cannot comprehend Islam well with our adult understanding of religion. Only by differentiation does it become clear that Islam is considerably more than a religion. It is even a patriarchal, intolerant system of society, a political ideology that brings its own legal system with it that seeks to regulate every aspect of our life. Therefore, it doesn’t have to do with making their religion controversial among people.

Certainly Wilders does exaggerate from time to time, which I find completely legitimate. It is not necessary to embrace all of his statements, rather this is a matter of urgently needed debate about political Islam as cause for the refusal to assimilate and as cause for many problems in the ghettoization of our city. And Wilders has successfully carried this debate into the political arena. And I am also trying to do this same thing because this is where it belongs.

The comparison of the Quran with Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” wasn’t created by Wilders, rather the Italian author Oriana Fallaci in her Islam-critical book “The Power of Reason” that came out in 2004. In it, she contested the existence of a “moderate Islam” and advocated the idea that Islamist violence isn’t the result of an abuse of this religion, rather that it is derived directly from its origins.

Incidentally, it was Winston Churchill who described Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” in his book “The Second World War” as “a new Quran of faith and war: pompous, long winded, shapeless, but pregnant with his message” and therefore was the first to make this comparison. In 1954 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature for his books about the Second World War.

There has been criticism of Islam since there has been Islam, and there will be as long as Islam is that which we know it today, or at least until Islam has undergone some kind of an enlightenment. Karl Marx once wrote about Islam, “The Quran and the Muslim legal system that has its footing in it reduce geography and ethnography of the various nations to the simple and convenient division of believers and infidels. The infidel is “harby,” that is to say, ‘the enemy.’ Islam ostracizes the nation of the infidels and creates a situation of permanent enmity between Muslims and infidels. In this sense, the pirate ships of the Berber countries were the holy fleet of Islam.” (Marx-Engels Works, Volume 10, Page 170).

According to your logic, the matter with Marx and Churchill likewise was that of right-wing populists. With due respect, it is hard for me to believe that. It is really hard for me to believe that we withdraw more and more from uncomfortable debates by declaring the author of the debate as a non-person.

Tolerance and attention to human values are, as you correctly wrote, pillars of our society. Therefore, I am getting involved so that in the future peaceful coexistence of all citizens in our land is also a customary thing. This, however requires that any occuring grievances are allowed to be addressed publicly and without reservation. From time to time we honestly do address the grievances, but don’t allow ourselves to talk about the causes. This, however, is necessary to be in the position at all of hammering out an attempt at solving the problem. For ultimately it is the ideological influence of political Islam that that drives especially young people increasingly into the disorientation between diametrically contradictory concepts of values and society with the consequences that, unfortunately, all of us know about.

We are constantly making the mistake of using secularized Muslims who have freed themselves from the misanthropic ideology of a fundamentalist Quran interpretation and have the courage to question critically what is behind the origins of Islam as an occasion for minimizing the dangers altogether. But it’s precisely these courageous people that need our support, and we need them. Tolerance, therefore, cannot mean anything goes; tolerance also means knowing the limits. An undefined and unlimited tolerance is nonsense and leads to confusion.

With a formulation in an “integration paper” where it is simply stated that political Islam is rejected doesn’t necessarily mean it has happened. It must be followed with actions. The least of which is discussion itself and this because this political Islam has, in practical reality and contrary to so many appeasers, long since become more distinct and demanding. A few years ago there were, for example, discussions about the question whether children should participate in swimming class, or whether they should be exempted on religious grounds. The debate was indeed carried out, but the results failed to appear. Even you know that today more children don’t participate than at the time of the debate. Even worse, today 8-, 9- and 10-year-old children are already wearing head covering in school, which serves as a notable indicator for the increasing Islamic influence in our society. We know, though, what kind of future these children will have. The debate was too feeble, and above all besides the point. For much too seldom do we comprehend what the cause really is.

Why are we so hard on ourselves? I would also like to discuss that, too. I would like to have a debate about what power we still have to bring the values of our Judeo-Christian culture from which our constitution is constructed back to influence in all areas of our city, and make them understandable as a fixing protective barrier for everyone.

The debate with political Islam has long since begun; it must be undertaken with intensity. The one thereby will have as motivation the defense of freedom and rule of law, the other will take care of the countless young girls that are forced into marriages, enslaved, and sometimes become even victims of so-called murders of honor.

However, it doesn’t matter for what reason, even you will not be able to evade this debate. To give out the slogan, “We need Islam” is simply too lame if the explanation for why we need it is missing. There are political decisions that have made this immigration so hard to keep tabs on. Today it is teachers, youth officers, police, judges and the citizens themselves who carry the burden of this policy unasked. But they all need clear answers from policy. At least even just a sign that policy is interested in solutions. Even if we are not responsible for these decisions of the past, we are under obligation. It is the mandate that obligates us.

On these premises, I can and will uphold my invitation to the Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, who will possibly still be a member of the Dutch government before the event, and set all hopes on the event of October 2 here in Berlin of successfully advancing the necessary debate.

Furthermore I hold, on the premise that the CDU has, unfortunately, departed more and more from its own values and convictions, that the attitude test of yours is absurd. Under these conditions, I am deciding for freedom and will engage myself for my beliefs.

With friendly greetings,

René Stadtkewitz

Dear Frank, I found it disappointing right away when I discovered that you wrote a letter to one of your fraction members and publicized it immediately. It would have been fair if you had stated that it was a public letter just like I am doing now. Your action shows me that it doesn\'t ...

PI, 05. Aug 2010 |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | post a comment    
Kategorie: Courage, Germany, Islamisation of Europe;

 Loading ...

look up...