The twisted world After the massacre in Norway on July 22 many Dutch commentators imputed a "twist ed" and

"apocalyptic" world view to the murderer Anders Breivik and his Dutch he ro Geert Wilders. But what exactly is wrong with that world view? Widespread it is. According to an opinion poll conducted one week after the trag edy, 63 percent of the Dutch are concerned about the growing influence of Islam a nd 75 percent say politicians have long underestimated the problem. Wilders does not have to soften his tone, say 52 percent of the respondents. World leaders like Angela Merkel who declare multicultural society a failure, and our own prime minister, Mark Rutte, who on the eve of his election promised that "we are going to give back the Netherlands to the Dutch", respond to that feeli ng. I want to focus on three recurrent elements of the above- mentioned world view. I s the Islam anti-Semitic (Wilders says even fascist), is the Islam anti-gay and are the followers of this religion, even through terror, out for world dominatio n? I think the first two questions must be answered with: traditionally not, but maybe the tide is turning. The answer to the third question is more complicated , but it surely casts a light on the coming of age of Bin Laden. Anti-Semitism In some bits rather rude language is used in the Koran against Christians and es pecially Jews. But because Jews and Christians draw from the same source (the be lief in one God, as revealed by Abraham and Moses), they were considered "People of the Book" and had a protected, albeit inferior status in Islam (dhimmis). Acc ording to the Prophet Muhammad both religions strayed from the true faith. In pr actice, they were second- class citizens and subject to all sorts of restrictive and often humiliating regulations. During the rise of Islam in the seventh century, the Jewish people had already fa nned out over the whole then- known world. There were Jewish minorities in Europ e, the Middle East and North Africa - regions where at that time Christianity had got a foothold through peaceful means. The conquests of Islam were sometimes bl oody and called a halt to the growth of Christianity. But eventually Jews and Ch ristians were allowed to keep their faith. The world of Islam was always more co lourful, both ethnically and religiously, than that of Christianity, where only Jewish minorities were living. Jews welcomed the big Muslim empires that arose over the centuries (that of Baghd ad, Cordoba and Istanbul). They had more to fear from the radicalizing Christian s, who felt cornered by the advent of Islam. In Spain even a thriving Jewish-Isl amic culture came into being during the Muslim caliphate. And when the Catholics reconquered the country in 1492, it was the Ottoman sultan - now leader of the largest Muslim empire who sent a fleet from Istanbul to Cadiz to save the Jews f rom the Inquisition. As a result of their international business contacts, language skills and experti se in the medical field, Jews frequently served as the lubricant of society. Or to put it in biblical terms: the salt of the earth. But when they became too powerful or in times of crisis, Jews became victims of m assacres as well. This was the case in Morocco and Persia (Iran), where there we re large Jewish communities, and also in Spain. According to historians, however, the hatred of Jews was never so intense as in C hristian Europe. Jewish communities in Europe also experienced periods of prospe rity. But the persecution of Jews was more systematic and ultimately resulted in the pogroms in Eastern Europe and Hitler's Holocaust, the scope of which is sti ll hard to comprehend. The authoritative Islam historian Bernard Lewis therefore believes that anti-Semi tism is a distinctively Christian phenomenon. "Unlike Christian anti-Semitism, t he attitude of Muslims towards non-Muslims is not one of hatred, fear or envy, b ut simply one of contempt", he says in The Jews of Islam. In another book, Semites and anti-Semites, he explains how Zionism, the movement

which from the nineteenth century onward advocated the return of Jews to Palesti ne, brought about a change in the Arab world (Arabic is the original language of Islam, which is spoken in the heartland of this religion). Palestine had been a n Arab country since the advent of Islam in the seventh century, where a small J ewish community had continued to live. Increasingly, European Jews were persuade d by Zionism to (r)emigrate to their Promised Land. In 1948 the United Nations (then dominated by the European colonial powers, the U nited States and the Soviet Union) decided to assign the main part of Palestine to the Jewish people: Israel. Such a homeland had already been promised to them after the First World War by the British, who then ruled the country. And indeed , after the Holocaust, there was no other way out. But it would definitely distu rb the relationship between Muslims and Jews. For the first time in their long h istory Jews became conquerors, says Howard Fast in The Jews, story of a people. Homosexuality In the Jewish Torah, and in the Bible and in the Koran the cities of Sodom and G omorrah serve as an example of sexually dissolute behaviour (sodomy), which inclu des sexual intercourse between men. But while Torah and Bible hold out the prosp ect of the death penalty for such behaviour, the Koran merely forbids it. The di fferent religious schools do not agree on the impact of this ban. For married me n it is regarded as adultery, the punishment ranging from whipping to death. For unmarried men, the law is sometimes less stringent. And there should always be four witnesses. Little is known about large-scale persecutions of homosexuals in the world until the late Middle Ages when in Europe the first "sodomites" ended up at the stake. Homophobia in Europe reached a climax in the eighteenth century. Thus, around 17 30 a nationwide network of sodomites was dismantled in the Dutch city of Utrecht r esulting in the execution of dozens of men. Influenced by the ideas of the Enlig htenment and the French Revolution, the persecutions abated, but homosexuality r emained illegal in many European countries until far into the previous century. Even less is known about the persecution of gay men in Islam until the twentieth century. Homosexual feelings play a major role in the Muslim world. Especially t he love of men for young men is sometimes described in almost sacred terms (see, for example: Gay Life & Culture, A World History, published by Thames and Hudso n, London). Many centuries before our Dutch writer Gerard Reve did so, the love for boys had been celebrated by the famous Arab poet Abu Nawas. In Tunisia there is even a large hotel chain named after him. And Nawas was not alone. The last big Muslim empire, that of the Ottoman Turks, legalized homosexuality in 1858 and as such was among the first in the world. Only France, the Netherlands and Belgium preceded them. After the collapse of their empire after the First World War, the liberal attitu de of the Ottomans, however, was not adopted everywhere else. In nearly half of all countries in the world homosexuality is still forbidden. But the seven count ries which in their legislation impose the death penalty, are all Muslim, althou gh they only represent a small fraction of all Muslims. Incidentally, a handful of Christian, Hindu and Buddhist nations still apply life imprisonment for homosexuality in their laws. However, such heavy penalties wer e rarely imposed until 1979 when the fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini came to p ower in Iran. It is estimated that since then more than four thousand people in that country were sentenced to death because of homosexual acts. Under Saddam Hussein neighbouring Iraq had a rather lively gay scene significantl y concentrated around the Abu Nawas Street in Baghdad, the local night spot area. And still, homosexuality is not illegal in Iraq. But since the ousting of the d ictator in 2003, Shiite militias (the Shiites are a radical minority in Islam; b ut they are a majority in Iran and Iraq) have killed hundreds of mostly feminine -looking gay men, without the government doing anything against it. The witch hu nt ended only when their leader Moqtada Sadr said in 2009 that homosexuality sho uld be eradicated, but not through violence. This bloody persecution of gay men, which is still confined to the Shia branch of

Islam, is unprecedented in the modern world. There is only one precedent: Hitle r's persecution gay men. World domination Muslim culture went into a downward spiral after the Ottomans were beaten back a t Vienna in 1683, the subsequent period of British and French colonization, and the cutting up of their empire into the present states after the First World War . The establishment of the state of Israel gave the final blow. Jews from Arab c ountries emigrated en masse to Israel and the United States. Often only some syn agogues and small, aging societies testify to their presence. The state of political, social and economic malaise in which most Muslim countrie s find themselves today, does not seem the ideal point of departure to conquer t he world - something the Prophet Muhammad, also warlord, certainly aspired to. M uslims also make up only a relatively small proportion (twenty percent) of the g lobal population. And all major military powers - the United States, Europe, the Soviet Union and China - are at war with Muslims, the first two in Iraq and Afg hanistan, the latter two with their own Muslim minorities. Thus, a new advance of Islam could eventually only succeed through the demograph ic factor (if Muslims, to start with, were to constitute a majority in Western E uropean countries), by means of terror or a nuclear bomb (which only Pakistan po ssesses) and other sinister weapons. Or a toxic cocktail of the three - an apoca lyptic vision indeed. But perhaps it is advisable to face an often neglected sober truth first. The wave of what we now call "Islamic terrorism", started in the Palestinian territories . That did not happen under the banner of Islam. Two prominent terrorist leaders were Christians. It was the time when leftist Arab nationalism flourished, insp ired by the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, the last charismatic Arab lea der. Religion did not matter. In 1968 and 1970, five hijackings were carried out by a radical splinter group le d by the Palestinian Christian George Habash baptized by the American magazine T ime as "Terrorism's Christian Godfather". And it was another Christian Palestini an, Nayef Hawatmeh, whose group in 1974 took hostage of a school in the Israeli city of Ma'a lot, demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners. That ended in a massacre killing 22 children. It shows the deep wound that the establishment of Israel inflicted on the hearts of the Palestinians who had lived there since time immemorial. Israel was not a "land without people for a people without land", as has sometimes been claimed. It was an often bloody conquest by the survivors of the European pogroms and Hol ocaust. A conquest that continues to this day, with the expropriation of the hom es of Palestinians who still live in Israel and the building of settlements in a reas that were conquered on the neighbouring Arab countries in the war of 1967. One can hardly blame the Jews of Israel themselves with their long history of per secution. But the Christian world (secularized in a tearing rush) should know bett er. It allows the Israelis to carry on, already since 1948, and supports them in this economically and militarily. To where? Even the construction of a nuclear a rsenal was condoned - in violation of international law. What kind of apocalypti c world view did this arouse in Israels Arab neighbours? The wealthy Saudi Osama bin Laden spent part of his childhood in the region: in L ebanon and Syria. His mother was Syrian, as was his first wife. It undoubtedly i nfluenced his later development. His great master was a Palestinian, Abdullah Az zam, who taught Bin Laden Islamic law at the university of Jeddah in Saudi Arabi a. Azzam persuaded him in 1979 to come to Afghanistan to help the resistance aga inst the then-Soviet occupiers. The other leaders of Al Qaeda all came from Isra els direct neighbours. Less than a year after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran, now also the Ara b Bin Laden lifted the fight to a higher level. Muslims worldwide were now calle d on to fight a Christian world which was smeared by decadence and paganism - wi th America as the Great Satan and also their own "infidel" Muslim governments. I srael became a side issue. And who knows whether the violent resurgence of Islam

had also would have happened without the conquest of this land which is holy to all three religions? There appears to be a pattern. Just as Christianity radicalized during the rise o f Islam and started its rather un-Christian Crusades, part of the Muslims now se ems in the grip of such a kind of jihad that has little to do with faith. On how much support this jihad can count in the Muslim population, will only become vi sible if the Arab Spring leads to democratically elected governments. Copyright Frits van Veen