It is good to see that more of us are waking up to the trouble that Islam brings to our countries. Europe is finally waking up, so lets add the Poles to the recent anti-Islam movements in Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. Hopefully these protests will snowball across Europe.
Mosque Building Brings Islam Fears to Poland
Published: April 1, 2010WARSAW (Reuters) – In a sight familiar in some west European countries but new to Poland, dozens of protesters demonstrated in a Warsaw suburb last weekend against the construction of a mosque.
Plans by Poland’s tiny Muslim community to build a place of worship and an Islamic cultural centre face opposition in a sign that concerns about Islam may be spreading eastwards to the staunchly Catholic European Union member.
Between 15,000 and 30,000 Muslims, many of them immigrants from Chechnya, live in Poland — the biggest ex-communist EU state where more than 90 percent of the 38-million population declare themselves Catholics.
Some 150 people protested at the half-finished building site, a 30-minute drive from the city centre, where the Muslim League, a religious organisation established in Poland in 2004 is building what will be only the country’s fifth mosque with government permission.
“Such centres are very often sources of radicalisation,” said one protester, who like most of the demonstrators was happy to be filmed but unwilling to give his name.
He brandished a banner depicting minarets as missiles that resembled a stark image used in a Swiss referendum when electors voted last year to ban new minarets.
Others chanted “Let’s not repeat Europe’s mistakes” and “Blind tolerance kills common sense,” and demanded that Muslim countries respect women’s rights and religious freedom.
“Look at what’s happening in Europe, I don’t want my daughter to be forced to wear a burka in the future,” a male protester said of the all-covering full-length veil which is the object of fierce debate in France.
A Belgian parliamentary committee voted this week to ban the wearing in public places of the burqa and the niqab, a similar garment in which only a woman’s eyes are visible.
“I lived in a town in Poland where there were Catholic churches, a synagogue and a mosque and that was fine. But if I go to Saudi Arabia, I cannot wear my medallion and churches where I could pray are banned,” said a woman demonstrator.
CATCH-UP?
Such complaints are frequent in west European countries, which have seen an influx of Muslims in recent decades, making Islam the second faith in many. The Muslim population in Europe is estimated at 15-18 million, roughly one-third in France.
The late-2009 referendum in Switzerland was the starkest instance of a rejection of Islam, but Germany and France also have disputes over the construction of minarets and mosques, or the wearing of Muslim headscarves and veils.
“The problems seen in France, Germany or the Netherlands will come to Poland as it is modernising, catching up with the EU’s west and becomes more attractive to migrants from poorer parts of the world,” said Professor Zbigniew Mikolejko of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
“We will be getting many poor Muslims from North Caucasus. So these protests highlight a fear about the future, a potential conflict. There is no threat now of course, but it shows people expect this trouble to come,” he told Reuters.
SNIP
“This fear comes from a lack of knowledge. There are countries where the assimilation of Muslims is working fine, like in Austria or Norway,” said Agata Skoworn-Nalborczyk, an Islam specialist at the Warsaw University.
“The average citizen knows a Muslim was behind the World Trade Centre attacks but doesn’t follow the differences within Islam. Poles have simplistic ideas about Islam as they lack their own experience with Muslims,” sociologist Mikolejko said.
Agata the “Islam specialist”, must be another puposely blind leftist. Muslims in Austria are just like Muslims across Europe, and this video footage from Norway, shows us just how well Muslims are assimilating there. Please try reality Agata.
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