An EU-funded report from a Turkish think tank about Europe's “Islamophobia” is causing outrage in some European countries.
One reason is that Denmark ia accused of widespread Islamophobia and “everyday discrimination of Muslims”.
The European Islamophobia Report 2018, authored by Sibel Özcan and Zeynep Bangert, was put together by Turkey's Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (Seta), with funding from the European Union (Brussels gave £109,000 for the study).
European Parliamentarian Niels Fuglsang, who represents the ruling Social Democrats, has said that he will demand an explanation from the European Commission. “I don't think our taxpayer money should go to such propaganda business for Erdogan. It is a scandal that EU money has gone to this and it must stop immediately”, Fuglsang said. the UK is protesting the report as well, since in it PM Boris Johnson is accused of “normalising Islamophobia”.
If it were not for a friend who sent me a copy of the report, I would have never discovered that I am branded among the “Islamophobes” in its pages. On page 488, I read: “At the beginning of February, a journalist of Il Foglio published the book (in Italian) 'The Suicide of Western Culture: This Is How Radical Islam Is Winning'. The thesis of this book is a 'typical' topic: the threat of Islamisation facing Europe and the defeat of Christianity and Western cultures because of our 'multiculturalist' decay and softness”.
“Islamophobia”... The goal of this repulsive campaign is to impose silence, self censorship and fear on Western writers, journalists and intellectuals. If I am an "Islamophobe", I must be isolated, damned, demonized and, why not, legally persecuted, as has happened to many writers in Europe.
We realize the danger, but we do not know how to act gaint it for fear of being accused of being “anti-immigrants”, “anti-Islam”, “xenophobic” ... The result is that all that the West cherishes - democracy, freedom of expression and conscience, Enlightenment, Judeo-Christian roots, human dignity – must be reinterpreted under the light of multiculturalism. But if the West acts like a mouse, it will be swallowed up by the snake.
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