Trying to assess the rise of the anti-immigration party Vlaams Belang, which represents almost a quarter of the Belgian electorate today, the Times reporter seems perplexed. This is how it seems he thinks: To be anti-immigration is to be, as he puts it, "far right" or "extreme right." And to be "far right" or "extreme right" is to be very, very bad. Weren't Nazis both far and extreme right -- or is that the Republican party? Whatever.
He knows Islam is a religion, although he doesn't seem to know it is also a political system. And to be prejudiced against religiosity (but not Christianity or Zionism) is very, very bad also. So Smith writes: "Many people" -- himself, for instance? -- "worry that the appeal of anti-Islamic politics will continue to spread as Europe's Muslim population grows." No mention, of course, that to be "anti-Islamic politics" is to be anti-sharia law, which sounds perfectly Jeffersonian to me.
This reasoning, however, is beyond a guy who marvels -- again, perplexed -- that one of his interviewees, a son and grandson of Holocaust victims, has campaigned for "far right" Vlaams Belang. The poisonous animus for Jews (and Christians) contained within "Islamic politics," not to mention its totalitarian strictures, fails to move the reporter's silly sense of political direction. His compass tells him anti-immigrationists are on the "far right" (jackboots), while Muslims, he writes, join "left-leaning parties" (save the whales).
Then Smith interviews a Belgian Muslim whose son faces terror charges in Turkey for killing 61 people in a 2003 bombing, and who calls the 9/11 attacks "a poetic act." In his, I suppose, "left-leaning" way, terror-dad "dismisses the far right's fears of an Islamization of Europe, even if he does dream of an Islamic theocracy governing the continent someday." Smith's conclusion? "In many ways, radical Islamists" -- such as terror-dad -- "are holding Europe's broader, moderate Muslim population hostage, attracting attention disproportionate to their numbers."
I say the reporter is holding The New York Times' broader, moderate readership hostage. The facts shall set you free in Bat Ye'or's "Eurabia."