RECONQUISTA

The original speech for the Brussells demo

2007-09-17T20:19:00.000Z

From S.I.O.E.

http://tinyurl.com/2yyju9

The original speech for the Brussels demo

Posted September 16th, 2007

People get prosecuted when they tell the truth – they get prosecuted if they show the crowd, that the emperor wears no clothes – as in the fairy tale of Hans Christian Andersen.
Some people have recently been trying to get the truth into the open, where it is possible for all who care, to see it. Not the analysed and manipulated truth conveyed through corrupt media, with no idea about freedom of speech - but the simple basic truth, that Europe is under attack. This attack is not done conventionally, with bombs and soldiers, but through a sneaking, undermining process – we are under attack through the media, infiltration of our institutions and direct harassment in the streets.

Now, how do you suppose the citizens of Europe react to these sneaking attacks? Well we march for peace, we try to get the message of our worry through to the people who our supposed to protect us - by peaceful means. And how are we received: As villains, xenophobes and racists.

Well people around here have just about had enough of that, we are sick and tired of being harassed and villainised just because we are saying what is obvious to everybody: that Islam is a threat to the European civilization. How many terror plots will have to succeed? How many rapes will have to be pulled through? How many areas of European soil have to be given over to Sharia? Before the state wakes up to the obvious facts? Well everybody here agrees, enough is enough; it stops here, we have had enough – No sharia here!

When Socrates in ancient times stood prosecuted by the tyrants, he did not step down – he could have done so and saved his skin – but he preferred to say whatever was on his mind, to search for truth in speech – and he was killed for it. He has inspired the true democrats ever since, and now we stand here again, another foul tyrannical government wants us to step down, or drink that cup of hemlock – as Socrates. All that have come today, here in this tyrannical city have been prepared to drink that cup of hemlock, we have braved our fears, we have stood up for the democratic first principle of freedom of speech, because we believe in it. We will not be silenced, we will not surrender our countries and kin, we will keep on fighting for what we hold dear.

The best politicians a people can have, are those who gallantly fight for the rights of their people. These politicians are so very rare these days, all we are left with are corrupt and weak specimens of the latter - like the Mayor of this city. Law is not something that automatically will appear and then function, it is something we should all hold dear and nurture in our lives. When law becomes a thing that is played with, by corrupt politicians, the existence of law disappears. Law is supposed to be the inner wall of the country, every citizen should grasp the essence of law and put it to their heart. And in the inner core of Law their lies virtue of justice – the quintessential principle of our society.

Now Roman law and justice is under serious threat these days, both from sloppiness of the responsible politicians, but also by the law of Sharia. This system of law stems from the Koran, and it has nothing to do with public opinion. It is produced and upheld by religious figures, analysing and judging according to tradition and conduct in the muslim countries. This has produced a civilization of decay and stagnation – there is absolutely no development in the middle east – only chaos and poverty. Now the defenders of Roman Law, our publicly elected politicians and the judges, cave in to Sharia. Because it is a better system of law? No, because they are afraid of the consequences – they are afraid of the muslim street, the mullahs, the rioters, the marauders and they react by giving in – hereby betraying the citizens of their country, their brothers and family.

It is a disgrace.

Everybody is in chains and yet everybody is free, That truth was beaconed upon us by the philosopher of the French revolution Rousseau. By chaining ourselves to Roman Law decreed by public vote, we have freed ourselves from the natural rule of the strongest. We still believe in this, but it doesn't work with the muslim street, that has no respect for Roman law, they only obey the rule of the strongest. Thereby we as law abiding citizens have been caught between the ever increasing muslim Ummah and the spineless conduct of our politicians – unable to figth for ourselves, because we respect Roman Law, and undefended by the law itself. Roman law only works if the citizens actually respect it – if a large portion of the population does not respect it, it becomes a death trap.

This death trap has been set up by that house in there – the EU magistrate. This house of arrogance and greed, this muddy castle of ineptitude and vainness. Selling off the citizens of Europe to the nearest thug down the street, while parading and flagging their own disability.

Not until this house of doubletalk and tyranny is put back on track, will the true European spirit that we fight to maintain flourish and bloom. Not until the crooked, spineless politicians have been ousted from this centre of corruption and manipulation will we be able to live in freedom again.

It is sad, but it is like that, the forces that were supposed to protect us are stabbing us in the back, for their career, for a little money, to be able to throw the next party with jugglers and extravaganza.

With no real interest in what really matters: Democracy and free speech.
But we stand here, the faithful, the believers in democracy, the sons and daughters of Socrates - and we do not give in; they can harass us, they can tell us that we are racists and islamophobes: we do not care – because we care for our children, and we want them to live in peace and freedom. So we put forth this example to follow, to brave the unjust laws, the prosecution, the muslim ummah - in a peaceful manner.

Because we take our freedom of speech seriously – in a gesture to that brave and free country over there in America, a comment to the constitutional first amendment.
And we reach out our hand to all the sons and daughters of European civilisation - and call for unity against the islamization of the west.

Let us all be free and the brave, and create another revival of that Hellenic spirit – that represents the heart of Europe.

Let us put that line in the sand now, and say:

Stop the islamisation of Europe!

No sharia here!

Democracy not theocracy!

Enough is enough!

Banned in the Netherlands

2007-08-11T16:12:00.000Z

The following comment, to a post on Gates of Vienna, about Geert Wilders calling for the Koran to be banned, led to this post.

http://tinyurl.com/2vafmm

and

http://tinyurl.com/2leyfh

“Profitsbeard said...

The Dutch banned the first book published in Holland warning of the impending Islamic invasion of the Netherlands.

Entitled:

"The Downfall of The Netherlands: Land of the Naive Dupes" viewable online here:

http://www.childrenofmillennium.org/heroes/downfall.htm

This was in 1990.

So they do ban some books.

Those by a Cassandra especially.

They hate someone telling them they're wrong.

Even if it kills them.”

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The book/pamphlet was written by a Muslim Pakistani immigrant to the Netherlands, so we must assume he knows what he’s talking about. In this post I publish only extracts from the book. Just these extracts are a substantial amount of reading – but worth it. Even so, I recommend you go to the above link and read it in its entirety, though the extracts are enough for reasonably comprehensive coverage. The English language use is sometimes a little awkward to fully appreciate what’s being said, but that is, I believe, because the author is a Pakistani writing in Dutch, which was then translated into English.

The author is talking of the Netherlands; I would like to suggest that much as I – British – can see Britain in the same light, so too should all Europeans, Canadians, Australians, Americans, and others, be able to see their own countries this way too. Wherever you see reference to the Netherlands, or the Dutch, try substituting your own country or your own people: it still makes perfect sense. The fact that it was written in 1990 tells me only that the Netherlands are in a more advanced stage of Islamification than the rest of us. Thus far, where the Netherlands have been and are, we are going or have gone … unless we bring it to a halt.

This book perfectly illustrates, by virtue of its author, that when we oppose Islam we are not opposing a skin colour, we are opposing an ideology. The issue is not one of which race you belong to, but rather what thoughts, ideas, values and attitudes bounce around inside your skull.

As an answer to accusations of “Racism” that inevitably follow criticism of Islam I would ask: what “Race”, exactly, is Islam? Or Muslims? Is it West Asian Arab? Or possibly South Asian Pakistani? Oriental Malaysian? How about Somali or Nigerian negro? Perhaps it is European white Bosnian or Albanian?

Can only white European Germans be Nazi? Or white European Slav Russians be Communist?

Exactly!

It is not a Race, it is an ideology.

In the extracts that follow, all emphases are mine.

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Extracts

The Downfall of the Netherlands

Land of the Naive Fools

Mohammed Rasoel

Translation courtesy of Faust

Foreword by the translator

On December 16, 1992 the Pakistani cabaret artist Zoka F. was ordered to pay a sum of 2000 guilders. The Dutch judge ruled that it had been proven that his book, 'De ondergang van Nederland', published under the pseudonym 'Mohammed Rasoel' was a racist pamphlet written with the sole purpose of inciting hatred. This sentence was followed by a massive public display of political correctness with the book being taken from the shelves in most bookstores throughout the Netherlands, and quickly forgotten about.

Foreword

When the political and social circumstances started to turn against him, the Muslim born author fled his Islamic country, after which he traveled for several years before finding refuge in Europe. Because he lived two lives, of which the second one was in the Netherlands, he observed the Dutch and their charming behavior, misplaced optimism, and disorientated urge for responsibility from an angle where they themselves were blind.

The author shows that the Dutch, if they don't adjust their policy regarding Muslims and set a drastically different course, will be repressed by the culture of Islam. In a worst-case scenario, they will have to admit they literally gave their already small country away. The author sheds light on the subject from different sides and clarifies with many examples that a seemingly far-fetched speculation is actually already materializing in the foreseeable future.

Whosoever reads the references to the evolution of mankind, to the argument about various forms of discrimination, and to the naivety of the Dutch, as well as the detailed explanations regarding the mentality of the Muslims, illustrated with quotes from the Koran, "Though if they oppose you, then kill them," shall not only reconsider their own position in society opposed to the Muslims, but also look differently at the reflection in the mirror, this time with the eyes of the author, who possibly, because he basically writes against himself, could be seen as truly objective. As a side note, the author kept his true identity and location confidential, afraid to make the same mistake as author Salman Rushdie.

Introduction

My knowledge of human behavior and the differences between populations can not only be contributed to twenty years of interest and an equal amount of visited countries, but also because of a monkey I used to have. A companion who taught me that for some things no difficult explanations are required. A comrade who, when placed in front of a mirror, was at first excited to see a fellow monkey, to look behind the mirror to find out where it was, unable to realize how empty mirrors really are. Though I, when it comes to aforementioned insights and the writing of this book, have the assumed benefit that I'm not a Dutchman, I write strengthened by the knowledge that this book only depicts what many oppressed and silenced Dutchmen think. I must also add that I, as a completely independent person, have no ties to Dutch, Islamic, or any other organization of any kind.

In this book I will give the impression that I generalize continuously, and possibly that I'm convinced of myself being right. The scope of this book is so all encompassing that I, to avoid a monotony of 'besides' and 'according to me', categorized various peoples with a common 'they', without meaning every single one of those people, and expressed frank opinions, without entitling myself to being absolutely right. It may seem awkward that I oppose my own kind; but that's not so strange. After all, when the governments wants to build a railroad straight through Woensdrecht one can expect the village to protest, but it would only be truly objective if the construction company itself would object.

My early years

I was born from average Muslim parents in an average Muslim nation to live a life and do things unexceptional for a random half-blind person lost in Islam, kicking, screaming, and bullying, just like the other Muslims.

… At school they broke quite a few switches on my knuckles, and at home perhaps even more, until my father found out one day that I had tried to smoke and wanted to punish me so severely he hired someone for the extra beating. But why should I complain? The boy next doors didn't hear me shout from four houses away like I heard him when he was beaten for stealing meat from the pan. I also endured less than the christian who murmured English to himself, which the children found so amusing they threw stones at him wherever he went. He bled continuously, not I. On the other hand he was one of the many exceptions like the crippled, retards, and blind who weren't spared either … Dogs busy heaving intercourse and hence attached to each other, rarely finished the ride; they were taken care of by the men, women, and children of the neighborhood, who found the display so repulsive that they simply bashed in the dogs' skulls with sticks. How much sympathy can a whining dog expect from a people too busy whining themselves?

… But always fresh and on guard was our ability to lie. At school, at home, or on the street. Everywhere the lie was the basis of our daily lives. If we were asked for directions, our name, what kind of work our father did, how we paid for something, if we came with the bus, if we were hungry, even if a doctor asked where it hurt; on each question you came up with a fitting lie. Not only because lying had become a second nature, but because we often had started to believe in our own lies without realizing that we lied, but also our fear to lose prestige. We depleted our family members quickly because we used their deaths as an excuse for being late. But afterwards the dead family members praised us for our ingenuity when it came to lying.

… bribery and being smart were one and the same, since only a fool wouldn't bribe a police officer if he could avoid prison time for some spare change. Rich people didn't get into these situations because a police officer who made the mistake of fining a rich person for something like speeding had the following options: fall on his knees and apologize, lose his job, or his nose. The people who didn't have to be rich to enjoy a general boost of status were the European tourists, who because of their good faith formed an easy target. It was our trick to approach them and warn them not to trust anyone and to watch their luggage carefully. This way we automatically earned some extra trust, and at the first opportunity: bye bye luggage. But those were all pranks; the big hits were arranged by the police force itself. Their method existed of placing hashish in the luggage of the tourists, if it was a couple that is, and then arrest the male and lock him up until the woman freed him by being cooperative with the inspector, in the usual fashion.

From nation to nation

After leaving my family, friends, and possessions behind I crossed the first border filled with hope, to the neighboring country, to once there meet people who were hardly different from where I came from, that is, when it comes to religion and mentality. And so it continued, to my disappointment, one country after another, until I started to wonder if this was everything there was.

… "You must go to Amsterdam," they said, especially in Istanbul, and one day I found myself standing there.

It was the only city that didn't want to see me gone, even though I was frightful and kept myself hidden from the police, until I found out that they were too busy looking good and showing the way to the national museum to be bothered by illegal aliens.

The collision

My travel through time, a trip of five centuries, ended except for the Netherlands also in confusion. Keep in mind it is easy not to get confused when you're too stupid to see the difference. I had no idea there was a people like the Dutch. They were peaceful and quiet, polite and friendly, and in conflicts they admitted their mistakes. … At other moments they criticize themselves "I'm an idiot", without seeing that as a lack of self-respect, pride, or manliness.

They spoke quietly and actually listened, making me imagine myself in wonderland. But besides those wonders the transition also brought pain. Like a fish on the beach who no longer belongs in the water but wasn't yet ready to walk the land … The Dutch way of living was something completely beyond me. Especially the calm behavior of the people had an irritating impact. Violence of voices and gestures was the only form of communication they knew and now they expected of me that I would restrain, and conform to the Dutch manners.

Introduction to the naive fools

If there were no Scandinavians, of who I don't know a whole lot, then without a single trace of doubt in my voice I would call the Dutch the nicest, most honorable, civilized, honest, objective, and outspoken people of the world, while my opinion about their social system, police, jurisdiction, education, etcetera, is equally high. I'm sometimes still surprised about the way of life in the Netherlands and the behavior of the Dutch, even though they form a rich source of entertainment and happiness in my daily life. But when someone doesn't agree with me or doesn't understand what I'm talking about it's either a moron or exactly one of those Dutchmen, while in other countries in their most ideal dreams people wish they could reach the same thing as here, or at least almost the same, because also the Dutch are not perfect.

How can a people be so advanced in their thought while being so naive at the same time? Or the other way around: how can people as smart as the drug lords of Colombia or the master minds of the mob and yet be dumb enough to ignore the lives they wreck? The answer is easy: we only develop our brains in those areas where we train them. The story of the Dutch is simply the story of a people who lived so long in a neatly arranged society, and developed its kindness so far that it not only forgot what a mess looks like, but never developed the intelligence to keep itself clean: the Dutch don't see the mess around them and hence do not see a good reason to protect themselves against it.

… the little bit of optimism I had was totally shattered when I discovered the highest authority in the field of optimism were the same self-pessimistic Dutch, with the possible exception of the Ostrich, of course.

Cyclops chasing a dream

Considering the support for great institutes like the Pieter Baan Centre where the mental health of criminals is observed, and despite the many unemployed psychologists and social workers, the latest fashion in the Netherlands is psychology. About the only thing that goes on is the constant digging into the backgrounds searching for the justifications, which comes in handy, because all the freely floating intelligence has to be used for something. And that's how the Dutch fail to see, totally absorbed by the ever-increasing number of situations, that there doesn't have to be a difficult explanation for everything. If a dog compulsively barks that could be because he's locked up too often, but about his instinct to chase cats nobody has to wonder. If a Dutch boy grows up without problems and all of a sudden starts stealing or becomes aggressive, then it would make sense to find the reason for the deviation from his normal behavior.

But when I am aggressive, that is my normal reaction. For me controlled behavior would be a deviation from the normal pattern. In short, some people do something purely driven because of circumstances, while others do so because of their nature. Some people go nuts, others are already nuts.

… a Moroccan woman who recently gave birth to a child all alone at home was surrounded by Dutch women from the neighborhood who were all sorry for her. "What a horrible experience that must have been", they said, placing themselves in her situation, without realizing how normal something like that in third world nations is. That's how guest workers, who used to live in groups and given their living conditions thought themselves as rich as kings, were forced to believe by their social workers that they were actually not happy, because the Dutch in mutual circumstances wouldn't be happy.

… It's time the Dutch realize that other people don't look at this world with the same eyes. Or, more to the point, it's time the Dutch realize that all the bloody political incidents, the civil wars, the border disputes in the Middle East, the far East, or elsewhere, that continuously make the news, could rather directly spill forth from an aggressive nature, without there being a difficult explanation for this. And that when a pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement or any other kind of extremist Muslim group forms a fanatic army, while shouting, "Allah Akbar", any kind of reasonable policy or ideology is out of the question, but that we're simply dealing with a bunch of idiots, psychopaths, and imbeciles who do whatever they please.

Beware of discrimination

No matter from what nation a fresh immigrant comes to the Netherlands, he will spend years figuring out the Dutch, unless he spends a couple of euro to buy the Dutch constitution which is available in most bookstores, and from which he can get some basic knowledge about them, including their sense of humor. He opens it, full of suspense and expectations, and wham! There it is, the first paragraph of the first chapter, what else could this be about? "Everyone who finds himself inside the Netherlands will in equal situations be treated equally. Discrimination because of religion, philosophy of life, political inclination, race, sex, or on any other grounds, is not allowed." The jewel of this statement is the words 'or on any other grounds.'

… There's no doubt that the history of discrimination is horrible and shouldn't be forgotten.

But somewhere in the campaign against it, with endless TV series about slaves in America, Jews in the second world war, South Africa, the Ku Klux Klan, etc, the Dutch lost track, short-circuited their brains, until they melted the various separate occurrences into one gigantic monster. Meanwhile they failed to see, intentionally or not, the word was used by either side like a gun against the head.

… nobody thought about there being more sides to the word "discrimination."

1. Direct discrimination: A ship got stuck at the pole. A helicopter comes to the rescue with warm meals for the whites and bread for the blacks.

2. Indirect discrimination: Whoever calls American people nice, calls at least one people not nice.

3. Subjective discrimination: An old Dutch woman is afraid of foreigners, and avoids them.

4. Objective discrimination: A Dutch moviemaker wants native Dutch actors for his Dutch movie - he doesn't want Moroccans.

5. Counter discrimination: A Turk who only rents rooms to Dutchmen.

6. Reversed discrimination: A Dutchman who isn't allowed in a bar for dark skinned people.

7. Inversed discrimination: Foreigners who are treated better and get more opportunities than the native Dutch.

I'll leave the various forms of discrimination for what they are, because the state prefers to keep the privilege to unite them into one big thick bat. One wrong word ('Moroccans live dirty') and the TV, left wing organizations, the police, the ministers, not to forget a group of recent graduates, freshly brainwashed students who want to use what they learned in practice, will be banging on your door. "What did you say? Come with us, you'll be put to justice." Once inside the courtroom, "You'll be made an example and we'll show the world how good we are here in the Netherlands," says the judge with a deep voice. "Pardon your Honor", interrupts the lawyer, "You just said 'How good we are here in the Netherlands', and according to the code of law, article 2 sub 2, regarding indirect discrimination, you hence state that the rest of the world is evil."

A month later the judge is trialed. Meanwhile other situations fall into the blind angle of the eyes of the judge: while the government is making a big issue out of the employment of foreigners and makes proposals to force Dutch employers to hire them, foreign employers only hire their own people, and nobody notices a thing.

… we concluded, due to the death of a three years old, that a pit-bull terrier is more dangerous than the average lap dog, and because of that, on the grounds of objective discrimination, there is a law that obliges the owners of pit bulls to have their dog wear a muzzle, and not just the owners of pit bulls who bit once before, or all dog owners. Because that's the way the facts are. The choice is between acknowledging and denying the facts.

… Discrimination of the wrong party is certainly wrong, but not more wrong than a wrong understanding of the meaning of the word, and not more wrong than the blatant accusation of others of wrong discrimination when that isn't the case. The word discrimination should be rebalanced and reevaluated, and it should perhaps be determined what forms of discrimination aren't entirely wrong.

… Ole, we are the Champions

The first impression of a Dutchman is that of Atlas carrying the weight of the world. At the second one that opinion doesn't change. At the third one it seems the Dutch are set on proving something with their good deeds, regardless of the consequences and perhaps regardless of the one at the receiving end of the good deeds. "What did you say there, do you use phosphate-free soap? Oh, that's nothing, I'm doing animal protection. What? Your mother works for Greenpeace? That's child play, my mother works for the Association of refugee aid and my brother is against acid rain, my father protests against the bomb, our entire family opposes discrimination and we have two pitch black kids living in the barn, who we took back from our holiday in Africa, even though we really wanted three of them, can't you see how great we are. And yes, almost forgot, we also voted for the green party."

The Indians paint their faces, Africans put rings around their neck and into their lips, some people wear jewelry to show their status, and the Dutch put their conscience on display.

The Muslims in the spot light

Thief knows thief, cop knows cop, junkie knows junkie, and Muslim knows Muslim. The Dutch however, who never learned to know themselves, prefer to get to know the Muslim, and do not do a very good job at it.

Deceitful appearance

The Dutch meet Muslims on cultural gatherings, on markets, and parties. They see sparkling, shy eyes and a sincere shining smile and think: how nice, how sociable, how lively these people are. And when they look at themselves in comparison, they see what they lack, but fascinated and captivated they move like insects to the source of unusual light. In the expectation that what shines there is gold, they don't see that the nice looking people are often the biggest monsters and that men like Ceausescu or Hussein beam as strongly at their parties as anyone else. Or did the Dutch think that unfriendly people are beasts with dangerous, unshaven faces and clothing drenched in blood, groaning and growling, "murder, murder"?

… when a Muslim does something right, or something not wrong whenever that is expected, the Dutch yell, "I told you they're all right!" And when they meet my mother, the sweetest and frailest old women they've ever seen, they couldn't image that she's the one my stories are about, and how aggressive she is on the inside. The Dutch can't get to know the Muslim, no matter how hard they try, because the Muslim won't let himself be known.

Variable contents

It can be interesting to see in what ways the Islamic culture differs from the Dutch one, but it can be dangerous not to see that seemingly mutual morals and habits differ vastly in intention and effect. In the Netherlands the important and rich people often walk around in the cheapest clothing, in which they step into their Audi of half a ton, or depending on the weather, on their crunching old bicycles. If they wear a suit, then only because of their work or because they find it pleasant to do so. In Islamic nations however, where one wears a suit to feel superior toward others, nobody with any kind of status would ever want to be found on a bicycle.

The, "Thank you", "Sorry", "Sorry", "Thank you", which easily comes from the Dutch mouth, upon which he looks you straight in the face, would be seen as self-humiliation in Islamic nations, …

… a conversation with a Dutchman is never complete without a dozen whys. The question why is offensive in Islamic nations and can lead to trouble. Given the great many differences under the superficial resemblances, I only named a fraction of them, combined with the ease at which Muslims lie and the confusion created by Dutch researchers pumping all sorts of, for Muslims, entirely unimaginable questions into their ears, followed by the pulling of the answers from their mouths that they desire to hear, it shouldn't be hard to imagine how many misunderstandings about Muslims continue to exist. I on the other hand walk in and out of their Mosques, sit among them in their clubs as their 'comrade' and hear them tell how depraved the Dutch are and how easy it is to fool them, not to mention the dangerous things they say without knowing what I think.

Do you know the Koran?

… If we truly want to understand Muslims, we must have a look at the Koran. And while I learned the book by heart, assisted with whiplashes, I've been reading it lately to refresh my memory, and pondering if Muslims abuse the Koran, or the other way around, or both. The following citations are from the translation by J.H. Kramers and can give the Dutch a global impression of the convictions and mental baggage of their fellow citizen.

Sura 2, 191: 'Fight them not at the Inviolable Place of Worship, as long as they don't fight you there. Though if they attack you, then slay them.'

Sura 5, 38: 'And the thief, male or female, you shall cut off their hands as pay-back for their crime, and to serve as an example of punishment from Allah.' If the Muslims in the Netherlands are so devoted to their religion, they will also have to accept the punishments of that Allah.

Sura 24, 2: 'The adulteress and the adulterer, whip each of them a hundred lashes.'

Sura 24, 31: 'And tell the believing women, that they subdue their eyes and maintain their chastity. They shall not reveal any parts of their bodies, except that which is necessary. They shall not strike their feet when they walk in order to shake and reveal certain details of their bodies.'

(To subdue your eyes applies to men as well.)

Sura 24, 4: 'Those who accuse married women of adultery, then fail to produce four witnesses, you shall whip them eighty lashes...'

Sura 4, 15: 'Those of your women, not maintaining their chastity, you must have four witnesses from among you against her. If they bear witness, then keep her in the houses, until death pays her debt or Allah shows a way for her.'

Before comparing the Koran with the Bible, it should be noted that with the Bible I do not mean the old testament, which isn't less ridiculous than the Koran, but the new testament (N.T.). And while the Koran and Bible have the same purpose, spreading a religion, the difference between them is striking. While Christianity (N.T.) spreads it with friendship and love, without force, asks to pray for the unbeliever and to help them with their conversion or otherwise forgive them, etc., Islam is hard, biding, punitive and aggressive. Or, with one word: primitive, because it hasn't changed one bit in fourteen centuries.

… Such a difference inevitably results in collisions and even without that there's a clear social conflict between what the Dutch and the Muslims are allowed to. Islam forbids letting dogs inside your house, entering a house where a dog lives, or shaking the hand of someone who touched a dog. This makes social relationships and friendships between the Dutch and Muslims highly impractical, especially when the Muslims aren't allowed to eat on the same table with Dutchmen who eat delicious sandwiches with pork ass. Next there's the clothing issue, which goes deeper than one would assume from the surface. A punker paints his hair, a hippy puts flowers in it, a soldier keeps it short, and those frequenting discos cover it with gel. Everyone does as he pleases, Muslim women on the other hand abide to the 'hizjab' and cover their head, not because they want to or because of their clothing style, but because uncovering their head makes them impure, dirty, and repulsive. Their 'hizjab' is a gesture, a manifesto, that contains a judgment about the Dutch women, who they approach with a polite smile that is less innocent than it seems.

This opinion, which Islamic women carry with them from under their 'hizjab' has been poured into them from childhood, because all Muslim women find all white women - simply put - repulsive.

… This results in an interesting one sided situation, where the Dutch give all their love and only get contempt in return, then what are all these Muslims doing in the Netherlands? It can't be so that Allah agrees that such a halal (pure) Muslim civilization lives on such a haram (impure) soil. Back to the content of the Bible and Koran. Some people claim the Bible also contains reprehensible scriptures, or that the Koran has good sides as well. In the Bible that I read (N.T.) there must be pages missing with the instruction to whip and mutilate, or scriptures with a mutual intention.

… The good side of the Koran doesn't neutralize its bad side.

… we can answer the question if Muslims abuse the Koran, or if there is a mutual relationship between the two of them. Claiming that the Koran is innocent to the behavior of Muslims, or that Muslims abuse the Koran, both abusively justifies the other party. In reality the two strengthen each other.

But the word abuse is incorrect, because both Koran and Muslims manage to use each other very well, and belong to each other. It's the soft New Testament the Muslims wouldn't like, and the Koran would reject the Dutch at first sight. The reciprocal relationship between Muslims and Koran doesn't mean the Muslims would be helpless or harmless without the Koran. … Take a gun away from an enraged man, and instead he'll grab a stick or stone.

Cleaning diapers

No matter how nice and spontaneous the Muslims may be, they're not the only ones. Also Dutch children, that is till around the age of twelve, display spontaneity, not that spontaneity isn't the same as being childlike; both come forth from the lack of self-criticism and thoughtfulness. Understand children as children, and much of their apparent incomprehensible behavior - such as seeking attention, crying about futilities, and the tendency to dislike everything, becomes clear. Such behavior became obvious and widely displayed when it came to a book that was so important; the behavior of a child whose toy was taken away.

… Children are also quick to anger and fight for straps [scraps?]. No wonder that the Islamic nations are continuously at war, and that their leaders cannot hold peace negotiations as adults. Movies, drama, and ego trips have a childlike relationship to each other. Children like to imitate TV programs, and they find themselves incredibly important and interesting. The Muslims ventured out onto the Dutch streets exactly like they were used to in their own countries, inspired by all the movies they had ever seen and fascinated by their own moustache and manly behavior. And drama is certainly not something patented by children.

Evolution

Regardless if the subject is about children or war, the environment, sex, or heart attacks, if I want to go into more detail, I often find myself referring to the evolution of human civilization. The Muslims are no exception to this, but so are people in general. In the stages a child goes through until it reaches adulthood, form an equal evolution like process as the development of ape to man. But not every child develops at the same pace and doesn't continue for the same length of time, so why would the different peoples on this planet? There are even examples of people, like the Biami's who only recently made contact to the outside world, who now still live like in the stone age - and not because they don't know how to modernize, but because they don't know better.

Maybe it's simply a matter of an evolutionary gap, though in this context I'd like to add that the evolution I refer to only spans a cultural development, the developing of social behavior and mentality; it seems as unlikely and illogical to me that two peoples would go through the exact same development as two fingers having the exact same print, or that two frames of two leaves would be alike. Moreover, a higher level of development doesn't have to be a blessing, as proven by our, as good as ruined, planet. It seems we never should have crawled out of our caverns. But less development means matter of fact more touchiness, more impulsivity, more aggression, basically: more of the characteristics we started out with as apes.

Thresholds and limitations

Although the ape-man, the lower civilized and the higher civilized all are emotional creatures, the distinction is mainly a matter of thresholds and barriers; thresholds above which they decided to respond and the limitations they apply to their actions. However, both these factors as well as the conscious and the control exercised upon it are directly related to the degree of development of the people. It's this realization, or the lack thereof, leading to almost anything being a reason for a fist fight in third world nations, and because of which the Dutch are almost impossible to offend.

… It happens that a Dutch girl wants to kiss but doesn't want you to touch her body, goes with you but doesn't want to pull off her clothes. It can even go as far that she wants to lie naked together yet doesn't want to have intercourse. Or, in a more common situation, a Dutch girl would want to pose as a model in her underwear but would never prostitute herself. A girl in Morocco kisses to have sex, or not at all, and if she's stupid enough to pose in her underwear, she might as well become a prostitute because her family would never believe otherwise and cut all ties. Girls from Amsterdam have long learned not to smile to Muslim guys, because they take that as a wink, and next cling to them until they say 'lesbian' and walk away. The stairway of evolution upon which a people stands depends on where their boundaries lie. The more two peoples differ when it comes to that location the sooner conflicts will arise. The difference between the Dutch and the Muslim is as extreme as it gets.

… A collision occurs at the moment that a Dutchman who expects words in return for his words, or swearing in return for his swearing, suddenly is beaten up without realizing that, for the other person, this is completely normal, and without realizing the other person has no brakes.

… The question remains at what point they decide to take actions, and how far they decide to go with their actions. Shall they just think of a curse, or also utter it silently? Shall they call it out loud or draw a knife?

… Another way to look at thresholds and limitations could be an answer to the argument that not all Muslims constantly shoot people in bars and that not every Turk goes as far as pumping lead into his sister because she doesn't marry the man who her parents promised her to. If we consider sensibility and insanity as a measuring cup with a scale of one to ten, and we assume that position nine is the point where someone has lose hands and position ten is the point where someone becomes insane enough to kill, than it's logical that someone who's normal behavior is closer to ten, lets say eight, reaches ten a lot easier than someone who's normal behavior lies at two. If both of them move two degrees, one would be at the ceiling (crazy enough to murder), while the other would rise from two to four. Warm water is a lot easier to get to the boiling point than cold water. This same insanity scale can be applied to the average behavior of a nation. The average of the Dutch people is probably 2, that of Scandinavians 1, and the Iranian average is a fat 9 and that in most Muslim nations probably 8. This doesn't mean that there are no easy going decent Muslims. Of course there are, maybe they're even more decent than the Dutch, but a people existing of a handful of sensible people among fanatics is for that reason not the same as a people that only has a handful of fanatics.

Salmanic Versdie

…We should be thankful to Rushdie for provoking the Muslims enough to show their true colors. Without this incident the iceberg would have kept growing unnoticed and resulted in a much bigger collision later on. Now the collision leads to a discussion about how shocked the West was about the protests, and by Khomeini's dangerous threats, though people should really talk about how dangerously shocked the West was by Khomeini's threats. Who touches a defective coffee machine can get one of two shocks: 1) the electric shock, 2) the shock of the unexpected. Who knowingly touches a bared wire can only get 1) the electric shock. The biggest threat lies in the shock that the West got from Khomeini's threats. Whoever lets himself be surprised in a game of chess loses.

The West should have seen this coming. Because from a shock you can recover, but ignorance and the surprise factor means a permanent danger. Regarding the collision between Islam and the freedom of speech, Muslims have as much a right to protect their religion or even be aggressive, as the white man has to protect his freedom of speech or his imperturbability. But either set of rights can be in effect for either party in their own nation. That's why a Dutchman can't demand that the Satanic Verses is sold in Turkey or Morocco, like a Muslim can't expect to uphold the sharia in the Netherlands. Muslims would deserve our praise if they returned to their own country to scream their lungs out of their body. Talking about screaming, a small amount of the 5,000 Muslims, gathered in The Hague, screaming "Die Rushdie", equals proportionally about 150,000 protesting Dutchmen. We're talking about one protest, and only the people who actually showed up to protest, so not the ones who weren't allowed out of their house or weren't allowed to protest. The protestors didn't protest out of principle, or even out of anger, but from pure aggression.

Aggression for the sake of aggression alone. … Being offended is sometimes purely a form of aggression. … Like being offended can be a form of aggression, fundamentalism can be a form of stupidity and narrow-mindedness.

This explains why the people in the middle ages were such fundamentalists, … So let's not cover up the pure fanaticism and stupidity of the Muslims with nice words like fundamentalism as long as they continue to chase Rushdie. Some people undoubtedly truly believe that Rushdie provoked the Muslims, or that it's in the common interest not to provoke them any further. But firstly it's not a provocation when someone in his own nation enjoys his own freedoms and ways of life; and secondly we should, if provoking is wrong, forbid the banks from having money or forbid people from having stereo installations build into their car, because that provokes thieves.

… my mother asked me how he could have written such a book, even though she, just like all the others, never saw or read the book. … To get back to the surprise factor: Whether it's about the philanthropic concert organized by George Harrison for the victims of the flooding in Bangladesh, where the money was snatched away by the rich, or for striking down a democratic movement in China, again and again people will be the victim of the surprise factor.

They don't see the events unfolding and they don't learn from their mistakes.

An excellent relationship

In the preceding text I might have given the impression that I believe the Muslims should never have come to the Netherlands. Quite the contrary: I compliment them with what they've achieved so far. And why wouldn't they be here and take the maximum advantage out of the goodwill of the Dutch, if that's exactly what's expected of them, and are even encouraged to do?

Blunder Experts

The big blunder, as now is commonly acknowledged, was only committed fairly recently, when anyone could enter the country because the Dutch didn't feel for doing the dirty work. Now they're facing even dirtier work, which they leave for others as well [by that I assume he means future generations]. This blunder was even bigger because preceding it there was no thorough investigation to their habits, their religion, or their mentality. And it didn't go like this either: "Dear parliament, what do you think: it will only increase the circulation of our papers, our television will have something to babble about, our lazy police gets some real work at last, and our writers and publishers will feel what they never felt: fear, and we'll get a guaranteed supply of problems for the first coming two hundred years. So come on, guys, raise your hand if you're for it."

And that's where one hundred fifty hands went into the air. More dangerous than mistakes of judgment are mistakes of mentality, because they keep being repeated. Someone who accidentally commits a crime is much more easily put back on a straight course than someone with a criminal personality.

Visit the argument-waterfalls

Now that the Muslims are here, obviously, there's a torrent of reasons for their presence. Though I must admit that I am quite sure of the fact that there are a lot more Muslims in the Netherlands than arguments. Like everyone knows the first argument to explain the arosen problems is that Muslims in the Netherlands are discriminated against and aren't being accepted into the society. Myself, also a dark skinned Muslim, have during all the years that I've been in the Netherlands, never experienced discrimination, except from foreigners. The worst that happens to me is that a woman puts her wallet away or that a guard in the store keeps an eye on me, which I can respect, because their distrust, in the last instance, can be blamed on the stealing habits of my own kind.

Regarding being accepted: I have met a thousand Dutchmen and have dozens of Dutch friends, and never was I given the feeling that I wasn't welcome or was ignored. To the contrary: I'm often annoyed that I'm treated extra politely. The truth is that only those who create a situation where they are being rejected, who patronize themselves and become inaccessible, feel discriminated against. For really it is the Muslims who reject the Dutch, and their complaints about being discriminated against is only a diversion that comes in handy. "But the discrimination and mutual social problems are only a matter of adjustment", argue the sociologists. They explain to us that the Muslims, children as well as grown ups, have difficulties transferring from their culture to the Dutch culture, and that they, as long as they are busy with that (many years by now), demand nothing except being tolerated.

That probably holds more, and an older, truth than the sociologists researched. Maybe the Muslims had adjustment issues in their own nation, where they fought continuously, were aggressive, even before their arrival in the Netherlands. … If the adjustment argument held any ground, the Dutch who immigrated to Canada and Australia would become aggressive, hard to educate, commit crimes, etcetera. "But our problems, are after all, the price we pay for living together, and isn't living together a matter of giving and taking?" ask the Dutch. But that isn't the case in this situation. If there really were a society of Syrians and one of Dutchmen, both in Tokyo, it would be logical if both would go to the same length to accommodate to each other.

But the Muslims happen to be in the Netherlands, the motherland of the Dutch, their home, and necessary accommodations would have to come entirely from the side of the Muslims, without any obligations for the Dutch. I can't move into someone's house and redecorate it, paint the television pink before breaking it, smoke cigars, throw out the cat, and expect him to accept it. Besides, if the Dutch would only adjust to a foreign nationality for 10% they would be torn apart. "Yes, but the Netherlands had colonies, and that isn't fair either", some will mention. Firstly, we can't say "Listen, you killed my family, so now I'll kill yours", in other words, one wrong doesn't justify another wrong. Secondly, it must be acknowledged that the Americans in the Philippines, the English in India, the Dutch in Indonesia, all of them, despite the often despicable treatment of the local population, helped to build up these nations, constructed railroads, founded schools and industries and even help maintain their culture by protecting historical monuments and buildings from the locals that used them as toilets.

And when the time was there, and their presence was no longer appreciated, they left, though perhaps a little later and in a less friendly manner than it should have been. Once they were gone, all that was history. But the presence of the Muslims in the West is another story. "You're sowing unnecessary panic. A mutual situation as the one of the Muslims in the Netherlands existed in the 17th century, and back then the immigrants managed to adjust themselves as well. That immigration wave the Dutch survived," I hear some think. That's all true, except for the word mutual. Unlike three hundred years ago, the immigrants today are Muslims, and that's where the main difference lies, …To me it seems short sighted to expect that something that worked out all right in the past will also work out well in the future.

Because if that was the case stuntmen would be invulnerable. … "Alright, alright, but there are only a handful of fundamentalist Muslims on about 14 million Dutchmen", some optimists bring up against this. I strongly doubt if it's just a handful. A handful of non-fundamentalists seems more likely. But regardless of that matter, a handful is often more than enough. It only takes one loud voice to stir a group of calm people, one thief and all shops take precautions, one anti-social family and an entire street loses it's charm, one east European metal turtle and hundreds of car drivers become endangered, one escaped murderer and an entire city lives in fear, and finally: one potential hijacker and a million passengers will be body searched for years. And even then: if I'm planning to harm a hundred people and none of those hundred has plans like that with me, who is in danger?

"Okay, maybe you're right, but you can't say it's the fault of the Muslims that they are the way they are", believe many. That's correct, but are the Dutch to blame?... no matter how often you hit us, we'll time after time turn you the other cheek," is what the Dutchman thinks. This attitude isn't wrong, and it's true that revenge doesn't pay off, and even when you turn someone the other cheek, the other will only feel guilty, hence punishing himself. The Dutch are making the mistake that this principle, since it worked on them, also works on others. They forget that some people never feel guilty nor see the error in their ways, because they lack the mental capabilities for that. You can't place your cat next to a mean dog, let it almost be torn apart and come back later with your cat in the hope that the dog learned from its mistakes.

Conditions for change

It's perhaps a brutal or ridiculous thought that in the current situation the best solution is that the Muslims change. But changes, regardless if they're genetic, astronomical, or ecological, only occur under certain conditions. This includes the Muslims, who in order to change must qualify for certain conditions considering intellect, character, will, capability, circumstances and time.

Intellect: in order to adjust to the Dutch way of living the Muslims must be able to understand what the Dutch are talking about. In all honesty, the Muslims don't have the slightest idea what a Dutchman really is, how open minded he is, how insane or free, maybe they don't even understand that the Netherlands isn't an Islamic nation. Themselves, and their Islam, they don't understand one bit either.

Character: in order to change someone must have a flexible personality. Fundamentalism is the direct opposite of this flexibility. And even then: in order to put water in a jerry can of gasoline you have to take out the gasoline first.

Will: the Muslims are not only proud of the aggression they develop toward Rushdie; they are convinced of their own character. The Islamic schools symbolize a signature under a statement that they don't want to change.

Capability: even if someone tries hard to change, this doesn't mean that he will actually succeed. You can't teach a cat to fetch sticks.

Circumstances: if there, it's been said before, were only a few Islamic families spread out over the Netherlands and in a classroom of Dutch children had only been one Islamic child, then the change would have been inevitable. Had there been three, they would have stuck together and change wouldn't have happened naturally. But on schools where the majority of the children are Islamic, change is close to impossible.

Time: even if all conditions would be met, change is still a long evolutionary process.

"And what about you, sir Rasoen, or whatever your name is, you yourself are the counter argument against what you say, because you yourself show that Muslims can change." That thought must have risen for some. I think it was plain dumb luck that I had the required ingredients inside me, next to the determination, required to let the changing process of several generations take place in one human life, and I believe sincerely that the average Muslim can't bridge that gap.

The Muslims themselves will of course disagree. As far as they're concerned they're Dutch the moment they have a Dutch passport. Other foreigners think you first have to get drunk, watch Andre van Duin and learn how to say 'chot-verdoma' (god damn me) and 'eutkereng' (welfare) to deserve that title. I disagree with both of them, because that's not what it's about. It's the mentality and norm system.

… The question is not what they look like, but if they treat people with the same original Dutch friendliness. Will they behave like machos in the neighborhood watch? Will they be corruptible as policemen? Will they verbally abuse the patience [patients?] they nurse? Will they honk nervously in a jam? Will they behave autocratically toward their employees? Will they be as tolerant as the Dutch or whine continuously, protest, and start a lawsuit? All in all, will they behave in a Dutch manner or keep their own mentality? All these questions are kicking in open doors. … And this brings us back to evolution: which goes steadily and not with jumps, including the Muslims in the Netherlands and the underdeveloped nations, as long as they don't reach the level of the West.

If we for example examine a nation like Pakistan and view the evolution of human behavior as a grayscale, this means that miss Bhutto is certainly a step forward and a lighter grey, but how much lighter? She likely thinks less religiously than her predecessor, less dark, but how much less? … Once again the answer to the question if Pakistan has been westernized is: no.

Integration: a saddening fairy tale

The hippies with whom I sat on the streets of Kabul, while that was still allowed, had their good and bad sides, just like those in every other movement. But the most daring stunt of their ideology of free love, without a steady partner, no matter how sensible in theory and well meant, didn't work in practice. It hurts when your girlfriend lies right in front of your nose in bed with someone else. Human nature isn't a matter of right or wrong, but one of fantasy and reality. The Dutch are pretty much the successors of the hypes with their learned by heart Technicolor-fairy tales about the supposed integration. They challenge the fundamental laws of nature, where millions of different kinds of plants and animals lived together in harmony for millions of years with each other, and where only the Dutch are needed, with the thought to mix them to realize the unavoidable consequences.

… How can it be that, … an integrated society cannot be accomplished? Well, it's no miracle. After all, when we cry because someone died, it's mostly a brother, sister, or parent.

And when a Dutchman in Malaysia is hung for drugs possession this doesn't make it into the newspaper in Tanzania. Why not? Because the people there do not feel connected to a stranger like they do with their own people. Every nation, including the Dutch one, if you like it or not, has somewhere the feeling that they form one big family (kind seeks kind), since that's how man works.

… in a village in Gelderland, which I'll keep anonymous for its own good, where people don't seek their own kind because they already have each other and managed to isolate themselves from the neighboring villages. During my stay of a week in this village, where I wasn't unwelcome, I was in an atmosphere so cozy that I had rarely experienced it since I knew the meaning of that word. And while this village held roughly twenty thousand people, I had never experienced so many people calling each other by their name, who took a walk at night in their own traditional clothing, laughing and with so much pleasure among each other that it seemed they formed one big family. And indeed: I found out they only married among each other.

But the best proof of the atmosphere of trust that was present there was that the goods of the stores that closed during the afternoon remained outside unguarded, and that while some shops stood out of sight in twisty alleys. When my week was over and I left again, I knew that I had been among people who knew where they stood and where they were. It's the identity loss (which this village didn't suffer from) added to the conflicts that arise between different types of people, which sows diversion [division?] in a nation. A nation like the one where Rushdie was born, is split in two because of the differences between Muslims and Hindus, and then in three parts thanks to the Pakistani's and Bengali's, and likely Kashmir and other chunks will follow on that list, where the Romanian Transylvania, Lithuania, the Canadian Quebec, and the Soviet-republic Georgia, and many other areas are, and will be added to.

Which proves that the most obvious and effective solution for differences of opinion between two people is: splitting up, a natural phenomenon that is seconded by the houses in which people everywhere on the world live in separation, by the supporters of Juventus and Liverpool, and by the thousands of divorces each year. If China had been split in two, a progressive and conservative part, then they wouldn't have to lose as many human lives. Because living apart doesn't make people into enemies, but brings them closer together as friends. … So far the Dutch integration theory and the expectation of her success remained afoot by lack of proof and evidence to the contrary. But with the arrival of a second generation of Muslims who, regarding clothing, habits, and social environment, are still loyal copies of the originals, and with the arrival of forty Islamic schools, there is now the irrefutable proof that the goal to integrate two cultures is a huge failure.

Refugees

The way the Dutch treat their refugees shouldn't seem odd to anyone who is familiar with their general behavior, and this includes the amount of clamor that accompanies it. … As far as the Dutch are concerned a refugee is a refugee and therefore I, as a refugee, can commit a murder in the Netherlands today, flee to Bangladesh, let myself be declared dead, buy a new passport under a new name, escape as a refugee across the same route to the Netherlands, to once there be treated as a king all over again.

And in course of time, if nobody appears to be keeping an eye on me, I can go on a holiday to my own country, and spend some Dutch currency, which of course I got by registering under several names hence receiving welfare more than once. (The Dutch embassy in Sri Lanke has confirmed accusations of the VVD that many Sri Lankian refugees secretly go back on vacation to Sri Lanka. Source: Teletext news of July 8, 1989) … those escaping hostile behavior might very well not be innocent or harmless, might very well have left behind women and children or even be capable of the same hostile and even criminal behavior: of all of the above cases are known.

… Maybe the Netherlands isn't too small for even more refugees, but there will never be enough space to let good will and nationalism coexist. Here I must remark that the Dutch doesn't seem to understand the difference between good and right. Driving your car all the way from Amsterdam to Tilburg because a shop sells shampoo in glass instead of plastic bottles is well meant, but not right.

… This moment Amsterdam alone houses 8,000 illegal refugees [written in 1990]. Who are they? Maybe they're the same people the real refugees escaped from - who gives a damn? After all, having seen so many movies about the resistance hiding people from the nazis, something like that should be tried at least once, and it's exciting too. And 8,000 is nothing. It would really be a start if we freed all the progressives from all the tyrannical nations and let them come to the Netherlands, to later on, when times changes and progressive leaders arise in those nations, save all the conservatives. But the climax of this existing game would be the foundation of the International Refugee Recycling Center (IRRC), which hopefully will serve Dutch refugees as well.

People=leader, people=nation

Nero, Idi Amin, Gaddafi, Ceausescu or Saddam Hussein - are the names of bad people, evil people, people who committed terrible crimes in their nations. We satisfy ourselves with the thought that they, and they alone, are responsible. Maybe we are in need of someone to place the blame upon, because the blue sky won't do, and our own shoulders seem out of the question. What we do not realize is that in a nation only things can happen that the people to a certain degree set into motion, by minority or majority, dictatorship or democracy. Certainly a leader doesn't always represent the majority, but someone like Ceausescu at least needed the support of a decently sized minority. Someone can only become a leader, or remain one, as long as the people are at his hand and cheer him on, or elect him as their leader, as can be seen in old movie fragments of the most tyrannical leaders.

Someone who finds himself in a vacuum with his ideas can never maintain his position as a leader, let alone acquire it. Ayatollah Khomeini could gain power because the Iranians are fanatics. Nobody can claim that he fell out of grace with his people, for they arrived with millions to mourn for him, and this at the beat of slapping their own head. The same went for Alexander the Great, and still goes for Gaddafi. If a team of Dutch scientists were to travel back in time on a peace mission and pick up a thousand warriors who would have perished because of Genghis Khan, and took them back to the present and give them houses with central heating, refrigerators, and social security, then this would not only frustrate these warriors in their instinctive urge to fight, but also force them into a suffocating life, much nastier than the fierce death on the battle field. The logic People = Leader goes also for the social system and laws of a nation.

In a nation only that happens what moves a nation. If the people of a nation are cruel, so will be the laws and their leader. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And when the lions were sitting in the middle of the Coliseum, one chewing on a hand, and the other on a hip of a prisoner, then the public wasn't upset and grossed out en masse, "Bah, why does Caesar force us to watch such a horrifying thing?" but enjoyed it to the fullest. In the same manner brutal police violence comes forth from the people. After all: till the day someone joins the police force he is the people. It is no wonder that the Dutch police officers are such cuties. The punishment for crimes in Thailand or Malaysia isn.t the same as in the Netherlands, because the mentality of the population isn't the same. Hirsch Ballin may try all he wants to enforce by law that the hands of drug addicts are cut off and homosexuals castrated, but he will not succeed.

Why not? Because neither the system, nor the police, nor the population would accept it. The same law would pass in Turkey or Morocco. It's well known that in many nations the death penalty goes for less serious offenses, such as drug possession, political opposition, and sometimes reporting the news - simply because that's the 'barbaric' (in the words of lady Thatcher) mentality of the masses. On that ground we can conclude (moldy expressed) from the messed up juridical system in the United States, that the Americans themselves are messed up, and in the same way the continuous wars between Muslim nations shows the aggressiveness of the Muslims, and not the one of its leaders. And it also explains why on July 15, 1977 thousands of Saudis joined forming a circle dressed in white clothing, to see the head of their princess be chopped off with an Islamic sword - though not with one strike - because she slept with a boy she met in Beirut. By the way, the same could have happened in Jordan, Oman, Yemen, and dozens of other nations, although the government of Iran prefers more fashionable methods, like stoning to death women who are found guilty of adultery (Quom, august 1, 1989). Things like that are a great deal of fun for the people.

You shall reap what you sow

Everything is but the sum of its parts. You can't replace half the parts of a Mercedes with Skoda parts and call it a Mercedes. When you let so many strangers into a nation, you change the population of that nation, and eventually the nation itself. As it stands that isn't that bad an idea, because life would be boring if nothing ever changed and we still danced the foxtrot. But going backward just for the sake of change seems impossible to defend, and the changes go in a backward direction because the people who enter the nation are backward. Besides, people arriving on Schiphol, the Dutch national airport, aren't asked: "Good afternoon, do you have any forbidden objects such as firearms, drugs, a wrong mentality or other contraband? And will you please stand under that machine? We'd like to measure your adrenaline response to 200 questions with which at the same time your way of thinking is measured."

The problem is that there's no effort taken what so ever to separate desired from undesired, rebellious from unrebellious, and dangerous from harmless strangers: everyone can enter.

… Even if we accept that people are responsible for all the abuse in the world, we still haven't defined the matter at hand clearly enough: the real wrong doer is the mentality of the people.

So now, in large amounts, people come to the Netherlands carrying with them the same mentality that caused so much havoc in their own countries. The mentality spreads through the Dutch society, and eventually the Dutch will make a stand against it. And because life exits of everything we experience between life and death, if what we experience is no longer Dutch, our life will no longer be Dutch either. … The content of the nation has changed, so the nation itself will change along.

Destruction of culture

With the change, or maybe we should say the decay, of the nation, its political, juridical system, and of course its culture will change as well. And now we're all smart enough to know that culture means art, music, fashion, dance, kitchen specialties, architecture, etc, which are pretty concrete and hence easy to protect. But there's another form of culture, … That's the kind of culture that cannot be touched, or photographed, or registered, and can't even be pointed out in a clear manner. The 'anthropological' culture, … is the sum of the sincerity, safety, happiness, and coziness of a nation, with other words, the atmosphere and how people feel and that's what I assume is what we should concentrate on. And on top of that: isn't it the anthropological culture that determines the esteem of the materialistic culture? The Dutch culture after all is Dutch because the Dutch live in the Netherlands and feel Dutch. Hence it's worthless fiction that you could maintain the Dutch culture as the Dutch people changes.

… There are people who do not believe in culture. Their disbelief deserves respect. After all the times have changed, and people stopped believing in heroes, loving the father land, military power, respect, the monarchy or culture. And while their opinion is reasonable, do they realize that the culture, which they do not believe in, isn't the culture they should be concerned about? Because if they for example do not believe in brutal police violence, then they must believe in friendly police officers. And if a friendly police force is the direct result of a good culture, then they should either believe in that culture or keep their mouth shut about brutal police violence. The belief in one mixed society where several cultures are protected is the great contradiction of our time.

It's like someone who says she loves seals, which is why she wears many of them around her neck. The world and all the cultures within it are like a painting palette, with on it several beautiful colors of paint, each with their own unique hue. Mix them all up, and you don't only have any color left, it'll be impossible to point out one individual color in the sludge. That's how the EU culture will look in the future.

I'll let the cultural threat from foreigners in general be for what it is now and focus on the more specific threat of the Muslims, which is also a political threat, and limits the amount of colors to two. We can mark the Dutch and Muslims with respectively yellow and red, as to be expected symbolizing "soft" and "hard". A teaspoon of yellow in a pot with red won't harm the red. The other way around the pot with yellow will never be the same: it's a lot easier to make a honest man dishonest, to make a calm person nervous, than the other way around, or to get addicted in bad company than it is to get clean in good company, and finally it's much easier for a hard person to dominate a soft person than the other way around. It's only natural that the Muslim culture will dominate the Dutch culture than the other way around, not because that's the intention or even desirable, but because that's just the way things go.

But beware, for the Dutch believe in culture and are willing to make sacrifices for it. Sacrificing one finger for another finger, nobody will be surprised by that. Sacrificing an entire hand for one finger starts to sound awkward. But the Dutch do not know limitations and basically say "We want to die for a finger", where they forget that if they die, the finger dies as well. Applying this in practice this concept will lead to the point where the Dutch will sacrifice their honesty, coziness, easy going nature, and even the so called tolerance which started the entire thing. They will, simply put, sacrifice their culture to protect the Islamic culture. Which seems even more illogical because that culture is already well protected in the nations the Muslims came from. Protecting them in the Netherlands would be comparable to feeding every single one of the extinction-threatened ice bears of the north pole to the endangered tigers of India.

The contemporary future

I came, since I started to understand the Dutch, to the conclusion that only the Netherlands, if it had protected itself, would have reached such a high level of development that it would have closed the prisons and left punishment to the conscience; walking naked through the streets would be normal, shops would be equipped with self service counters, the police as good as disbanded, pollution brought back to a minimum, production labor merely handwork, and the population shrunk to one million people, all of them living in a bungalow. Could that have been possible? It seems too late to wonder. In a certain way it is wrong and even dangerous to make predictions about a nation, because nobody knows what would have happened in reality, and sometimes there's a turn for the better. On the other hand, had I written a book in 1642 warning the people not to cut down their forests or pollute the air, I'd spend the rest of my life borrowing Galileo's quills, and had I warned twenty years ago that Muslims in the Netherlands would revolt against a writer, then at best I would have made the first part of the Tommy Cooper show. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to calculate that 2² leads to 4 and 4² leads to 16 and, 16² leads to 256, so it becomes obvious where things will go with the Dutch.

Neither is it a wonder that the Dutch reason that they must accept an existing 2, but not a threatening 4, to once the 4 is there accept that 4, but not a 16, etcetera. But due to the appearance of articles like that of the Turk Ibrahim Gormez: (Source: De Telegraaf March 31, 1990) 'We ruined it here for ourselves', the title speaking for itself, it seems safe to assume that the 2 will never lead to 256. Safe - maybe. Right - maybe not. Just the appearance of such an article over a full color page proves that words like that from the mouth of a Turk are rare. Besides, I wouldn't know if another six other Turks in the Netherlands would agree with him. On top of that it's in my opinion the sad reality, just like the world population explosion which in a not too distant future will result in a world population of 20 billion people, the presence of Muslims in the Netherlands, unless drastic measures are taken, will show to be an undismantleable time bomb. As a matter of fact, why are we talking about a prediction: the future is already here. The Netherlands is no longer the safe nation of the past, where a girl could walk alone through the park at night, where front doors were opened or could be opened by pulling a piece of rope through the letter-box, where people could walk through their own neighborhood without knowing what fear or danger was. The 2 flew past the 16 already. Incidents unthinkable thirty years ago now take place regularly.

Impossible yesterday - normal today

… In a city like Amsterdam there are already organized gangs of Moroccan children who walk the streets at night, fight, start small riots, and disturb the already scarce quiet, while some city districts, where the Dutch can no longer do what they want, can't dress the way they like, can't say what they please, and more and more have been placed under a kind of house arrest, without a trace of the old coziness, can already be considered as lost territory.

Furthermore in all the big cities there are dozens of Surinamers and Arabians selling "Psst, hash, coke, trips", sometimes by force, if they aren't too busy with the physical harassment of the elderly and girls, who walk faster with long faces and scared eyes, unaware of the visibility of their own emotions. Other Dutchmen, who live in the pigsty that Muslims turn apartment buildings into, move one by one. Who doesn't and dares going outside carries a knife for self-defense. The Dutch, and I mean those who aren't six feet under ground already, have all in all turned into a frightened people, afraid to make jokes about Muslims, to offend them, fool them, and criticize or correct them. Added to that is that the presence of the Muslims can be felt every single day. When you pass them they look at you daringly, if you're calling in a phone booth they bounce on the door. If you say "get lost," you get a steam course in sign language; if you respond in equal fashion lesson two follows, with a shiny blade; call them, and they'll never say their name first; if you do business with them they'll try to screw you over and have a thousand demands; are you driving through Rotterdam at night, you'll only see Muslims wandering about; going to the carnival in Amsterdam or to the Dam on new years eve, then you'll only find a few Dutchmen among them; argue with them, and instantly all their friends and family members will be your enemies for the years to come; respond to their advertisement, and soon you'll be working in a 2 by 1.5 feet box in the Mandenmaker alley near the Damrak; take a shower in a public bathing house, and the owner will ask you not to shit in the drain.

And if the mess in the cities wasn't enough, the constitution has to submit as well. The Muslims take their daughters out of school years before the legal age to protect their teenage virginity, beat up their thankful women, who pass on the message to their children, use their women as imprisoned servants, if slaves isn't a better word, and couldn't care less about laws regarding child abuse and equal rights for women. Meanwhile the criminality, as is known, increased enormously, so that the Netherlands concerning theft, violence, and break-ins finally took over the much desired first place of Europe: in 1989 26.8% of the Dutch population became a victim. However, if we analyze the CBS numbers we come to the conclusion that relative to the entire population between 6 and 13 times more crimes are committed by non-Dutch than by the Dutch. But they turn, despite all their honesty, their eyes the other way. They'd rather end up suffocating from their nervous whistling, than admit who is responsible for the drastic increase of criminality and how irritated and short fused it made them. Another crime is the endless discussion about unemployment in the Netherlands, where a 100,000 schooled metal, catering, confection, and cleaning workers sit at home on the couch scratching their grey heads, while according to the labor inspection an equal sized amount of illegal immigrants have a job in the same field (source: teletext news of June 28, 1990)

Rats in the corner

Each year there are more Dutchmen - according to the statistics already 100,000 [1990] - who are full of frustration about their life, and maybe another couple of million who aren't happy with the way things go. A hundred thousand Dutchmen who live as normal, peaceful people, in their own peaceful country and went their own peaceful way until they were flooded by a tsunami of Muslims, and suddenly they no longer were normal people, but racists. Those Dutchmen have basically been driven into a corner by the Muslims where they now are accused of being against the Muslims, while in the name of a questionable philosophy a couple of hundred thousand Muslims are made happy at the cost of the happiness of a couple of million Dutchmen. That was some real clever thinking guys.

The subject of racism is still chained with unbreakable shackles to a name I'd rather not have named. "What a pity", the Dutch sigh, "Janmaat [that was 1990 – today it’s probably Wilders] is back in the lower house." They go out of their way to avoid reality that it's a conviction that returned instead of just a man. The question isn't if Janmaat is an Einstein or a chicken without a head, alive or dead, but what someone must have been through before he sees no option left but to vote on that man - multiplied with the feeling of guilt, forced upon him by the rest of the nation, with which they have to live. And the more Dutchmen who vote on ultra-right parties, the stronger the proof that the nation suffers. Or maybe people call an information number and ask "Good morning, this is Harry, I'm a bastard, who should I put my vote on this time?" It remains somewhat awkward that the left wing parties created the circumstances that allowed the right wing parties to form.

Besides, it's unfair and cruel that the majority of the 'good' Dutchmen sit leaned back, together in their neat little towns, unaware of what is going on in the big cities, where the population functions as the head of the try-your-strength machine. I hope for those green Dutchmen that they never discover what they have on their conscience. By the way, I sometimes wondered, in the assumption that I must be wrong, if some of the 'greener' people in charge, somewhere deep in a dark corner of their mind, hold a grudge against the Dutch, a personal frustration, jealousy, so it gives a kick to pour all that misery over a nation [and don’t we say exactly that today, 2007, 17 years later]. But don't you agree that it's sort of ironic? I come from a country with the intention to use you, I abuse you, I shock you, take your job, and you see me driving by through the blurred bus window in an expensive car you paid for.

You try to control yourself, but when you've totally had it and open your mouth, who is the one in trouble? You yourselves. I'm sorry, Dutchies, but you've been screwed. Don't worry, just continue with your polonaise, your carnival, and zap to a commercial channel. But the next time you tire of your welfare check, climb down the ladder of your damp garret and take an unsafe train to The Hague to protest against the steady deterioration of social securities you enjoy with a fellow 1.5 million countrymen, or the next time you read in the paper about a stabbing, or become the victim yourself, realize that you asked for it.

And how

This is what Santa Claus will bring for the Sleeping Beauty:

* Homosexuals will be afraid to reveal their sexuality.

* Nudity and other violations of Islam will no longer be allowed on TV or in public.

* Criminality will increase further.

* The Dutch will inherit criminal behavior.

* Crimes will be punished more severely.

* There will come new national laws the Muslims desire.

* The value of an eyewitness report will decrease in court.

* The amount of depressed people and suicides will increase.

* Corruption will take on epidemic proportions.

* The use of alcohol in public will be forbidden.

* The Dutch will become irritated and short fused.

* The innocent look in the eyes of the Dutch will vanish.

* The Dutch workers will be pushed out of their jobs.

* Several groups of Muslims will get into conflicts.

* The honesty and mutual trust among the Dutch will vanish.

* The coziness, sense of humor, and urge to freedom of the Dutch will disappear.

Some of the above predictions might not be obvious right away. So let's go into detail about a couple of them as an example of how changes take place.

Crimes will be punished more severely: the mild punishing climate in the Netherlands is sufficient for the soft Dutch people. The two balance each other out perfectly. However, the mild punishments combined with the luxurious prisons would seem like some sort of social welfare in third world nations and attract millions of inmates each month. As criminality continues to rise in the Netherlands, it will be necessary to take harsher measures, and against the Dutch as well. An indirect blow from the left, and it will hit the Dutch honesty, trust, peacefulness, social security, job atmosphere, and a big list of other facets just as hard.

The Dutch workers will be pushed out of their jobs: The labor conditions in the Netherlands are unique. The Dutch worker is used to working in a relaxed manner, in a friendly environment, where the relationship with colleagues, eye contact, and the atmosphere is much more important than money. Next it's amazing how natural and unofficial, and how unfanatic and how un-Japanese the Dutch act at their jobs. The Muslim worker is (pretty much just like the American, English, and about every other worker) obsessed with money. He will, through a much more energetic, enthusiastic character, try much harder to earn more money, think up mean tricks, barter, lie, cheat, and whatever else it takes to get higher up. What the consequences of this will be doesn't require much argumentation.

It only takes the slightest glitch in the spontaneity of a joke, a gesture, or a cry out, and someone could get annoyed and plop, there goes the soap bubble. And you can give all sort of rights regarding freedom to the people and try to convince them through the TV, hammering on the fact that we live in a free nation - it's pointless if the people are afraid to stand up for their rights, … You smile at the wife of a Turk and wham, you just got a punch. "Hey, we're in the Netherlands, man", you remind him. Wham, another punch. "Hey, stop that, it's against article 42." Bang, now it's an uppercut. "Hey now, this really should stop." Boing, a kick for a change. "We've got freedom of speech here, you do know that right?" Baff, a karate-punch to finish the job. You bend over, gather your teeth from the street, …

Russian roulette

The bizarre part of the whole thing is the question why it was necessary, no matter the price, to take the risk of having the Netherlands get hit by a massive immigration wave of Muslims. Of course there are situations in life where risks need to be taken, but only when there's no other option.

… the Dutch are forced into the relationship of the same kind as that of a match and a gas cloud: The little match in the kitchen, where it belongs, is blamed for a possible explosion, even if it was the gas that shouldn't have been there. After all, if we look at all the Iranians, Pakistanis, Liberians, Saudis, Iraqis, Turks, Moroccans, etc, who live in the Netherlands, and how much freedom they have, and if we look at how many Dutchmen live in their country, and how many restrictions to their freedom they have, and finally what circumstances, communication methods, information channels, terrorists, spies, and secret agents are needed to let that situation function properly, we should be able to imagine who is facing the wrong end of this numerical inequality.

The course of the downfall

It starts with challenging nature's laws as two fundamentally different worlds are brought together in a miniscule point to carry out an experiment. At one side the soft Dutchmen, drowning in a sea of conscience and guilt, and on the other side the hard Muslims, medieval robbers. A people that in their own Trojan bodies not only carry their culture, but also the corruption, bloodshed, desperation, misery, and disaster, currently seemingly harmless like the mustard gas bombs that lie on the ocean floor. The situations may remind some of the one on Pearl Harbor, you know, the day the Japanese said: "Surprise!"

The behavior of the Muslims currently hasn't fully deployed yet, and can be compared to the one of the boy who is new at a club. It takes a while before the ice is broken and he starts to move more at ease, until at last his true nature becomes visible. In the same way most Muslims in the Netherlands are self-conscious and afraid to openly challenge the Dutch. But as time progresses and they continue to claim victories like having their own schools, universities, mosques, hospitals, beaches, swimming pools, sport centers and whatever else they can think of, they'll steadily become less shy and more self assured. The Muslims will stamp the Koran into the head of their children through the ears, a brainwashing behind closed doors and curtains, so they will start to hate the Dutch and see them as their enemies. For this purpose they've been granted their own schools, where they can fabricate Muslim-bombs without any disturbance.

And then there's that other industry, which supplies Islam in an unstoppable pace of much more disciples than the Dutch mothers can keep up with. Because of this difference (as well as importing brides and grooms from the home country in 75% of the marriages) the Muslim population will surpass the Dutch one eventually. … In a certain stage there will be more incidents like the affair with Rushdie, and the Muslims will reconsider their right to be offended by the libertarian, sinful way of life of the Dutch, a way of life that they consider to go straight against their Islamic way of life. They will state that a Muslim woman can't walk through a street with sex shops, dog turds, girls with short skirts, or that the sight of that is a violation of their Ramadan. The government, who'll at that moment be more concerned with the oil price and the course of the dollar, besides finding it more important that the Dutchmen with a ton on their bank account can hang in front of the TV, than that they can walk the street as free citizens, will go for a compromise to avoid complications, and come up with an emergency law that forbids the display of pornography in shopping windows and the walking of dogs, but not quite yet the wearing of short skirts during the Ramadan.

A handful of Dutchmen, cursed with a greater respect for their own existence and a stronger will to survive, will object to the changes that are taking place and protest, to be directly oppressed by the majority, turned into outcasts, and branded as racists. The Muslims will count on the guaranteed reaction of the Dutch, by making optimal use of it, and strike the Dutch like leprosy and take away their hand finger by finger. After the passing of the century, somewhere around 2010, the bombs will be done ticking and ready for the big bang. But on the other side underground movements and gangs will have been created because of the repressive and frustrating situation. During this stage most Dutchmen will realize what a grievous mistake it was to be friendly to the wrong persons.

But since the international image and the public decency still have the highest priority, the Dutch will continue to ignore their problems, or wipe them under the carpet, lacking the guts to face them. Instead they'll keep the dialogue going, in the hope to still convert the Muslims, and one will blame the other for not trying hard enough, or for not accepting the Muslims enough. And too busy unpacking their mental baggage in search of the last possible justification, they won't see the smile on the faces of the Muslims who watch the overly diligent oddballs. While all this is taking place in the Netherlands, the Muslim leaders elsewhere, who kept themselves informed of the developments, concentrate on plans for the long term.

And whether a country like Iran at that moment only partially helps with the revolt will hardly be of importance to the Muslims. Strengthened by their higher positions in politics and the national bureaucracy, which they didn't have before, and supported by their allies in Belgium, Germany, England, and France, the Muslims shall create a network of mutual loyalty, and undermine the entire social system. Once that's over and done with, the Muslims will realize that they no longer have to maintain nor tolerate the oppression and suffocation of their hollow love affair with the Dutch. In the year 2020 the first stage of the downfall will be completed. The Dutch anthropological culture will be lost. From then onward, year after year, the Dutch will have to, like a body without a soul, live on in grief and regret the loss of what was built up over the centuries, and of a clock that wouldn't turn back if it could. Many years and many tears later the situation will only have worsened. Till the day the great incident happens. An incident where two rivaling foundations of two rivaling cultures make a frontal collision. Then the Muslims will hit back with all they have for the first time. Men, women, and children will go out on the street as one man, and not like recently against Rushdie, but a hundred times amplified and with a hundred times that rage.

And though the Dutch will fight for their norms and values, the Muslims will not only surprise them once again with their barbaric methods, they will punch straight through their soft and decent defense. When a pack of wolves attacks a herd of sheep the outcome is known beforehand. By now it should be obvious what the Koran means with: "When you meet the unbelievers in jihad, chop off their heads. And when you have brought them low, bind your prisoners rigorously." (Sura 47, 4) And not until that moment will the Dutch at last admit that they, by letting the Muslims into the Netherlands, planted the disasters of strange countries inside their own territory. So now, as never before, they will all vote on a party who aims for a 'definitive solution' of the problem. But since they no longer form the large majority, since the Muslims will vote on their own Muslim party of which the well-camouflaged prototype already exists, this will not accomplish anything.

Afterwards the Muslims will steadily continue to overmaster and dominate the Dutch, who will have no choice but to participate in a game of tug of war where they will steadily lose ground. The Dutch on their own side won't know of a solution nor be capable of carrying out a possible solution. And revenge isn't their style. The Muslims, who will know all this, shall start to make the nation obey their will and more or less gain control. And with the help of supply lines from their own countries or through private immigration centers they will allow for a continuous flow of immigrants who will establish themselves in the Netherlands, and indirectly force the Dutch out. By 2050 there will be no Netherlands left, or at least, nothing worth calling it that. The second stage of the downfall is then completed.

The final remedy

It is 2050 by now. The European Union gave up on the unification and closed her borders again. Scandinavia cancelled her relationships with the Netherlands, while the United States is angry at the Dutch government for housing the Islamic rampart, which in turn threatens American citizens in Europe. Many Dutchmen have found refuge in the surrounding nations and of the Dutchmen left behind the women dress as Muslim women to avoid trouble. The jihad has started. The queen and most of the ministers are still in the Netherlands, but the party of the Muslims has a strong position in the cabinet. Iran and Libya have direct influence through their European headquarter in Rotterdam and their secret army, the 'Islamic Execution Squad'.

Dutch and Islamic gangs fight it out in the streets and the population has taken the right in their own hand, since the police are afraid to take action. The nation is frozen by fear. The queen calls for the remaining truly Dutch ministers to come together for a secret meeting. Nobody is allowed in our out of the royal palace. It's expected the congress will last a week. They will eat and sleep in the palace, guarded by the armed forces. After five days the congress is over and the following is concluded: The provinces Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe, Overijssel, Gelderland, and Limburg will be declared as 'New-Netherland'. Utrecht, Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland, Brabant, and Zeeland will from now on be 'Old-Netherland'. All Muslims are to be deported from New-Netherland to Old-Netherland.

Borderposts making the former Berlin wall look like wire-netting are built like roads between both countries. New passports are handed over to all the real Dutch people, who only get one chance to choose between the two countries. Regardless of how bizarre and unreal it may seem, or maybe even is, still it happens. Countries split regularly. And while it's hard to imagine at first, the cause is always the difference between two cultures. But the longer it takes to realize this reality, the bigger the chance of a civil war. Though mostly it doesn't get that far. Sometimes a people, like the North American Indians, and the Australian aborigines, are walshed flat, such a people goes extinct, with a few remaining behind to become attractions for tourists with Canons and Fujis.

Unhappily ever after

About a year ago a girl from Limburg decided to go on a vacation to Amsterdam. She heard nice stories about this big city, but wasn't aware of the dangers. So she walked nearby the Zeedijk into the wrong street and was raped. The same day she returned home, with her trust in pieces and her eyes wide open for the rest of her life. Some wounds heal and some things cannot be undone, but all the guilt and tears shed at the Anne Frank House cannot bring six billion [million] corpses back to life. With which we are back at a people that isn't that much bigger than those six million.

There they stand, the Dutch with their completely justified and without doubt noble striving to dissociate themselves as far away as possible from Hitler's ideology. Completely blind to the fact that their path circles back to the other end at the jews (with all due respect). The poor devils continue to misunderstand that a choice isn't necessarily between the Nazis or the Jews, predator or prey, oppressor or victim, but that there is an alternative, a third road, which is save yourself and guarantee the continuance of your own culture and your own country. It's simply this one, tiny misunderstanding, that will make the Dutch go down in history as the people who thought so deeply about a nightmare from the past that they ended up becoming that nightmare.

— Mohammed Rasoel

To all those who read it all, this is written in the Netherlands about the Netherlands. Here in 2007 it reads to me very much like what’s happening in my own country. Does it also read like yours?

We were given an honest warning by someone who knows what he’s talking about. Our leaders ensured, by banning that warning, that we would never see it. We must ask questions about the loyalties of our leaders. We must also ask: what are we going to do not only about Islam and Muslims, but also … our leaders.

Thanks to Profitsbeard for the heads-up.

Keep your powder dry.

2007-06-21T15:35:00.000Z

Apoligies for my absence: I've had ... difficulties.

This is the text of a talk I am delivering this evening, 21st June 2007.

Murder rates

Brit natives/non-Brits

In Britain

The idea for this talk, and the basic numbers, were given to me by a man on the internet who uses the screen-name “alanorei”. Thank you alan.

Let’s take a look at some of the murders in this country for the two and a half years from January 2005 up until two weeks ago when PC Henry was murdered in Luton (by an illegal immigrant from Nigeria).

It must first be said that the majority of murders in Britain are of non-Brits by non-Brits, and of Brits by Brits. Apart from the sheer rate at which non-Brits are murdering each other compared to their overall numbers, these two sets of figures are uncontroversial. Throughout human history people have murdered each other. We can make an issue about the prevalence of gun crime these days, or about how murder numbers have climbed since the death penalty was abolished, but on the whole these are murders that are entirely independent of the issue of immigration – the Brit/Brit murders would have happened anyway, and what non-Brits do to each other is no concern of ours other than how it impinges on our sense of personal security, and breaks our law, and so need not concern us in this particular exercise.

What we’re looking at here is the murder of native Brits by non-Brits, and non-Brits by native Brits. These are murders that need not happen or have happened. Entirely avoidable.

By non-Brits I mean all of those people who either came here from abroad themselves or are descended from such people. I go back two generations, or 60 years, in this definition. 60 years ago is when immigration in large numbers started. Now it must be conceded that the vast majority of these people are well-behaved, law-abiding people who just want to get on with their – now vastly improved – lives. We have to concede that because it’s a fact; but there’s a good question attached to that fact: when they turn up on our border, how do we tell which are the well-behaved ones, and why should we take an unneccessary chance with any of them? What’s also a fact is that their psychology developed in different cultures, and is therefore very different from ours. What is common-sense to them may be outrageous to us, and vice-versa. By way of example let’s take a look at Somalia: Somalia has been an anarchic country riven by lethal, armed, violence for over thirty years. Most of the Somali immigrants we are getting into this country grew up in that violence. While growing up, it became common-sense to them that if you were challenged by anyone, it would probably enhance your chances of survival if you just pulled out a gun and blew the challengers away. That’s just a fact of Somali life for the past thirty years, and is now deeply embedded in their psychology; or common sense, if you like. But when they come here, they don’t leave their psychology behind and pick up a new, British, psychology when they arrive on our shores. This is the same for anyone from anywhere. They bring their old psychology with them. And so we end up with policewomen, who have challenged a gang of armed Somalis getting murdered and seriously injured in Leeds/Bradford.

If a culture is particularly murderously inclined, then the people who are born into and grow up in that culture are themselves likely to be murderously inclined; certainly more so than if they had grown up in a peacefully inclined culture. The reasons for the murderous inclinations of a culture are irrelevant.

What we’re going to look at here tonight are the totally unneccessary losses of life - murders: the murders of native Brits by non-Brits, and of non-Brits by native Brits. These are murders that would never have happened to our people and theirs had the non-Brits just stayed where they came from. We are also going to look at the rate at which they are murdering us, and thus by implication the rate at which we are murdering them as compared to our relative numbers in the overall population of our country. Are we murdering them disproportionately, or are they murdering us disproportionately. Disproportionately to our numbers relative to each other that is.

Some of the numbers I’m about to use are exact, and one is – necessarily – an approximation; but a fairly accurate approximation. Any error in the approximation is on the side of caution and favours the non-Brit population. I will demonstrate later why this approximation favours non-Brits

First the approximation:

The population of Britain comprises 86% native Brits, and 14% non-Brits (defined earlier). That means that for every one non-Brit of all kinds in Britain there are six native Brits. It follows from that, that if immigrants and Brits are murdering each other at equal rates, then for every one murder of a Brit by an immigrant there should be six murders of immigrants by Brits. That would make us equally lethal towards each other.

Is this what the numbers say? Hardly.

For the two and a half years from January 2005 up until the beginning of this month, June 2007, exactly 8 non-Brits of all kinds have been murdered by native Brits. So to be approximately equal in our rates of murdering each other, just one – or perhaps two – native Brits should have been murdered by non-Brits. What is the actual number of native Brits murdered by non-Brits in this time: one? two? Well no actually, it’s 123.

If we look at it the other way around: as 123 native Brits have been murdered by non-Brits in that two and a half years, then to maintain proportionality in our rates of murdering each other, according to our numbers in the population, we should have murdered 123 (murder of Brits by non-Brits) x 6 (number of times by which Brits outnumber non-Brits in the population) = 738 non-Brits.

Instead : 8.

What we can use these numbers for is as a measure of the murderous inclination of one culture against the aggregate of all the other cultures in our wonderfully culturally-enriched multicultural society. That is, how murderously inclined are we as a people/culture compared to the aggregate of all the other peoples/cultures present here?

We can answer this by looking at how many times more likely is it that you, as a native Brit, are likely to be murdered by a non-Brit, in your own country, than a non-Brit is likely to be murdered by you?

To maintain proportionality with the actual murder number for Brits by non-Brits, we should have murdered 738 of them. In actual fact we murdered 8. So you are

738 (proportional number)/8 (actual number) = 92.25 times more likely to be murdered by a non-Brit than a non-Brit is likely to be murdered by you. Using the standard rule in mathematics (below .5, go to the next whole number down; .5 and above, go to the next whole number up),let’s call that a straight 92.

You are 92 times more likely to be murdered by a non-Brit, here in your own country, than a non-Brit is likely to be murdered by you.

Let’s approach it the other way around and see what the numbers tell us.

We murdered 8 of them. To maintain proportionality with relative numbers in the population, they should have murdered 8/6 = 1.33 (recurring) of us. They actually murdered 123 of us. So their rate of murdering us is 123/1.33 = 92.48 times our rate of murdering them (the slight difference is caused by the recurrence). Again, by the same mathematical rules, this comes out as a straight 92.

There doesn’t seem to be much doubt about it: non-Brits – in Britain – are murdering Brits at a rate 92 times higher than Brits are murdering non-Brits.

We can translate that number into a measure of the murderous inclinations of our people/culture as against the murderous inclinations of the aggregate of all the other people/cultures present here:

The aggregate of the other peoples/cultures present here is 92 times more murderously inclined than is our own people/culture.

Why are we letting them in? Is this what politicians and media mean by “Enrichment”? That is: our lives are now far more exciting due to the increased – and as more and more are entering the country at a rate of one a minute, increasing - risk of being murdered since we became multicultural? Therefore more enriched because more exciting?

Of course, this minor study takes no account of other crimes such as rape, paedophilia, grooming, robbery with violence (mugging), etc. Be nice if the authorities published nationality/race/culture statistics for all these other crimes …

I suppose it should be possible to pin down exactly which peoples/cultures are the really dangerous ones. After all, there are plenty of Germans, French, Dutch, Australians, Chinese, Hindu and Sikh Indians, etc here, but they don’t seem to be much in the news for murdering (etc) Brits. If that breakdown was done, then we could remove them from percentages of native Brits to non-Brits and that way get a truer (and far far higher) measure of which are the most murerously inclined peoples/cultures that are being allowed to settle amongst us, and prey on us.

Now then, I said my population percentage estimate was being generous to immigrants, and promised to explain why. Well, the higher the estimate for the percentage of non-Brits here, the lower the figure comes out for how murderously inclined their peoples/cultures are relative to ours. I’ll demonstrate:

I used the figures 86% - 14%, which meant there were 6 times more Brits than non-Brits. Suppose I had used the figures 90% - 10%, which is closer to what the multiculturalists claim in an effort to convince us there’s no immigration problem. Well, that would mean that there are 9 Brits here for every 1 non-Brit. So, to maintain proportionality relative to numbers, to be equally murderously inclined, Brits would have had to have murdered 123 x 9 = 1107 non-Brits in that two and a half years. Brits actually murdered 8, so non-Brits would be murdering Brits at 1107/8 = 138.375 times the rate at which Brits would be murdering non-Brits. Therefore the murderous inclination of the aggregate of the non-Brit people/cultures here in Britain would be 138 (mathematical rule) times worse than that of the native Brit people/culture.

So you see, when the multiculturalists try to allay our fears by claiming the percentage of non-Brits is lower, then in actual fact they are increasing our fears by telling us that these other cultures are even more murderously inclined than we already know they are.

Take care on your way home tonight.

Next post, within two or three weeks, will be an update on Muslim terror attacks worldwide.

Martin Luther- On war against Islamic Terror - 1528

2007-02-26T15:58:00.000Z

Martin Luther

On war against Islamic reign of terror
1528

(On war against the Turk)
Vom Kriege wider die Türken, 1528
(WA 30 II, 107-148)

Luther’s preface

Count of Katzenellenbogen, Ziegenhain and Nidda, My gracious lord.
Grace and peace in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. Serene, highborn Prince, gracious Lord.
Certain persons have been begging me for the past five years to write about war against the Turks, and encourage our people and stir them up to it, and now that the Turk is actually approaching, my friends are compelling me to do this duty, especially since there are some stupid preachers among us Germans (as I am sorry to hear) who are making the people believe that we ought not and must not fight against the Turks. Some are even so crazy as to say that it is not proper for Christians to bear the temporal sword or to be rulers; also because our German people are such a wild and uncivilized folk that there are some who want the Turk to come and rule. All the blame for this wicked error among the people is laid on Luther and must be called “the fruit of my Gospel,” just as I must bear the blame for the rebellion, and for everything bad that happens anywhere in the world.

My accusers know better, but God and His Word to the contrary, they pretend not to know better, and seek occasion to speak evil of the Holy Ghost and of the truth that is openly confessed, so that they may earn the reward of hell and never receive repentance or the forgiveness of their sins.

Therefore it is necessary for me to write of these things for my own sake and the Gospel’s sake and to enter our defense; not because of the blasphemers, however. They are not good enough to make it worthwhile to say a single word of defense to them, for to them the Gospel must always be a stench and a savor of death unto death, as they have deserved by their willful blasphemy. But I must write in order that innocent consciences may not any longer be deceived by these slandermongers, and made suspicious of me or my doctrine, and may not be deceived into believing that we must not fight against the Turks. I have thought best to publish this little book under the name of your Grace, who are a famous and mighty prince, so that it may be the better received and the more diligently read. Thus, if it came to a discussion of a campaign against the Turks, the princes and lords would readily recall it. I commend your Grace to our merciful God’s grace and favor, that He may keep your Grace against all error and against the craft of the devil, and illumine and strengthen your Grace for a blessed reign.

Your Grace’s devoted Martin Luther Wittenberg, October 9, 1528

The two kingdoms

Pope Leo the Tenth, in the bull in which he put me under the ban, condemned, among other statements, the following one. I had said that “to fight against the Turk is the same thing as resisting God, who visits our sin upon us with this rod.” From this article they may get it, who say that I prevent and dissuade from war against the Turk. I still confess freely that this article is mine and that I put it forth and defended it at the time; and if things in the world were in the same state now that they were in then, I would still have to put it forth and defend it. But it is not fair to forget how things then stood in the world, and what my grounds and reasons were, and still keep my words and apply them to another situation where those grounds and reasons do not exist. With this kind of art, who could not make the Gospel a pack of lies or pretend that it contradicted itself?

This was the state of things at that time – no one had taught, no one had heard, and no one knew anything about temporal government, whence it came, what its office and work was, or how it ought to serve God. The most learned men (I shall not name them) held temporal government for a heathen, human, ungodly thing, as though it were perilous to salvation to be in the ranks of the rulers. Therefore, the priests and monks had so driven kings and princes into the corner, as to persuade them that, to serve God, they must undertake other works, such as hearing mass, saying prayers, endowing masses, etc. In a word, princes and lords who wanted to be pious men held their rank and office as of no value and did not consider it a service of God. They became really priests and monks, except that they did not wear tonsures and cowls. If they would serve God, they must go to church. All the lords then living would have to testify to this, for they knew it by experience. My gracious lord, Duke Frederick, of blessed memory, was so glad when I first wrote On Temporal Government, that he had the little book copied out and put in a special binding, and was happy that he could see what his position was before God.

Thus the pope and the clergy were, at that time, all in all, over all, and through all, like God in the world, and the temporal rulers were in darkness, oppressed and unknown. But the pope and his crowd wanted to be Christians, too, and therefore pretended to make war on the Turk. Over those two points the discussion arose, for I was then working on doctrine that concerned Christians and the conscience, and had as yet written nothing about the temporal rulers. The papists, therefore, called me a flatterer of the princes, because I was dealing only with the spiritual class, and not with the temporal; just as they call me seditious, now that I have written in such glorification of temporal government as no teacher has done since the days of the apostles, except, perhaps, St. Augustine. Of this I can boast with a good conscience and the testimony of the world will support me.

Counsels or binding commands

Among the points of Christian doctrine, I discussed what Christ says, in Matthew, viz., that a Christian shall not resist evil, but endure all things, let the coat go and the cloak, let them be taken from him, offer the other cheek, etc. Of this the pope, with his universities and cloister-schools, had made “an advice,” not a commandment, and not a rule that a Christian must keep; thus they had perverted Christ’s word, spread false doctrine throughout the world, and deceived Christians. Since, therefore, they wanted to be Christians, nay, the best Christians in the world, and yet fight against the Turk, endure no evil, and suffer neither compulsion nor wrong, I opposed them with this saying of Christ that Christians shall not resist evil, but suffer all things and let all things go. Upon this I based the article that Pope Leo condemned. He did it the more gladly because I took the rogue’s-cloak off the Roman knavery.

For the popes had never seriously intended to make war on the Turk, but used the Turkish war as a conjurer’s hat, playing around in it, and robbing Germany of money by means of indulgences, whenever they took the notion. All the world knew it, but now it is forgotten. Thus they condemned my article not because it prevented the Turkish war, but because it tore off this conjurer’s hat and blocked the path along which the money went to Rome. If they had seriously wished to fight against the Turk, the pope and the cardinals would have had enough from the pallia, annates, and other unmentionable sources of income, so that they would not have needed to practice such extortion and robbery in Germany. If there had been a general opinion that a serious war was at hand, I could have dressed my article up better and made some distinctions.

It did not please me, either, that the Christians and the princes were driven, urged, and irritated into attacking the Turk and making war on him, before they amended their own ways and lived like true Christians. These two points, or either separately, were enough reason to dissuade from war. For I shall never advise a heathen or a Turk, let alone a Christian, to attack another or begin war. That is nothing else than advising bloodshed and destruction, and it brings no good fortune in the end, as I have written in the book On Soldiers; and it never does any good when one knave punishes another without first becoming good himself.

Misuse of the Christian name

But what moved me most of all was this. They undertook to fight against the Turk under the name of Christ, and taught men and stirred them up to do this, as though our people were an army of Christians against the Turks, who were enemies of Christ; and this is straight against Christ’s doctrine and name. It is against His doctrine, because He says that Christians shall not resist evil, shall not fight or quarrel, not take revenge or insist on rights. It is against His name, because in such an army there are scarcely five Christians, and perhaps worse people in the eyes of God than are the Turks; and yet they would all bear the name of Christ. This is the greatest of all sins and one that no Turk commits, for Christ’s name is used for sin and shame and thus dishonored. This would be especially so if the pope and the bishops were in the war, for they would put the greatest shame and dishonor on Christ’s name, since they are called to fight against the devil with the Word of God and with prayer, and would be deserting their calling and office and fighting with the sword against flesh and blood. This they are not commanded, but forbidden to do.

O how gladly would Christ receive me at the Last Judgment, if when summoned to the spiritual office, to preach and care for souls, I had left it and busied myself with fighting and with the temporal sword! And how should Christ come to it that He or His have anything to do with the sword and go to war, and kill men’s bodies, when He glories in it that He has come to save the world, not to kill people? For His work is to deal with the Gospel and by His Spirit to redeem men from sin and death, nay, to help them from this world to everlasting life. According to John 6:15, He fled and would not let Himself be made king; before Pilate He confessed, “My kingdom is not of this world”; and He bade Peter, in the garden, put up his sword, and said, “He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword.”

I say this not because I would teach that worldly rulers ought not be Christians, or that a Christian cannot bear the sword and serve God in temporal government. Would God they were all Christians, or that no one could be a prince unless he were a Christian! Things would be better than they now are and the Turk would not be so powerful. But what I would do is keep the callings and offices distinct and apart, so that everyone can see to what he is called, and fulfill the duties of his office faithfully and with the heart, in the service of God. Of this I have written more than enough elsewhere, especially in the books On Soldiers and On Temporal Government. For Paul will not suffer it that in the Church, where all should be Christians, one assume another’s office ( Romans 12:4 and Corinthians 12:15), but exhorts every member to his own work, so that no disorder arise, but everything be done in an orderly way. How much less, then, is the disorder to be tolerated that arises when a Christian leaves his office and takes upon him a temporal office, or when a bishop or pastor leaves his office and takes upon him the office of a prince or judge; or, on the other hand, when a prince takes up the office of a bishop and lets his princely office go? Even today this shameful disorder rages and rules in the whole papacy, contrary to their own canons and laws.

Inquire of experience how well we have succeeded hitherto with the Turkish war, though we have fought as Christians until we have lost Rhodes and almost all of Hungary and much German land besides. And that we may perceive clearly that God is not with us in our war against the Turks, He has never put so much courage or spirit into the minds of our princes that they have been able even once to deal seriously with the Turkish war. Though many of the diets, almost all of them in fact, have been called and held on this account, the matter will neither be settled nor arranged, and it seems as though God were mocking our diets and letting the devil hinder them and get the better of them until the Turk comes ravaging on at his leisure and ruins Germany without trouble and without resistance. Why does this happen? Because my article, which Pope Leo condemned, remains uncondemned and in full force. Because the papists reject it, arbitrarily and without Scripture, the Turk must take its part and prove it with the fist and with deeds. If we will not learn out of the Scriptures, we must learn out of the Turk’s scabbard, until we find in our hurt that Christians are not to make war or resist evil. Fools must be chased with clubs.

Confusion of Christianity and politics

How many wars, think you, have there been against the Turk in which we would not have received heavy losses, if the bishops and clergy were there? How pitifully the fine king Lassla, with his bishops was beaten by the Turk at Varna. The Hungarians themselves blamed Cardinal Julian and killed him for it. Recently King Ludwig would perhaps have fought with more success, if he had not led a priests’ army or, as they call it, a Christian army against the Turks. If I were emperor, king, or prince in a campaign against the Turk, I would exhort my bishops and priests to stay at home and mind the duties of their office, praying, fasting, saying mass, preaching, and caring for the poor, as not only Holy Scripture, but their own canon law teaches and requires. If, however, they were to be disobedient to God and their own law and desire to go along to war, I would teach them by force to attend to their office and not, by their disobedience, put me and my army under God’s wrath and into danger. It would be less harmful to have three devils in the army than one disobedient, apostate bishop, who had forgotten his office and assumed that of another. For there can be no good fortune with such people around, who go against God and their own law.

I have heard of fine soldiers who have thought that the king of France, when he was defeated and captured by the emperor before Pavia, had all of his bad fortune because he had the pope’s, or as they boastfully call them, the Church’s, people with him. For after they came to his camp with a great cry of Ecclesia, ecclesia! “Church, Church!” there was no more good fortune there. This is what the soldiers say, though perhaps they do not know the reason for it, viz., that is not right for the pope, who wants to be a Christian, and the highest and best Christian preacher at that, to lead a church army, or army of Christians. For the Church ought not strive or fight with the sword; it has other enemies than flesh and blood, their name is the wicked devils in the air; therefore it has other weapons and swords and other wars, so that it has enough to do, and cannot mix in the wars of the emperor or princes, for the Scriptures say that there shall be no good fortune where men are disobedient to God.

Again, if I were a soldier and saw in the field a priests’ banner, or banner of the cross, even though it were a crucifix I should run as though the devil were chasing me; and even if they won a victory, by God’s decree, I should not take any part in the booty or the rejoicing. Even the wicked iron-eater, Pope Julius, who was half devil, did not succeed, but had to call at last on the Emperor Maximilian and let him take charge of the game, despite the fact that Julius had more money, arms, and people. I think, too, that this latest pope, Clement, whom people held almost a god of war, succeeded well with his fighting until he lost Rome and all its wealth to a few ill-armed soldiers. The conclusion is this: Christ will teach them to understand my article, that Christians shall not make war, and the condemned article must take its revenge, for it is said of Christians and will be uncondemned and right and true; although they do not care and do not believe it, but rush on more and more, hardened and unrepentant, and go to destruction. To this I say Amen, Amen.

It is true, indeed, that since they have temporal lordship and wealth, they ought to make out of it the same contributions to the emperor, kings, or princes that other holdings properly make, and render the same services that others are expected to render. Nay, these “goods of the Church,” as they call them, ought above all others to serve and help in the protection of the needy and the welfare of all classes, for they are given for that purpose, not in order that a bishop may forget his office and use them for war or battle. If the banner of Emperor Charles or of a prince is in the field, then let everyone run boldly and gladly to the banner to which his allegiance is sworn; but if the banner of a bishop, cardinal, or pope is there, then run the other way, and say “I do not know this coin; if it were a prayer book, or the Holy Scriptures preached in the Church, I would rally to it.”

Facing two fronts

Now before I exhort or urge to war against the Turk, hear me, for God’s sake, while I first teach you how to fight with a good conscience. For although, if I wanted to give way to the old Adam, I could keep quiet and look on while the Turk revenged me upon the tyrants who persecute the Gospel and subject me to all kinds of pain, and paid them back for it, nevertheless, I shall not do this, but rather serve both friends and enemies, so that my sun may rise on both bad and good, and my rain fall on the thankful and unthankful.

In the first place, it is certain that the Turk has no right or command to begin war and to attack lands that are not his. Therefore, his war is nothing else than outrage and robbery, with which God is punishing the world, as He often does through wicked knaves, and sometimes through godly people. For he does not fight from necessity or to protect his land in peace, as the right kind of a ruler does, but like a pirate or highwayman, he seeks to rob and damage other lands, who are doing and have done nothing to him. He is God’s rod and the devil’s servant; there is no doubt about that.

In the second place, it must be known that the man, whoever he is, who is going to make war against the Turk, must be sure that he has a commission from God and is doing right. He must not plunge in for the sake of revenge or have some other mad notion or reason. He must be sure of this, so that, win or lose, he may be in a state of salvation and in a godly occupation.

There are two of these men, and there ought to be only two: the one is named Christian, the other Emperor Charles.

The first front – penance and prayer

Christian should be first, with his army. For since the Turk is the rod of the wrath of the Lord our God and the servant of the raging devil, the first thing to be done is to smite the devil, his lord, and take the rod out of God’s hand, so that the Turk may be found in his own strength only, all by himself, without the devil’s help and without God’s hand. This should be done by Sir Christian, that is, the pious, holy, dear body of Christians. They are the people who have the arms for this war and know what to do with them. If the Turk’s god, the devil, is not first beaten, there is reason to fear that the Turk will not be so easy to beat. Now the devil is a spirit, who cannot be beaten with armor, guns, horses, and men, and God’s wrath cannot be allayed by them, as it is written in Psalm 33:17 - 18, “The Lord hath no pleasure in the strength of the horse, neither delighteth he in any man’s legs; the Lord delighteth in them that fear him and wait for his goodness.” Christian weapons and power must do it.

Here you ask, “Who are the Christians and where does one find them?” Answer: They are not many, but they are everywhere, though they are spread out thin and live far apart, under good and bad princes. Christendom must continue to the end, as the article of the Creed says, “I believe one holy Christian Church.” But if that is true, it must be possible to find them. Every pastor and preacher ought to exhort his people most diligently to repentance and to prayer. They ought to drive men to repentance by showing our great and numberless sins and our ingratitude, by which we have earned God’s wrath and disfavor, so that He justly gives us into the hands of the devil and the Turk. That this preaching may work the more strongly, they ought to cite examples and sayings out of the Scriptures, such as the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the children of Israel, and show how cruelly and how often God punished the world, and its lands and peoples; and they ought to make it plain that it is no wonder, since we sin more heavily than they did, if we are punished worse than they.

Instructions for penance and prayer
Verily, this fight must be begun with repentance, and we must reform our lives, or we shall fight in vain; as the prophet Jeremiah says in the chapter, “I will speak at one time against a kingdom to pluck it up, destroy it, and scatter it; but if that people against which I speak repent, I will repent me of the evil that I thought to do it; again I speak of a kingdom and people to plant and build it, but if it do evil in my sight, and hear not my voice, I will repent me of the good that I had said I would do it.

Therefore, speak to them of Judah and them of Jerusalem, and say, Behold I prepare a calamity for you and think evil against you; let each of you, then, turn from his evil way and make your deeds good.” This saying we may apply to ourselves as though it had been spoken to us, for God devises an evil against us because of our wickedness and certainly prepares the Turk against us, as He says also in Psalm 7:12, “If a man turn not, he hath whetted his sword and stretched his bow, and aimed it, and laid a deadly bolt in it.”

Along with these must be cited the words and illustrations of Scripture in which God makes it known how well He is pleased with true repentance or amendment, made in faith and reliance on His Word – such as, in the Old Testament the examples of Kings David, Ahab, Mannasseh, and the like; in the New Testament of St. Peter, the malefactor, the publican in the Gospel, and so forth. Although I know that to the scholars and saints, who need no repentance, this advice of mine will be laughable and that they hold it for a simple and common thing which they have long since got beyond; nevertheless, I have not been willing to omit for the sake of myself and sinners like myself, who need both repentance and exhortation to repentance every day. In spite of it, we remain all too lazy and lax, and have not, with those “ninety and nine just persons,” got so far over the hill as they permit themselves to think they have.

After people have been thus taught and exhorted to confess their sin and amend their ways, they should then be exhorted with the utmost diligence to prayer, and shown how such prayer pleases God, how He has commanded it and promised to hear it, and that no one ought to think lightly of his own praying, or have doubts about it, but be sure, with firm faith, that it will be heard; all of which has been published by us in many tracts. For the man who doubts, or prays at a venture, would do better to let it alone, because such prayer is merely a tempting of God and only makes things worse. Therefore, I would advise against processions, f112 which are a heathenish and useless practice, for they are pomp and show rather than prayer. It might, indeed, be of some use to have the people, especially the young people, sing the Litany at mass or vespers or in the church after the sermon, provided that everyone, at home, by himself, conconstantly raised to Christ at least a sigh of the heart for grace to lead a better life and for help against the Turk. I am not speaking of much long praying, but of frequent brief sighs, in one or two words, such as “O help us, dear God the Father; have mercy on us, dear Lord Jesus Christ!” or the like.

Lo, this kind of preaching will strike the Christians and find them out, and there will be Christians who will accept it and act according to it; it matters not if you do not know who they are. The tyrants and bishops may also be exhorted to desist from their raging and persecution against the Word of God and not to hinder our prayer; but if they do not desist, we must not cease to pray, but keep on, and take the chance that they will have the benefit of our prayer and be preserved along with us, or that we shall pay for their raging and be ruined along with them. They are so perverse and blind that if God gave good fortune against the Turk, they would ascribe it to their holiness and merit and boast of it against us. On the other hand, if things turned out badly, they would ascribe it to no one but us, and lay the blame on us, disregarding the shameful, openly sinful, and wicked life, which they not only lead, but defend; for they cannot teach rightly a single point about the way to pray, and they are worse than the Turks. Ah, well. We must leave that to God’s judgment!

In this exhortation to prayer, also, we must introduce sayings and examples from the Scriptures, in which it is shown how strong and mighty a man’s prayer has sometimes been; for example, Elijah’s prayer, which St. James praises; the prayers of Elisha and other prophets; of Kings David, Solomon, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jesis, Hezekiah, etc.; the story of how God promised Abraham that He would spare the land of Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of five righteous men; for the prayer of righteous men can do much if it be persistent, says St. James in his Epistle. They are to be informed, besides, that they shall be careful not to anger God by not praying, and not to fall under His judgment, in Ezekiel 13:5, where God says, “Ye have not set yourselves against me, and opposed yourselves as a wall before the house of Israel, to stand against the battle in the day of the Lord”; and in Ezekiel 22, “I sought a man among them who would be a wall, and stand against me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. Therefore I poured my wrath upon them and consumed them with the fire of my anger and paid them as they deserved, saith the Lord.”

Penance and prayer against Gods wrath

From this it is easy to see that God would have men set themselves in the way of his wrath and keep it off, and that He is greatly angered if this is not done. That is what I meant when I spoke above about taking the rod out of God’s hands. Let him fast who will. Let him go down on his knees and bow and fall to the ground, if he is in earnest; for the bowing and kneeling that has been practiced hitherto in the chapters and monasteries was not in earnest; it was, and still is, mere apery. It is not for nothing that I exhort pastors and preachers to impress this upon the people, for I see plainly that it rests entirely with the preachers whether the people shall amend their ways and pray, or not. Little will be accomplished by preaching in which men call Luther names and blaspheme, and let repentance and prayer alone; but where God’s Word is spoken, it is not without fruit. They, however, must preach as though they were preaching to saints who had learned all that there was to know about repentance and faith, and therefore had to talk about something higher.

We should have been moved to this prayer against the Turk by the great need of our time, for the Turk, as has been said, is the servant of the devil, who not only ruins land and people with the sword, as we shall hear later, but also lays waste the Christian Faith and our dear Lord Jesus Christ. For although some praise his government because he allows everyone to believe what he will so long as he remains the temporal lord, yet this praise is not true, for he does not allow Christians to come together in public, and no one can openly confess Christ or preach or teach against Mohammed.

What kind of freedom of belief is it when no one is allowed to preach or confess Christ, and yet our salvation depends on that confession as Paul says, “To confess with the lips saves,” and Christ has strictly commanded to confess and teach His Gospel.

Since, therefore, faith must be kept quiet and held secret among this barbarous and wild people and under this severe rule, how can it at last exist or remain, when there is need for so much trouble and labor, in places where it is preached most faithfully and diligently? Therefore, it happens, and must happen, that those Christians who are captured or otherwise get into Turkey fall away and become altogether Turkish, and it is very seldom that one remains true to his faith, for they lack the living bread of souls and see the free and fleshly life of the Turks and are obliged to adapt themselves to it.

How can one injure Christ more than with these two things; namely, force and wiles? With force, they prevent preaching and suppress the Word.

With wiles, they daily put wicked and dangerous examples before men’s eyes and draw men to them. If we then would not lose our Lord Jesus Christ, His Word and faith, we must pray against the Turks as against other enemies of our salvation and of all good. Nay, as we pray against the devil himself.

Islam – the faith of the Muslims

In this connection, the people should be told of all the dissolute life and ways that the Turk practices, so that they may the better feel the need of prayer. To be sure, it has often disgusted me and still does, that neither our great lords nor our scholars have been at any pains to give us any certain knowledge about the life of the Turks in the two classes, spiritual and temporal; and yet he has come so near to us. For it is said that they too have chapters and monasteries. Some indeed have invented outrageous lies about the Turks in order to stir up us Germans against them, but there is no need for lies; the truth is all too great. I will tell my dear Christians a few things, so far as I know the real truth, so that they may the better be moved and stirred up to pray earnestly against the enemy of Christ our Lord.

I have some pieces of Mohammed’s Koran which might be called in German a book of sermons or doctrines of the kind that we call pope’s decretals. When I have time, I must put it into German so that every man may see what a foul and shameful book it is. f116 In the first place, he praises Christ and Mary very much as those who alone were without sin, and yet he believes nothing more of Christ than that he is a holy prophet, like Jeremiah or Jonah, and denies that he is God’s Son and true God. Besides, he does not believe that Christ is the Savior of the world, Who died for our sins, but that He preached to His own time, and completed His work before His death, just like any other prophet.

Islam denies Christ

On the other hand, he praises and exalts himself highly and boasts that he has talked with God and the angels, and that since Christ’s office of prophet is now complete, it has been commanded to him to bring the world to his faith and if the world is not willing, to compel it or punish it with the sword; and there is much glorification of the sword in it. Therefore, the Turks think their Mohammed much higher and greater than Christ, for the office of Christ has ended and Mohammed’s office is still in force.

From this anyone can easily observe that Mohammed is a destroyer of our Lord Christ and His kingdom, and if anyone denies concerning Christ, that He is God’s Son and has died for us, and still lives and reigns at the right hand of God, what has he left of Christ? Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Baptism, the Sacrament, Gospel, Faith and all Christian doctrine and life are gone, and there is left, instead of Christ, nothing more than Mohammed with his doctrine of works and especially of the sword. That is the chief doctrine of the Turkish faith in which all abominations, all errors, all devils are piled up in one heap.

And yet, the world acts as though it were snowing pupils of the Turkish faith, for it pleases the reason extraordinarily well that Christ should not be God, as the Jews also believe, and especially is Reason pleased with the thought that men are to rule and bear the sword and get up in the world; then the devil pushes it along. Thus a faith is patched together out of the faith of Jews, Christians and heathen. He gets it from the Christians when he praises Christ and Mary and the apostles and other saints. He gets it from the Jews that people are not to drink wine, are to fast the certain times of the year, wash like the Nazarites, and eat off the ground, and go on with such holy works as part of our monks do and hope for everlasting life at the Judgment Day, for, holy people that they are, they believe in the resurrection of the dead, though few of the papists believe in it.

What pious Christian heart would not be horrified at this enemy of Christ, since we see that the Turk allows no article of our faith to stand, except the single one about the resurrection of the dead? Then Christ is no redeemer, savior, or king; there is no forgiveness of sins, no grace, no Holy Ghost.

Why should I say much? In the article that Christ is to be beneath Mohammed, and less than he, everything is destroyed. Who would not rather be dead than live under such a government, where he must say nothing about his Christ, and hear and see such blasphemy and abomination against Him? Yet it takes such a powerful hold, when it wins a land, that people even submit to it willingly. Therefore, let everyone pray who can pray that this abomination may not become lord over us and that we may not be punished with this terrible rod of God’s anger.

Islam rules with arms

In the second place, the Turk’s Koran, or creed, teaches him to destroy not only the Christian faith, but also the whole temporal government. His Mohammed, as has been said, commands that ruling is to be done by the sword, and in his Koran the sword is the commonest and noblest work.

Thus the Turk is, in truth, nothing but a murderer or highwayman, as his deeds show before men’s eyes. St. Augustine calls other kingdoms, too, great robbery; Psalm 76:4 also calls them “fastnesses of robbers,” f118 because it is but seldom that an empire has come up except by robbery, force, and wrong; or at the very least, it is often seized and possessed by wicked people without any justice, so that the Scriptures, in Genesis 10:9, call the first prince upon earth, Nimrod, a mighty hunter. But never has any kingdom come up and become so mighty by murder and robbery as that of the Turk; and he murders and robs every day, for it is commanded in their law, as a good and divine work, that they shall rob and murder, devour and destroy more and more those that are round about them; and they do this, and think that they are doing God service. Their government, therefore, is not a regular rulership, like others, for the maintenance of peace, the protection of the good, and the punishment of the wicked, but a rod of anger and a punishment of God upon the unbelieving world, as has been said. The work of murdering and robbing pleases the flesh in any case, because it enables men to gain high place and subject everyone’s life and goods to themselves; how much more must the flesh be pleased when this is a commandment, as though God would have it so and it pleased Him well! Therefore among the Turks, too, they are held the best who are diligent to increase the Turkish kingdom and who are constantly murdering and robbing round about them.

This second thing must follow out of the first; for Christ says, in John 8:44, that the devil is a liar and murderer. With lies he kills souls, with murder bodies. If he wins with a lie, he does not take a holiday and make delay, but follows it up with murder. Thus when the spirit of lies had taken possession of Mohammed and the devil had murdered men’s souls with his Koran and had destroyed the faith of Christians, he had to go on and take the sword and attempt the murder of their bodies. The Turkish faith, then, has not made its progress by preaching and the working of miracles, but by the sword and by murder, and its success has been due to God’s wrath, which ordered that, since all the world has a desire for the sword and robbery and murder, one should come who would give it enough of murder and robbery.

All fanatics, as a rule, when the spirit of lies has taken possession of them and led them away from the true faith, have been unable to stop there, but have followed the lie with murder and taken up the sword, as a sign that they were children of the father of all lies and murder. Thus we read how the Arians became murderers and one of the greatest bishops of Alexandria, Lucius by name, drove the orthodox out of the city, and went into the ship and held a naked sword in his own hand until the orthodox were all on board and had to go away; and these tender, holy bishops committed many other murders even at that time, which is almost twelve hundred years ago. Again, in the time of St. Augustine, which is almost eleven hundred years ago, the holy father shows, in his books, how many murders were committed by the Donatists. In such an utterly worldly way did the clergy conduct themselves! They had only the name and guise of bishops among the Christians; but because they had fallen away from the truth and become subject to the spirit of lies, they had to go forward in his service and become wolves and murderers. Even in our own times, what was Muenzer seeking, except to become a new Turkish emperor? He was possessed of the spirit of lies and therefore there was no holding him back; he had to go at the other work of the devil, take the sword and murder and rob, as the spirit of murder drove him, and he created such a rebellion and such misery.

Muhammad and the pope are tied together

And what shall I say of the most Holy Father, the pope? Is it not true that he and his bishops have become worldly lords, have fallen away from the Gospel, led by the spirit of lies, and embraced their own human doctrine, and thus have practiced murder, down to the present hour? Read the histories of the time and you find that the principal business of popes and bishops has been to set emperors, kings, princes, lands, and people against one another, even themselves to fight and help in the work of murder and bloodshed. Why so? Because the spirit of lies never acts any other way.

After he has made his disciples teachers of lies and deceivers, he has no rest until he makes them murderers, robbers, and blood-dogs. For who has ordered them to bear the sword, to make war, and to urge men on and stir them up to murder and war, when their duty was to attend to preaching and prayer?

They call me and mine seditious, but when have I ever coveted the sword or urged men to take it, and not rather taught and kept peace and obedience, except that I have instructed and exhorted the regular temporal rulers to do their duty and maintain peace and justice? By its fruits one shall know the tree. I and mine keep and teach peace; the pope, with his followers, makes war, murders, robs, and that not only his enemies; but he burns, condemns, and persecutes the innocent, the pious, the orthodox, as a true Antichrist. For he does this, “sitting in the temple of God,” as head of the Church; and that the Turk does not do. But as the pope is Antichrist, so the Turk is the very devil. The prayer of Christendom is against both.

Both shall go down to hell, even though it may take the Last Day to send them there; and I hope it will not be long.

Summing up what has been said: Where the spirit of lies is, there is also the spirit of murder, though he may not get to work or may be hindered. If he is hindered, he still laughs and is jubilant when murder is done, and at least consents to it, for he holds it right. But good Christians do not rejoice over any murder, not even over the misfortunes of their enemies. Since, then, Mohammed’s Koran is such a great spirit of lies that it leaves almost nothing of Christian truth remaining, how could it have any other result than that it should become a great and mighty murderer, with both lies and murders under the show of truth and righteousness. As, therefore, lies destroy the spiritual order of faith and truth, so murder destroys all temporal order instituted by God; for where murder and robbery are practiced, it is impossible that there should be a fine, praiseworthy temporal government, since they cannot think more highly of peace than of war and murder, or attend to the pursuits of peace, as one can see in soldiers. Therefore, the Turks do not regard the work of agriculture highly.

Islam despises women and marriage

The third point is that Mohammed’s Koran thinks nothing of marriage, but permits everyone to take wives as he will. Therefore, it is customary among the Turks for one man to have ten or twenty wives and to desert or sell any of them that he will, when he will, so that in Turkey women are held immeasurably cheap and are despised; they are bought and sold like cattle. Although there may be some few who do not take advantage of this law, nevertheless this is the law and anyone can follow if he will. Such a way of living is not marriage and cannot be marriage, because none of them takes a wife or has a wife with the intention of staying with her forever, as though the two were one body, as God’s Word says, in Genesis 2:24, “The man shall cleave to his wife and they two be one body.”

Thus the marriage of the Turks closely resembles the chaste life that the soldiers live with their harlots; for the Turks are soldiers and must act like soldiers; Mars and Venus, say the poets, must be together.

Some Muslims are all right

These three points I have wanted to mention. I am sure of them from the Koran of the Turks. What I have heard beside I will not bring forward, because I cannot be sure about it. Suppose, then, that there are some Christians among the Turks; suppose that some of them are monks; suppose that some are honorable laymen; even then, what good can there be in the government and the whole Turkish way of life, when according to their Koran these three things rule among them; namely, lying, murder, and disregard of marriage, and besides, everyone must keep Christian truth quiet and dare not rebuke or try to reform these three points, but must look on and consent to them, as I fear, at least so far as to be silent? How can there be a more horrible, dangerous, terrible imprisonment than a life under such a government? Lies destroy the spiritual estate, murder the temporal, disregard of marriage the estate of matrimony. Now take out of the world veram religionem, veram politiam, veram oeconomiam, i.e., true spiritual life, true temporal government, and true conduct of the home; what is left in the world, but flesh, world and devil? A life there is like the life of the “good fellows” who keep house with harlots.

It is said, indeed, that the Turks are, among themselves, faithful and friendly and careful to tell the truth. I believe that, and I think that they probably have more fine virtues in them than that. No man is so bad that there is not something good in him. Now and then a woman of the streets has good qualities that scarcely ten honorable matrons have. So the devil would have a cloak and be a fair angel, an angel of light; therefore he hides behind certain works, that are works of the light. Murderers and robbers are more faithful and friendly to each other than neighbors are, nay, more so than many Christians. For if the devil keeps the three things – lies, murder, and disregard of marriage – as the real foundation of hell, he can easily tolerate, nay, help, that fleshly love and faithfulness shall be built upon it, as precious stones (though they are nothing but hay and straw), though he knows well that nothing of them will remain through the fire. f123 On the other hand, where true faith, true government, true marriage are, he tries earnestly that little love and fidelity may appear and little be shown, so that he can put the foundation to shame and have it despised.

What is more, when the Turks go into battle their war-cry is no other word than “Allah! Allah!” and they shout it till heaven and earth resound. But in the Arabic language Allah means God, and is a corruption of the Hebrew Eloha. For they have taught in the Koran that they shall boast constantly with these words, “There is no God but God.” All that is really a device of the devil. For what is it to say, “There is no God but God” without distinguishing one God from another? The devil, too, is a god and they honor him with this word; of that there is no doubt. In just the same way the pope’s soldiers cry “Ecclesia! Ecclesia!” To be sure: the devil’s ecclesia! Therefore I believe that the Turks’ Allah does more in war than they themselves. He gives them courage and wiles, guides sword and fist, horse and man. What do you think, then, of the holy people who can call upon God in battle, and yet destroy Christ and all God’s words and works, as you have heard?

Prohibition agains pictures

It is part of the Turks’ holiness, also, that they tolerate no images or pictures and are even holier than our destroyers of images. For our destroyers tolerate, and are glad to have, images on gulden, groschen, rings, and ornaments; but the Turk tolerates none of them and stamps nothing but letters on his coins. He is entirely Muenzerian, too, for he overthrows all rulers and tolerates no gradations of government, such as princes, counts, lords, nobles and other feudatories; but he alone is lord over all in his own land, and what he gives out is only pay, never property or rights of rulership. He is also a papist; for he believes that he will become holy and be saved by works, and thinks it no sin to overthrow Christ, lay government waste, and destroy marriage. All these things the pope also works at, though in other ways, with hypocrisy, while the Turk uses force and the sword. In a word, as has been said, it is the very dregs of all abominations and errors.

All this I have wanted to tell to the first man, namely, the community of Christians, so that he may know and see how much need there is for prayer, and how we must first smite the Turk’s Allah, that is, his god, the devil, and strike down his power and godhead; otherwise, I fear, the sword will accomplish little. For this man is not to fight in a bodily way with the Turk, as the pope and his followers teach, nor resist him with the fist, but recognize the Turk as God’s rod and anger, which Christians must either suffer, if God visits their sins upon them, or fight against and drive away with repentance, tears, and prayer. He who despises this counsel, let him despise it; I want to see what damage he will do the Turk.

The secular government

The second man whose place it is to fight against the Turk is Emperor Charles, or whoever is emperor; for the Turk attacks his subjects and his empire, and it is his duty, as a regular ruler appointed by God, to defend his own. I repeat it here, that I would not urge anyone or tell anyone to fight against the Turk unless the first method, mentioned above, had been followed, and men had first repented and been reconciled to God, etc. If anyone will go to war besides, let him take his risk. It is not proper for me to say anything more about it beyond telling everyone his duty and instructing his conscience.

I see clearly that kings and princes are taking such a silly and careless attitude toward the Turk that I fear they are despising God and the Turk too greatly, or do not know, perhaps, that the Turk is such a mighty lord that no kingdom or land, whatever it is, is strong enough to resist him alone, unless God will do a miracle. Now I cannot expect any miracle or special grace of God for Germany, unless men amend their ways and honor the Word of God differently than has hitherto been done.

But enough has been said about that for those who will listen. We would now speak of the emperor.

In the first place, if there is to be war against the Turk, it should be fought at the emperor’s command, under his banner, and in his name. Then everyone can assure his own conscience that he is obeying the ordinance of God, since we know that the emperor is our true overlord and head, and he who obeys him, in such a case, obeys God also, while he who disobeys him disobeys God also. If he dies in this obedience, he dies in a good state, and if he has previously repented and believes on Christ, he is saved. These things, I suppose, everyone knows better than I can teach him, and would to God they knew them as well as they think they do. Yet we will say something more about them.

In the second place, this banner and obedience of the emperor ought to be true and simple. The emperor should seek nothing else than simply to perform the work and duty of his office, which is to protect his subjects; and those under his banner should seek simply the work and duty of obedience. By this simplicity you should understand that there is to be no fighting of the Turk for the reasons for which the emperors and princes have heretofore been urged to war, such as the winning of great honor, glory, and wealth, the increasing of lands, or wrath and revengefulness and other things of the kind; for by these things men seek only their own self- interest, and therefore we have had no good fortune heretofore, either in fighting or planning to fight against the Turk.

Therefore the urging and inciting, with which the emperor and the princes have heretofore been stirred up to fight against the Turk, ought to cease.

He has been urged, as head of Christendom, as protector of the Church and defender of the faith, to wipe out the faith of the Turk, and the urging and exhorting have been based on the wickedness and vice of the Turks. Not so! The emperor is not head of Christendom or protector of the Gospel or of the faith. The Church and the faith must have another protector than emperor and kings. They are usually the worst enemies of Christendom and of the faith, as Psalm 2:2 says and the Church constantly laments. With that kind of urging and exhorting things are only made worse and God is the more deeply angered, because that interferes with His honor and His work, and would ascribe it to men, which is idolatry and blasphemy.

The authorities should not interfere in peoples faith

And if the emperor were to destroy the unbelievers and non-Christians, he would have to begin with the pope, bishops, and clergy and perhaps not spare us, or himself; for there is enough horrible idolatry in his own empire to make it unnecessary for him to fight the Turks for this cause. Among us there are Turks, Jews, heathen, non-Christians, all too many of them, proving it with public false doctrine and with offensive, shameful lives. Let the Turk believe and live as he will, just as one lets the papacy and other false Christians live. The emperor’s sword has nothing to do with the faith; it belongs to physical, worldly things, if God is not to become angry with us. If we pervert His order and throw it into confusion, He, too, becomes perverse and throws us into confusion and all misfortune, as it is written, “With the perverse thou art perverse.” We can perceive and grasp this by means of the fortune we have heretofore had against the Turk. Think of all the heartbreak and misery that have been caused by the cruciata, by the indulgences and crusading-taxes, with which Christians have been stirred up to take the sword and fight the Turk, when they ought to have been fighting the devil and unbelief with the Word and with prayer.

This is what should be done. The emperor and the princes should be exhorted concerning their office and their bounden duty to give serious and constant thought to governing their subjects in peace and to protecting them against the Turk. This would be their duty whether they themselves were Christians or not, though it would be very good if they were Christians. But since it is uncertain, and remains so, that they are Christians, and it is certain that they are emperors and princes, that is, that they have God’s command to protect their subjects and are in duty bound to do so, therefore we must let the uncertain go and hold to the certain, urge them with continual preaching and exhortation, and lay it heavily upon their consciences, that it is their duty to God not to let their subjects be so pitiably ruined, and that they are doing a great and notable sin when they do not think of their office and use all their power to bring counsel and help to those who should live, with body and goods, under their protection and who are bound to them with oaths of homage.

For I think (so far as I have yet observed the matter in our diets) that neither emperor nor princes believe themselves that they are emperor and princes. For they act as though it lay with their own judgment and pleasure whether they would rescue and protect their subjects from the power of the Turk or not; and the princes neither care nor think that they are bound and obligated before God to counsel and help the emperor in this matter with body and goods. Everyone of them lets it go as though it were no affair of his and as though he were forced neither by command or necessity, but it were left to his own free choice to do it or leave it.

Responsible for the authorities continuation

They are just like the common people who do not think it their duty to God and the world, when they have bright sons, to put them to school and have them study; but everyone thinks he has free power to raise his son as he pleases, no matter what God’s word and ordinance are. Nay, the councilmen in the cities and almost all the rulers act in the same way, and let the schools go to nothing, as though they had no responsibility for them, and had an indulgence besides. No one remembers that God earnestly commands, and will have it so, that bright children shall be raised to His praise and for His work, which cannot be done without the schools. On the contrary everyone is in a hurry to have his children making a living, as though God and Christendom needed no pastors, preachers, carers for souls, and the worldly rulers no chancellors, counselors, or secretaries. But of this another time. The pen must remain empress, or God will show us something else.

Emperor, kings, and princes act the same way. They do not consider that God’s commandment makes it necessary to protect their subjects; it is to lie in their own free choice to do it, if the notion sometime takes them, or they have leisure for it. Dear fellow, let us all do that! Let none of us look to that which is commanded him and which God orders him to do, but let all our actions and duties be matters of our own free will, and God will give us good fortune and His grace, and we shall be plagued by the Turk here in time, and by the devil yonder in eternity.

Perhaps, then, a worthless prattler – I should say a legate – will come from Rome and exhort the estates of the empire and stir them up against the Turk, telling them how the enemy of the Christian faith has done such great harm to Christendom and that the emperor, as guardian of the Church and defender of the faith, should do so and so; as though they themselves were great friends of the Christian faith! But I say to him: You are a base-born knave, you impotent chatterer! For this way you accomplish nothing except to make the emperor feel that he should do a good Christian work that he is not commanded to do; and that rests with his free choice; his conscience is not touched at all by that, and he is not reminded of the necessary duty, laid upon him by God, but the whole thing is referred to his free will.

This is the way that a legate ought to deal with the estates of the empire at the diet. He should hold God’s commandment before them and make of it an unavoidable necessity, and say: “Dear lords, emperor, and princes, if you would be emperor and princes, act as emperor and princes, or the Turk will teach you with God’s wrath and disfavor. Germany, or the empire, is given you and committed to you by God, that you may protect, rule, counsel, and help it, and you not only should, but must do this on pain of losing your soul’s salvation and God’s favor and grace. But now it is evident that none of you takes this seriously, or believes it, but you take your office as a jest, as though it were a mummery of the carnival, for you leave the subjects, whom God has committed to you, to be so wretchedly harassed, taken captive, put to shame, plundered, slain, and sold by the Turk. Do you not think, since Go has committed this office to you, and has given you money and people besides for you to do good to them, that He will demand at your hands all the subjects whom you so shamefully deserted, while you danced, reveled, showed off, and gambled? If you seriously believed that you were appointed and ordained of God to be emperor and princes, you would leave your banqueting and rivalry for high places and other unprofitable display for awhile, and consult faithfully how you might discharge your office and fulfill God’s commandment and rescue your consciences from all the blood and the misery which the Turk inflicts upon them. For how can God, or any godly heart think otherwise of you than that you hate your subjects or have a secret covenant with the Turk or, at least, hold yourselves for neither emperor nor princes, but for dolls and puppets for children to play with? Otherwise, it would be impossible that your consciences should let you rest, if you seriously held yourselves for overlords appointed by God, and were not to speak and advise together about these matters differently than you have done heretofore. In this you see that you are constantly becoming Turks to your own subjects. “Nay, you even take up the case of Luther and discuss, in the devil’s name, whether one can eat meat in the fast-times and nuns can take husbands, and things of that kind, which are not committed to you for discussion and about which God has given you no commandment; and meanwhile the serious and strict commandment of God hangs in the smoke, the commandment by which He has appointed you protectors of poor Germany; and you become murderers, betrayers, and blood-dogs to your own good, faithful, obedient subjects, and leave them to the Turk, nay, cast them into his jaws, as a reward for the bodies and money wealth and honor that they stake on you and reach out to you.”

A good orator can here see well what I would like to say, if I were learned in the art of oratory, and what a legate should aim at and expound at the diet, if he would discharge his office honestly and faithfully.

The authorities should protect our body and earthly life

For this reason I said above that Charles, or the emperor should be the man to fight against the Turk, and that the fighting should be done under his banner. “O, that is easy! Everybody knew it long ago. Luther is not telling us anything new, but only worn-out old stuff.” Nay, dear fellow, the emperor must truly see himself with other eyes than heretofore, and you must see his banner with other eyes. You and I are talking about the same emperor and the same banner, but you are not talking about the eyes that I am talking about. You must see on the banner the commandment of God that says, “Protect the good; punish the bad.” Tell me how many there are who can read this on the emperor’s banner, or who seriously believe it. Do you not think that their consciences would terrify them, if they saw this banner and had to own that they were greatly guilty before God on account of their failure to give help and protection to their faithful subjects? Dear fellow, a banner is not simply a piece of silk; there are letters on it, and on him who reads the letters luxury and banqueting should pall.

That it has been regarded heretofore as a mere piece of silk, is easy to prove, for otherwise the emperor would long ago have set it up, the princes would have followed it, and the Turk would not have become so mighty. But because the princes called it with their mouths the emperor’s banner, and were disobedient to it with their fists, and held it by their deeds a mere piece of silk, those things have come to the pass that we now see with our own eyes. God grant that we are not, all of us, too late, I with my exhortation and the lords with their banner; and that it may not happen to us as it did to the children of Israel who would not fight against the Amorites when God first commanded them; afterwards, when they would have fought, they were beaten, because God would not be with them. Nevertheless, no one should despair; repentance and right conduct always find grace.

After emperor and princes remember that, by God’s commandment, they owe their subjects this protection, they should be exhorted not to be presumptuous and undertake this work defiantly, or in reliance on their own might or planning; for there are many princes who say, “I have right and authority, therefore I will do it!” Then they pitch in, with pride and boasting of their might, and meet defeat at last; for if they did not feel their power, the matter of right would have small enough effect on them, as is proved in other cases, in which they pay no heed to right. It is not enough, then, for you to know that God has committed this or that to you; you should also do it with fear and humility, for God commands no one to do anything by his own wisdom or strength, but He, too, will have a part in it and be feared. Nay, He will do it through us, and will therefore have us pray to Him, and not become presumptuous or forget His help, as the Psalter says, “The Lord hath pleasure in those that fear Him and wait for His kindness.” Otherwise we should persuade ourselves that we could do things and did not need God’s help, and take to ourselves the victory and the honor that belong to Him.

Therefore an emperor or prince ought to learn well that verse of the Psalter, in Psalm 44:6-7, “I rely not upon my bow, and my sword helps me not, but thou helpest us from our enemies and puttest to shame them that hate us,” and also the rest of what that Psalm says; and Psalm 60:10-12, “Lord God, thou goest not out with our host; give us aid in our need, for man’s help is vain; with God we will do deeds; he shall tread down our enemies.”

These and like sayings have had to be fulfilled by many kings and great princes, from the beginning to the present day. They have become examples, though they had God’s commandment and authority and right.

Emperor and princes, therefore, should not let these sayings become a jest. Read here the apt illustration given in Judges 20:18, how the children of Israel were twice beaten by the Benjamites, despite the fact that God bade them fight and that they had the best of right. Their boldness and presumption were their downfall, as the text says, Fidentes fortitudine et numero. It is true that one should have horses and men and weapons and everything that is needed for battle, if they are to be had, so that one is not tempting God; but when one has them, one must not be bold because of it, for God is not to be forgotten or despised, since it is written, “All victory comes from heaven.”

If these two things are present, God’s commandment and our humility, then there is no danger or need, so far as this second man, the emperor, is concerned; we are strong enough for the whole world and must have good fortune and success. But if we have not good fortune, it is certainly because one of the two things is lacking; we are going to war either without God’s commandment, or in our own presumption, or the first soldier, the Christian, is not there with his prayers. It is not necessary here to warn against seeking honor or booty in war; for he who fights in humility and obedience to God’s command, with his mind fixed solely upon the simple duty of protecting and defending his subjects, will forget honor and booty; nay, they will come to him, without his seeking, more richly and gloriously than he can wish.

Here someone will say, “Where shall we find pious fighting-men, who will act this way?” Answer: The Gospel is preached to all the world, and yet very few believe; nevertheless Christendom believes and abides.

Therefore I am writing this instruction with no hope that it will be accepted by all; indeed, most people will laugh and scoff at me. For me it is enough if, with this book, I shall be able to instruct some princes and their subjects; even though they may be very few in number, that does not matter to me; there will be victory and good fortune enough. And would to God that I had instructed only the emperor, or him who is to conduct the war in his name and at his command; I would then be of good hope. It has often happened, indeed, it usually happens, God gives a whole land and kingdom good fortune and success through one single man; just as, on the other hand, through one knave at court He brings a whole land into all sorts of distress and misery; as Solomon says, in Ecclesiastes, “A single knave does great harm.”

Thus we read of Naaman, the captain of the king of Syria, that through this one man God gave the whole land good fortune and success. So through the holy Joseph He gave great good fortune to the whole kingdom of Egypt, and in 2 Kings 3:14, Elisha says to Jehoram, “I would not look to thee, if Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, were not there,” and thus the godless kings of Israel and Edom had to be helped for the sake of one godly man, when otherwise they would have been ruined in all kinds of distress; and in the book of Judges one can see the good that God did through Ehud, Gideon, Deborah, Samson, and other individuals, though the people were not worthy of it. See, on the other hand, what great harm Doeg did at the court of King Saul ( 1 Kings 22:1) and what Absalom accomplished against his father David, with the aid and counsel of Ahithophel ( 2 Kings 15:1).

I say this in order that it may not frighten us, or move us in any way, if the great majority are unbelieving and fight under the emperor’s banner with an unchristian mind. We must remember, too, that Abraham, all by himself, was able to do much ( Genesis 14:1 and 17:1). It is certain, also, that among the Turks, who are the army of the devil, there is not one who is a Christian or has an humble and a right heart. In 1 Kings 14:1, the godly Jonathan said, “It is not hard for God to give victory by many or by few,” and himself inflicted on the Philistines a great slaughter such as Saul could not, with his whole army. It does not matter, therefore, if the crowd is not good, provided only that the head and some of the chief men are upright; it would be good, of course, if all were upright, but that is scarcely possible.

The limit of the duty of obedience

Moreover, I hear it said that there are those in Germany who desire the coming of the Turk and his government, because they would rather be under the Turk than under the emperor or princes. It would be hard to fight against the Turk with such people. Against them I have no better advice to give than that pastors and preachers be exhorted to be diligent in their preaching and faithful in instructing such people, pointing out to them the danger they are in and the wrong that they are doing, how they are making themselves partakers of great and numberless sins and loading themselves down with them in the sight of God, if they are found in this opinion. For it is misery enough to be compelled to suffer the Turk as overlord and to endure his government; but willingly to put oneself under it, or to desire it, when one need not and is not compelled – the man who does that ought to be shown the sin he is committing and how terribly he is going on.

In the first place, these people are faithless and guilty of perjury to their rulers, to whom they have taken oaths and done homage; and this is in God’s sight a great sin that does not go unpunished. On account of such perjury the good king Zedekiah had to perish miserably, because he did not keep the oath that he gave to the heathen emperor at Babylon. Such people may think, or persuade themselves, that it is within their own power and choice to betake themselves from one lord to another, acting as though they were free to do or not to do what they pleased, forgetting and not remembering God’s commandment and their oath, by which they are in duty bound to be obedient, until they are forcibly compelled to abandon it or are put to death for it; as the peasants thought, in the recent rebellion, and were beaten because of it. For just as a man may not slay himself, but endure until he is forcibly slain by others, so no one should evade his obedience or his oath, unless he is released from it by others, either by force or by favor and permission. f130 The preachers must diligently impress this on such people; indeed their office of preaching compels them to do so, for it is their duty to warn their parishioners, and guard them against sin and harm to their souls. For one who willingly turns from his lord and takes the side of the Turk can never stay under the Turk with a good conscience, but his own heart will always speak to him and rebuke him thus – “See, you were faithless to your overlord and deprived him of the obedience that you owed him, and robbed him of his right to rule over you; now, no sin can be forgiven unless stolen goods are restored; but how shall you make restitution to your lord, when you are under the Turk and cannot make restitution. One of two things, then, must happen; – either you must toil and labor forever, trying to get away from the Turk and back to your overlord; or your conscience must forever suffer compunction, pain and unrest (if, indeed, it does not result in despair and everlasting death), because you submitted to the Turk willingly and without necessity, against your sworn duty. In the latter case you must be among the Turks with your body, but over on this side with your heart and conscience. What have you gained then? Why did you not stay on this side from the first?”

In the second place, beside all that, such faithless, disloyal, perjured folk commit a still more horrible sin. They make themselves partakers of all the abominations and wickedness of the Turks; for he who willingly goes over to the Turks makes himself their comrade and an accomplice in all their doings. Now we have heard above what kind of man the Turk is, viz., a destroyer, enemy, and blasphemer of our Lord Jesus Christ, who instead of the Gospel and faith, sets up his shameful Mohammed and all kinds of lies, ruins all temporal government and home-life, or marriage, and, since his warfare is nothing but murder and bloodshed, is a tool of the devil himself.

See, then! He who consorts with the Turk must be partaker of this terrible abomination and brings down on his own head all the murder, all the blood that the Turk has shed, and all the lies and vices with which he has damaged Christ’s Kingdom and led souls astray. It is miserable enough if one is forced to be under this blood-dog and devil against his own will, and see and hear these abominations, and put up with them as the godly Lot had to do in Sodom, as St. Peter writes; it is not necessary to seek them of one’s own accord, or desire them.

Nay, a man ought far rather die twice over in war, obedient to his overlord, than have, like a poor Lot, to be brought by force into such Sodoms and Gomorrahs. Still less ought a godly man long to go there of his own accord, in disobedience, and against God’s commandment and his own duty. That would mean not only to become partaker in all the wickedness of the Turk and the devil, but to strengthen and further them; just as Judas not only made himself partaker of the wickedness of the Jews against Christ, but strengthened it and helped it along, while Pilate did not act as evilly as Judas, as Christ testifies in John 17:1
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In the third place, it is to be impressed by the preachers on the people that, if they do go over to the Turks, they will not have bettered themselves and their hopes and intentions will not be realized. For it is the Turk’s way not to let any who are anything or have anything stay in the place where they live, but to put them far back in another land, where they are sold and must be servants. Thus they fulfill the proverb “Running out of the rain and falling in the water”; and “Lifting the plate and breaking the dish.” Bad becomes worse; it scarcely serves them wrong. For the Turk is a true man of war, who has other ways of treating land and people, both in getting them and keeping them, than our emperor, kings, and princes have. He does not trust and believe these disloyal people and has the force to do as he will; thus he has not the same need of people that our princes have.

The preachers and pastors, I say, must impress this upon such disloyal people, with constant admonition and warning, for it is the truth, and it is needed. But if there are some who despise this exhortation and will not be moved by it, let them go on to the devil, as St. Paul had to let the Greeks, and St. Peter the Jews go; the others should not mind. Indeed, if it were to come to war, I would rather that none of these were under the emperor’s banner, or stayed under it, but were all on the Turk’s side; they would be beaten all the sooner and in battle they would do the Turk more harm than good, for they are out of favor with God, the devil, and the world, and are surely, all of them, condemned to hell. It is good to fight against such people, who are plainly and surely damned both by God and the world.

There are many depraved and abandoned and wicked men; but anyone with any sense will without doubt, heed such exhortation and be moved to stay in his obedience, and not throw his soul so carelessly into hell to the devil, but rather fight with all his might under his overlord, even though, in so doing, he is slain by the Turks.

But you say again, “If the pope is as bad as the Turk – and you yourself call him Antichrist, together with his clergy and his followers – then the Turk is as godly as the pope, for he acknowledges the four Gospels and Moses, together with the prophets; must we not, then, fight the pope as well as the Turk, or, perhaps, rather than the Turk?” Answer: I cannot deny that the Turk holds the four Gospels to be divine and true, as well as the prophets, and also speaks very highly of Christ and His mother, but at the same time, he believes that his Mohammed is above Christ and that Christ is not God, as has been said above. We Christians acknowledge the Old Testament as divine Scripture, but now that it is fulfilled and is, as St. Peter says, in Acts 15:10, too hard without God’s grace, it is abolished and no longer binds us.

The relation between the Koran and the Bible

Just so Mohammed treats the Gospel; he declares that it is indeed true, but has long since served its purpose; also that it is too hard to keep, especially on the points where Christ says that one is to leave all for His sake, love God with the whole heart, and the like.

Therefore God has had to give another new law, one that is not so hard and that the world can keep, and this law is the Koran. But if anyone asks why he does no miracles to confirm this new law, he says that that is unnecessary and of no use, for people had many miracles before, when Moses’ law and the Gospel arose, and did not believe. Therefore his Koran did not need to be confirmed by wasted miracles, but by the sword, which is more effective than miracles. Thus it has been, and still is the case among the Turks, that everything is done with the sword, instead of with miracles.

On the other hand, the pope is not much more godly than Mohammed and resembles him extraordinarily; for he, too, praises the Gospel with his lips, but holds that many things in it are too hard, and these things are the very ones that Mohammed and the Turks also consider too hard, such as those contained in Matthew 5:20. Therefore he interprets them, and makes of them consilia, i.e., “counsels,” which no one is bound to keep unless he desires to do so, as has been shamelessly taught at Paris, and in other universities, foundations, and monasteries. Therefore, too, he does not rule with the Gospel, or Word of God, but has made a new law and a Koran, viz., his decretals, and enforces them with the ban, as the Turk enforces his Koran with the sword; he even calls the ban his spiritual sword, though only the Word of God is that and should be called that ( Ephesians 6:17). Nevertheless, he uses the temporal sword also, when he can, or, at least, calls upon it, and urges and stirs up others to use it. And I am confident that if the pope could use the temporal sword as mightily as the Turk, he would perhaps lack the will to do so even less than the Turk and, indeed, they have often tried it.

Italian weddings – homosexual relationships
God visits them with the same plague, too, and smites them with blindness, so that it happens to them as St. Paul says, in Romans 1:28, about the shameful vice of the dumb sins, that God gives them up to a perverse mind because they pervert the Word of God. So blind and senseless are both pope and Turk that both of them commit the dumb sins shamelessly, as an honorable and praiseworthy thing. Since they think lightly of marriage, it serves them right that there are dog-marriages (and would to God they were dog-marriages), nay, “Italian marriages” and “Florentine brides” f131 among them; and they think these things good;

For I hear one horrible thing after another about what an open and glorious Sodom Turkey is, and everybody who has looked around a little in Rome and Italy knows very well how God there revenges and punishes the prohibition of marriage, so that Sodom and Gomorrah, which God overwhelmed in days of old with fire and brimstone, must seem a mere jest compared with these abominations. On this one account, therefore, I would regret the rule of the Turk; nay, it would be intolerable in Germany.

Not crusade, but armed defence
“What are we to do, then? Are we to fight against the pope, as well as the Turk, since the one is as godly as the other?” Answer: Treat the one like the other and no one is wronged; like sin should receive like punishment. I mean that this way. If the pope and his followers were to attack the empire with the sword, as the Turk does, he should receive the same treatment as the Turk; and this is what was done to him by the army of Emperor Charles before Pavia. For there stands God’s verdict, “He that takes the sword shall perish by the sword.” I do not advise that men go to war with the Turk or the pope because of his false belief or evil life, but because of the murder and destruction which he does. But the best thing about the papacy is that it has not yet the sword, as the Turk has; otherwise it would surely undertake to bring the whole world into subjection, though it would accomplish no more than to bring it to faith in the pope’s Koran, the decretals. For he pays as little heed as the Turk to the Gospel, or Christian faith, and knows it as little, though with fasts, which he himself does not keep, he makes a great pretense of Turkish sanctity; thus they deserve the reputation of being like the Turk, though they are against Christ.

Against the papacy, however, because of its errors and wicked ways, the first man, Sir Christian, has been aroused, and he attacks it boldly with prayer and the Word of God; and he has wounded it, too, so that they feel it and rage. But no raging helps; the axe is laid to the tree and the tree must be uprooted, unless it bears different fruit. I see clearly that they have no notion of reforming, but the farther things go, the more stubborn they become and want to butt their way through, and boast, “All or nothing, bishop or drudge!” I consider them so godly that, unless they reform or turn from their shameful ways, both they themselves and the whole world admit that it is not to be endured, and that they should betake themselves to their comrade and brother, the holy Turk. Ah well! May our heavenly Father quickly hear their own prayer and grant that, as they say, they may be “all or nothing, bishop or drudge.” Amen! They will have it so. Amen! So let it be, let it come true, as God pleases!

But you say further: “How can the Emperor Charles fight against the Turk in these days, when he has against him such hindrances and such treachery from kings, princes, the Venetians, indeed from almost everybody?” Answer: What a man cannot lift, he must let lie. If we can do no more, we must let our Lord Jesus Christ counsel and aid us, by His coming, which cannot be far off. For the world has come to its end; the Roman Empire is almost gone and torn to bits; it stands as the kingdom of the Jews stood when Christ’s birth was near; the Jews had scarcely anything of their kingdom, Herod was the token of farewell. And so, I think, now that the Roman Empire is almost gone, Christ’s coming is at the door, and the Turk is the Empire’s token of farewell, a parting gift to the Roman Empire; and just as Herod and the Jews hated each other, though both made common cause against Christ, so Turk and papacy hate each other, but make common cause against Christ and His kingdom.

Nevertheless, what the emperor can do for his subjects against the Turk, that he should do, so that even though he cannot entirely prevent the abomination, he may yet try to protect and rescue his subjects by checking the Turk and holding him off. To this protection the emperor should be moved not only by his bounden duty, his office, and the command of God, nor only by the unchristian and vile government that the Turk brings in, as has been said above, but also by the misery and wretchedness that comes to his subjects. They know better than I, beyond all doubt, how cruelly the Turk treats those whom he carries away captive. He treats them like cattle, dragging, towing, driving those that can go along, and killing out of hand those that cannot go, whether they are young or old.

All this and the like more ought to move all the princes, and the whole empire, to forget their own cases and contentions, or let them rest for awhile, and unite, in all earnest, to help the wretched; so that things may not go as they went with Constantinople and Greece. They quarreled with one another and looked after their own affairs, until the Turk overwhelmed both of them together, as he has already come very near doing to us in a similar case. But if this is not to be, and our unrepentant life makes us unworthy of any grace or counsel or support, we must put up with it and suffer under the devil; but that does not excuse those who could help and do not.

I wish it to be clearly understood, however, by what I have said, that it was not for nothing that I called Emperor Charles the man who ought to go to war against the Turk. As for other kings, princes, and rulers who despise Emperor Charles, or are not his subjects, or are not obedient, I leave them to take their own chances. They shall do nothing by my advice or admonition; what I have written here has been for Emperor Charles and his subjects; the others do not concern me. For I well know the pride of some kings and princes who would be glad if not Emperor Charles, but they, were to be the heroes and masters to win honor against the Turk. I grant them the honor, but if they are beaten in trying to get it, it will be their own fault. Why do they not conduct themselves humbly toward the true head and the regularly appointed ruler. The rebellion among the peasants has been punished, but if the rebellion among the princes and lords were also to be punished, I believe that there would be very few princes and lords left. God grant that it may not be the Turk who inflicts the punishment! Amen.

Efficient attack as prevention
Finally, I would have it understood as my kind and faithful advice that, if it comes to the point of war against the Turk, we shall arm and prepare, and not hold the Turk too cheap, acting as we Germans usually do, and coming on the field with twenty or thirty thousand men. And even though a success is granted us and we win a victory, we have no staying-power, but sit down again and carouse until another necessity arises. To be sure, I am not qualified to give instruction on this point, and they themselves know, or ought to know, more about it than I, nevertheless, when I see people acting so childishly, I must think either that the princes and our Germans do not know or believe the strength and power of the Turk, or have no serious purpose to fight against the Turk, but just as the pope has robbed Germany of money under the pretense of the Turkish war and by indulgences, so they, too, following the pope’s example, would swindle us out of money.

My advice, therefore, is not to set the armed preparation so low and not to offer our poor Germans to slaughter. If we are not going to make an adequate, honest resistance that will have some staying-power, it were far better not to begin a war, but to give up lands and people to the Turk in time, without useless bloodshed, rather than have him win anyhow in an easy battle and with shameful bloodshed, as happened in Hungary with King Lewis. Fighting against the Turk is not like fighting against the King of France, or the Venetians, or the pope; he is a different kind of warrior; he has people and money in abundance; he beat the Sultan twice in succession, and that took people. Why, dear sir, his people are under arms all the time, so that he can quickly bring together three or four hundred thousand men; if we were to cut off a hundred thousand, he would soon be back again with as many men as before. He has staying-power.

There is, therefore, nothing at all in trying to meet him with fifty or sixty thousand men unless we have an equal or a greater number in reserve. Only count up his lands, dear sir. He has Greece, Asia, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, etc., that is, he has so many lands that if Spain, France, England, Germany, Italy, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and Denmark were all counted together, they would not equal the land he has. Besides, he is master of all of them and commands effective and ready obedience. And, as has been said, they are constantly under arms and are exercised in warfare, so that he has staying-power, and can deliver two, three, four battles, one after another, as he showed against the Sultan. This Gog and Magog is a different kind of majesty than our kings and princes.

I say this because I fear that my Germans do not know it or believe it, and think, perhaps, that they are strong enough by themselves, and take the Turk for such a lord as the king of France, whom they would easily withstand. But I shall be without blame, and shall not have laden my tongue and pen with blood, if a king measures himself with the Turk all alone, for it is tempting God when anyone sets out with a smaller force against a stronger king, as Christ also shows in the Gospel of Luke, especially since our princes are not the kind of people for whom a divine miracle is to be expected. The king of Bohemia is now a mighty prince, but God forbid that he match himself all alone against the Turk! Let him have Emperor Charles as his captain and all the emperor’s power behind him. But then, if everyone will not believe this, let him learn by his own experience! I know what kind of might the Turk’s might is, unless the historians and geographers lie, and daily experience, too; they do not, that I know.

I do not say this in order to scare off the kings from war against the Turk, but as an admonition to make wise and serious preparation, and not to go at this matter in so childish and sleepy a way, for I would like, if possible, to prevent useless bloodshed and lost wars. It would be serious preparation, if our princes were to wind their own affairs in a ball and put their heads and hearts, hands and feet, together, and make one body out of the great crowd from which one could make another army, if one battle were lost, and not, as heretofore, let single kings and princes set upon him – yesterday the king of Hungary, tomorrow the king of Bohemia, day after tomorrow the king of Poland – until the Turk devours them one after another and nothing is accomplished by it, except that our people are betrayed and slaughtered and blood is shed needlessly.

For if our kings and princes were to agree, and stand by one another and help one another, and the Christian man were to pray for them, I should be undismayed and of good hope; the Turk would leave his raging and find in Emperor Charles a man who was his equal. Failing that, if things are to go as they now go, and no one is in agreement with another or loyal to another, and everyone wants to be his own man and takes the field with a beggarly array, I must let it go at that. Of course I will gladly help pray, but it will be a weak prayer, for I can have little faith that it will be heard, bemuse of the childish, presumptuous, and shortsighted way in which such great enterprises are undertaken, knowing that it is tempting God and that He can have no pleasure in it.

Serious warning
What do our dear lords do? They take it for a mere jest. It is a fact that the Turk is at our throat, and even if he does not will to march against us this year, yet he is there, armed and ready any hour to attack us, when he will, and yet our princes discuss, meanwhile, how they can harass Luther and the Gospel. It is the Turk! Against it force must be used! It must be put out! That is what they are doing right now at Speyer, making the greatest ado about the eating of meat and fish, and foolishness like that.

God give you honor, you faithless heads of your poor people! What devil bids you occupy yourselves so violently with spiritual things, which are not committed to you, and be so lax and slothful in dealing with things that God has committed to you and that concern you and your poor people, now in the greatest and most pressing need, and thus be only hindering all those whose intentions are good and who would gladly do their part? Yes, go on singing and hearing the Mass of the Holy Spirit! He has great pleasure in it and will be very gracious to you disobedient, refractory fellows, because you let those things alone that he has committed to you, and work at what he has forbidden you! Yes, the Evil Spirit may hear you!

With this I have cleared my conscience. This book shall be my witness concerning the measure and the manner in which I advise war against the Turk. If any will proceed otherwise, let him proceed, win or lose. I shall not enjoy his victory and not pay for his defeat, but shall be innocent of all the blood that will be shed in vain. I know that this book will not make the Turk a gracious lord to me, if it comes before him; nevertheless, I have wished to tell my Germans the truth, so far as I know it, and give faithful counsel and service to the grateful and the ungrateful alike. If it helps, it helps; if it helps not, then may our dear Lord Jesus Christ help, and come down from heaven with the Last Judgment, and smite both Turk and pope to the earth, together with all tyrants and all the godless, and deliver us from all sins and from all evil. Amen.