Last week, a big row broke out in the federal government of Belgium. The reason? Al Gore and his campaign on climate change. But it was not about measures to limit CO2 emissions that the government ministers were quarreling. No, they were fighting about this picture which appeared in the Belgian press:

A quote from Diana West in The Washington Times, 16 March 2007

Why don't our leaders face [the likely transformation of Europe into an Islamic continent]? This may be one of those questions our children will ask some day. But if such natural curiosity isn't expressed until the next generation, the civilizational struggle for Europe will certainly have been lost. Better to question our politicians now.

A quote from The Daily Telegraph, 16 March 2007

A quote from Dutchnews.nl, 16 March 2007

The silent march in memory of Rinie Mulder, the 54-year-old man shot dead by police in Utrecht on Sunday, passed off peacefully on Thursday evening. Between 1,500 and 2,500 people took part in the march through the neighbourhood of Ondiep, […] [L]ocal residents [plan] to organise their own neighbourhood patrols to keep order in the neighbourhood because the police [are] not active enough.

After the death last Sunday of Rinie Mulder, a 54-year old indigenous Dutchman who was shot by a police officer, non-immigrant citizens went on a rampage in Utrecht. Apparently Mulder intervened when Muslim youths harassed a pregnant native Dutch woman. Locals claim the police has failed to protect them for years. They say the authorities are afraid of the immigrants and tolerate their criminal behavior.

This issue is not just about Utrecht or Holland. Similar resentment against Muslim immigrants, but at least as much against their own authorities, is quietly brewing among the natives all over Western Europe.

I recently read the book The Reformation by Owen Chadwick, about the Protestant Reformation and the situation in 15th and 16th century Europe. It is fascinating to read about Western Europe during a period when it was genuinely dynamic, not the anemic and self-loathing continent it is now. But still, I was also struck by how many similarities there are between the situation then and now. This was also during a period of Muslim aggression, as the Turks made inroads into the Balkans and Central Europe, eventually threatening even Western Europe.

The Dutch police deny that the police officer who killed Rinie Mulder is of Moroccan or Turkish descent. Esther, a Dutch blogger, refers to a post on a Moroccan website saying the police officer is Turkish, not Moroccan. The post has, however, been removed. Yesterday, we reported, relying on sources in Ondiep, that the officer was a Moroccan woman.

Ondiep, a working class neighbourhood in the Dutch town of Utrecht, is in turmoil. After the death last Sunday of Rinie Mulder, a 54-year old indigenous Dutchman who was shot by a police officer, non-immigrant citizens went on a rampage, burning cars, looting shops and arsoning a community centre in “inverted Paris style riots.” According to our sources the police officer who killed Mulder is a woman of Moroccan origin.

The Ondiep residents have been complaining for months about harassment and intimidation by immigrant youths of Moroccan origin. The Dutch mainstream media do not go into much detail about what is going on. Most of them do not mention the ethnicity of the victim and the police officer, though the riots clearly have an ethnic nature.

A quote from the National Geographic website, 28 February 2007

In 2005 data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide “ice caps” near Mars’s south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

[And Jupiter, and Neptune, and Pluto, …]

The decisive battle against Islamic extremists will not be fought in Iraq, but in Europe. It is not in Baghdad but in cities like Antwerp, Belgium, where the future of the West will be decided.

I recently met Marij Uijt den Bogaard, a 49-year-old woman who deserves America's support at least as much as Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.