Solidarity with Ralph Giordano

This is the, so far, last chapter of the Cologne mosque drama. What started as a travesty has developed into a major tragedy in the meantime.

Like many other people critical of Islam, German-Jewish anti-Fascist journalist and writer Ralph Giordano, a Holocaust-survivor now in his 84th year, has been subjected to death threats.

Why? because he, too, had denounced the building of the mosque at Cologne.

This petition takes up his words and arguments. It is online now in English and French as well.

Yours truly is among the initial signatories and reponsible for the English translation. We need the help and support of all courageous and wellmeaning people all over the world.

To: Politicians & Media

We, too say: "No, no and no again!"

Following the murder of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh and the death threats against Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, the Dutch cabaret artist Ewoud Jansen and many others, the Islam-inspired madness has arrived in Germany some time ago already. Muslim fanatics are out to kill Hans-Peter Raddatz, Seyran Ates and Ekin Deligöz and are now targeting Ralph Giordano: The journalist and writer received death threats because he called for "the cancellation of the plans regarding the building of a major mosque in the Cologne suburb of Ehrenfeld, because they are transporting a false image of the real relationship between Muslim minority and the majority of the German society.

Like Ralph Giordano we therefore ask:

- Where are we that we have to check first whether radical Muslims will approve of what we do or leave?
- Where are we that we let religious and other fanatics decide what we are allowed to say and what not in anticipating obedience?
- Where are we that we are caving in to those Islamic ire- and outrage-collectives, obviously retrievable-on-demand by some local Mullahs between Cairo, Iran and Bali, as the Danish "Mohammed cartoon brawl" revealed?

Like Ralph Giordano, we are fed up with the "traditions, customs and habits, which are bastardising any criticism and turn it into insults, but are as quick as extravagant when it comes to name-calling of people of a different faith“. And we, too, are fighting back a "potential blackmailing capacity, which wants to keep us under Islamic supervision and which reaches with its tentacles from the Near- and Middle East right into the heart of Europe."

We therefore stress:

We will not submit freedom of expression to Sharia law!
There is no place anywhere for death threats, antisemitism and Holocaust denial!

We there fore ask politicians and the media:

1. to preserve without trade-off the 200-year-old European achievements of unrestricted personal freedom, freedom of opinion and expression. No person has the right to threaten somebody else with murder because he doesn't like the other person's views;

2. to prosecute without taboo all conditions and circumstances within the Muslim minority that are against the German constitution (Grundgesetz) and therefore inimical to integration, first and foremost the unacceptable status of women;

3. to embark upon a critical examination of those imams and stakeholders who are abusing the liberal framework and tolerance of a free constitution to push through totalitarian views of state and religion within their enclave, who are undermining the conventions of rule of law and constitution, who are teaching hesperophobic indoctrination in line with Sharia law and who reject the standards of democracy such as co-education, sex-education, gym classes, school trips and the equality of the sexes;

4. to embark upon a critical examination of the Quran and the biography of Mohammed;

5. to support all secular Muslims who intend to pave the way to integration by means of reform;

6. to tackle the official integration-, antisemitism- and right-wing-extremism policy in Germany on state- and federal level single-minded- and openly.

We, too say: "No, no and no again!"

Cross-posted at Roncesvalles and MNM.