Flanders is a land of cathedrals and belfries, not mosques and minarets. The Flemish identity is linked to democracy and Islam clashes with our idea of a democracy.

In addition to rejecting Islamic rules and laws and endorsing our norms and values, it is of course also necessary that people speak Dutch in order to be eligible for naturalization or residence on our territory. And the latter of course applies to all newcomers, not just Muslim immigrants. Otherwise it will be impossible to become part of our society and community. In any case, signing such a declaration has mainly symbolic value, and is therefore no guarantee of successful assimilation.

Islam is a civilisation incompatible with the principles of France.

The analysis is clear, we have a great problem with Islam, in the Netherlands too. The solution is not so complicated; what is missing are political guts and a feeling of urgency. Immigration from Islamic countries should be forbidden. We must learn to be intolerant with the intolerant, in the street, in the mosque, in court. We must answer hatred and violence by terrorists with exclusion and intolerance and show who the boss in the Netherlands is.

Muslims demand what they call "respect". And this is how we give them respect. Our elites are willing to give in. To give up. In my own country we have gone from calls by one cabinet member to turn Muslim holidays into official state holidays, to statements by another cabinet member, that Islam is part of Dutch culture, to an affirmation by the Christian-Democratic attorney general that he is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey. Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behaviour, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs. ... I call the perpetrators "settlers". Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.

Islam and freedom are not compatible. You see it in almost every country where it dominates. There is a total lack of freedom, civil society, rule of law, middle class; journalists, gays, apostates — they are all in trouble in those places. And we import it.

‘It must be asserted firmly,’...‘no matter what the Ulema say, that he who sincerely affirms that he is a Muslim, is a Muslim; no one has the right to question his beliefs and no one has the right to excommunicate him. That dread weapon, the fatwa of takfir, is a ridiculous anachronism. It recoils on the author, without admonishing or reforming the errant soul. Belief is a matter of conscience, and this is the age which recognizes freedom of conscience in matters of faith. What may be said after proper analysis is that a certain person’s opinions are wrong, but not that “he is a Kafir.”‘

Similar is also the way the French-speaking Belgians and the Indian Muslims have managed to confirm their privileges through legislation and the creation of institutions. Thus, the bolts in the Belgian Constitution to “protect” the numerical minority and prevent the majority from ever acting like a majority, or the notion of “secularism” and the Article 30 protecting only minority institutions in the Indian Constitution. For the majority, there are institutions rewarding pro-minority opinions, such as the King Baudouin Foundation c.q. the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.... A difference is of course the nature of the opponent:... Islam is intrinsically anti-Pagan and hence anti-Hindu. The Indian Muslims have killed a few million Hindus within living memory, whereas the occasion when the French killed a handful of Flemish lies centuries in the past. Or to revert that: the Hindus are being tested a lot harder than the Flemish for their patience with the other community.

Muhammad isn't sacred to me. I don't blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings. I live under French law. I don't live under Quranic law.

You can't stop people having places of worship. That, in itself, is discriminatory. Democracy and Islam can live together. It's not Islam that's the problem, it's extreme elements within the Muslim community. Those elements develop because vulnerable young men come to believe inspirational leaders with extreme views.

Equating the Muslim personal law, in its present local state, to the Quran and Hadith, describing it as a wholly revealed or inspired law, and declaring that not an iota of the existing principles can be changed, only exposes the ignorance of Islamic values, Islamic religion and Islamic jurisprudence. Attempting to distort facts about the recent reform of personal law in the Muslim countries cannot do any good. Throwing mud on those who have progressive tendencies and talk of reform of the Muslim personal law, or making contemptuous remarks about their sincerity and wisdom, cannot help either. Instead of trying to conceal the realities, the Muslims must face them. If after having been practised in India in an uncontrolled way for tens of centuries, the Muslim personal law is found being misused and misapplied and consequently lagging behind the social progress in the country, there is nothing in it to be ashamed of. Instead of being stubborn or obstinate about it, the situation has to be duly appreciated, and made good... It is no sensible argument that any reform of the Muslim personal law would amount to interference in religious freedom and affect the cultural identity of Muslims. If the Muslim personal law is codified and reformed—men are restrained from pronouncing a divorce arbitrarily, women's rights in family life are enlarged, and orphaned grandchildren of a deceased Muslim are allowed to share the latter's heritage along with other heirs—how is the religious freedom or cultural identity of Muslims going to be affected?... It is irrelevant for cultural identity whether a Muslim can torture his first wife by contracting a bigamous marriage against her wishes and without necessity, or a wife can tease her husband throughout his life by exploiting his inability to pay dower. These and the other drawbacks in the existing personal law cannot be considered essential ingredients of the Muslim culture...

To insist that the Muslim personal law prevailing in India should be preserved as it is amounts to insisting on the retention of certain legal rigidities, social inequalities, uncalled for discrepancies and undesirable hardships,'... 'Do these features, one may ask, behove the followers of that great religion that was Islam?

Firstly I am Muslim. I am an Indian in the second number. If any law clashes with the ideology of Islam, then I am with Islam. I am not ready to abide by the constitution or law. We are not loyal to the country, but we are the leaders of it. Dogs are faithfuls.

Some people are prone to confuse Islam with its victims, that is, the Muslims, and condemn the latter at the same time as they come to know the crudities of the former. This is a very serious confusion, which should be avoided by all those who believe in building up a broad-based human brotherhood as opposed to narrow, sectarian, self-centred, and chauvinistic nationalism or communalism.