Interview with Fjordman: Europe is the Sick Man of the World

Fjordman was interviewed for the latest issue of the Berlin-based weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit, where his responses were translated into German. Below are excerpts from original English text of his replies, as published at Tundra Tabloids:

I was asked whether it was OK to publish a few of my essays in German, and I said yes. I am currently completing a different kind of book in English called The Curious Civilization, which should be available at some point in 2012. Germany is a very important country for the future of Europe as a whole so it is of great significance to be published there. The title Defending Europe is appropriate in my view because European civilization is going through a low point in its history right now. Today, merely saying positive about the European cultural heritage and the peoples who created it is almost considered a sign of extremism.

I have studied Arabic language at the American University in Cairo and lived in Egypt during the terror attacks of September 11th 2001. I am not sure I would describe this as a turning point since I was already growing skeptical of Islamic culture and mentality before that time, but things certainly escalated after this event.

What shocked me the most, though, was not witnessing how happy many Arabs and Muslims were over the mass murder of thousands of unarmed civilians. What shocked me the most was how Western mass media and the political establishment lied about this fact. 9/11 was in my view clearly an Islamic Jihadist act of war against Western civilization, yet the West was in complete denial about this.

I also worked in Israel and the Palestinian territories as an observer in Hebron in 2002 and 2003 and could there see first-hand how biased, anti-Israeli and pro-Islamic much of the media coverage from this region truly is. I myself narrowly missed a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2003 that was committed by a young Muslim man who was a British citizen. I could literally hear the explosion behind me as I had just left the nice beachfront area where this happened a few minutes earlier. Two of my colleagues were murdered in March 2002 in a Jihadist terror attack by the very Palestinians we were supposed to help. In contrast, I found most Israeli Jews to be friendly, with the partial exception of a few of the most militant settlers.

Read the rest at Tundra Tabloids.