By Soeren Kern

A mob of some 20 Islamists stormed a debate in Amsterdam that was featuring two Muslim liberals, the Canadian writer and Muslim feminist Irshad Manji and the Dutch-Moroccan Green Left MP Tofik Dibi.

Muslim extremists belonging to the group Sharia4Belgium, which seeks to establish Islamic Sharia law across Europe, yelled "Allahu Akbar" ("Allah is Great") and threatened to break Manji's neck. Waving an Islamist jihadist flag, they then demanded that Manji and Dibi be executed for apostasy.

The December 8 debate on how liberal Muslims can prevent Islam from being hijacked by Muslim extremists was held at the De Baile venue in downtown Amsterdam, and was sponsored by the Brussels-based European Foundation for Democracy. The event resumed after police arrested several of the Islamists.

The incident highlights the increasing frequency with which Muslims are using intimidation tactics - including harassment and even murder - in an effort to silence free speech in Europe and to impose Islam on the continent.

Manji is touring Europe to promote her new book, "Allah, Liberty and Love." She is also the author of "The Trouble With Islam Today," which is critical of mainstream Islam and its deep-seated anti-Semitism.

The confrontation took place just days after a group of ten Dutch-Moroccan Muslim youths threw stones at a Santa Claus in the southwestern Slotervaart neighborhood of Amsterdam, where more than 30% of the population is Moroccan and another 20% is Turkish.

In recent years, Christian festivities celebrating the arrival of "Sinterklaas" to the Netherlands have been cancelled in several cities due to threats and violence by Muslim youths.

In Belgium, 40 members of Sharia4Belgium recently disrupted a speech about Islam by the Dutch author Benno Barnard. The lecture, entitled "The Islam Debate: Long Live God, Down with Allah!" was part of a series of talks about the Enlightenment at Antwerp University.

Sharia4Belgium is a radical Muslim organization that denounces democracy and wants to turn Belgium into an Islamic state. The group has established an Islamic Sharia law court in Antwerp, the second-largest city in Belgium. The objective of the court is to create a parallel Islamic legal system in Belgium that will challenge the state's authority as the enforcer of civil law protections guaranteed by the Belgian constitution.

In France, teachers in schools with a high proportion of Muslim children are being threatened on an almost daily basis by Muslims who object to courses about the Holocaust, the Crusades or evolution, and who demand halal [food permitted under Islamic Sharia law] meals and "reject French culture and its values," according to a report published by the French government.

Muslims are also trying to silence discussion of events related to Israel and the Palestinians, and American military actions in Muslim countries.

"Teachers regularly find that Muslim parents refuse to have their children learn about Christianity," the report says. "Some think it amounts to evangelization." The report also says "anti-Semitism surfaces during courses about the Holocaust, such as inappropriate jokes and refusals to watch films about Nazi concentration camps. Tensions often come from pupils who identify themselves as Muslims."

The report also says that although teachers can discuss the transatlantic slave trade without incidents, they face harsh criticism from Muslim pupils when they teach about the history of slavery within Africa or the Middle East.

During Ramadan, some Muslim students harass others who do not observe the annual daytime fast, the report says. Boys who identify themselves as Muslims and reject French values harass girls who do well in class as "collaborators" with the "dirty French." Some girls ask to be excused from gym or pool sessions because they are not supposed to mix with boys, the study adds.

Elsewhere in France, Muslim youths used stones to attack Roman Catholics who were celebrating a religious event at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Virgin of Santa Cruz in the southern French city of Nîmes.

In Britain, radical Muslims attacked Conservative MP Mike Freer, who was attending a meeting with constituents at a mosque in Finchley in north London on October 28. Freer, who is not Jewish but who is a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia, said the protesters were "aggressive" and that he had been forced to call the commander of the Finchley police department to complain.

Also in London, a Christian employee at Heathrow Airport recently was fired for exposing a campaign of systematic harassment by fundamentalist Muslims.

In Leicester, a gang of Somali Muslim women who assaulted and nearly killed a non-Muslim passer-by in the city center walked free in November after a politically correct judge decided that as Muslims, the women were "not used to being drunk." The Quran prohibits Muslims from consuming alcohol. The judge said: "Those who knock someone to the floor and kick them in the head can expect to go inside [prison], but I'm going to suspend the sentence."

In Denmark, the Danish Islamist group Kaldet til Islam (Call to Islam) has dispatched 24-hour Islamic 'morals police' to enforce Sharia law in parts of Copenhagen. The patrols harass non-Muslims caught drinking alcohol, gambling, going to discothèques or engaging in other activities the group views as running contrary to Islam.

In Sweden, Muslim harassment of Jews has become so commonplace that the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center has advised Jews against traveling there. "We reluctantly are issuing this advisory because religious Jews and other members of the Jewish community there have been subject to anti-Semitic taunts and harassment. There have been dozens of incidents reported to the authorities but have not resulted in arrests or convictions for hate crimes," the center said in a statement.

In the Swedish city of Malmö, Muslim anti-Semitism has become so bad that some 30 Jewish families have left for Stockholm, England or Israel - and more are preparing to go.

Back in Holland, the Dutch-Moroccan MP Khadija Arib has called for Mohamed al-Maghraoui, a controversial Imam (Muslim religious leader), to be banned from the Netherlands because of his support for the forced marriage of nine-year-old girls.

Al-Maghraoui (aka the Pedo Imam) issued a fatwa [religious edict] in Morocco in 2008 saying it is acceptable for girls to marry at the age of nine because the Islamic Prophet Mohammed consummated his marriage to Aisha when she was nine.

Al-Maghraoui was scheduled to attend a five-day conference in December 2011 to celebrate the opening of an extension to the As-Sunnah mosque in The Hague.

As-Sunnah is headed by the Imam Sheik Fawaz Jneid, a Lebanese-born Syrian national who also has a Dutch passport. In November 2004, Fawaz called for the murder of Islam critic Theo van Gogh, a wish that was carried out in Amsterdam a few weeks later by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan.

In a prayer to Allah, Fawaz said: "Cause Van Gogh a disease which all the inhabitants of the earth are unable to cure. Cause him suffering making him long for death. Blind the sight of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, give her brains a cancer. Give her tongue a cancer."

Hirsi Ali, who made a controversial film, Submission, with Van Gogh about women in Islam, said Fawaz cannot be prosecuted because the Dutch legal system is "too rational." She says Dutch courts prefer to uphold the freedom of religion rights enjoyed by Muslims rather than to clamp down on harassment or defamation perpetrated by those same Muslims.

Dutch MP Geert Wilders says the As-Sunnah mosque should be closed down if Al-Maghraoui is allowed to speak. Dutch intelligence has identified the mosque as a radical Salafist center which attracts Muslim youths from all over the Netherlands.

Salafism is a fundamentalist sect within Sunni Islam that espouses a literalist reading of Islamic scriptures and adheres to a conservative and highly regulated puritan lifestyle. Salafism also seeks the destruction of Western democracy, which is to be replaced by a Universal Islamic Caliphate, a worldwide Islamic theocracy regulated by Sharia law.

The As-Sunnah mosque has been at the center of controversy for giving a platform to radical preaching, including its insistence that Muslims should not integrate into Dutch society.

[Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group.]