Europe’s Islam Debate Erupts as Paris Killers at Large

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK: The bodies haven’t been buried and the killers are on the loose, but that didn’t prevent anti-Islam politicians across Europe from seizing on yesterday’s massacre in Paris.

The rhetoric varied in intensity across the European Union’s 28 countries, each with its own religious and social phobias, many gripped by an economic recession that makes convenient scapegoats out of immigrants -- especially those with veils, turbans and non-white skin.

“I wish my daughter will be free tomorrow to go around without a veil and without any fears,” Matteo Salvini, head of Italy’s anti-immigration Northern League, said on Twitter. Nigel Farage, leader of the U.K. Independence Party, spoke on LBC radio of a “Fifth Column” gnawing away at Britain and “a really rather gross policy of multi-culturalism.” Geert Wilders, head of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, said it is time to “de-Islamize our country.” » | James G. Neuger | Thursday, January 08, 2015