The trial of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders on hate speech charges begins this week. The truth is on trial here, not Wilders. Because as we have seen in Canada before human rights commissions, the truth is no defense. Truth is illegal in European courts.
This is another story you probably do not have a clue about if you rely on mainstream media for your news. But it will one day be in history books as a turning point, marking the time when Europe came to its senses and reclaimed her western, Judeo-Christian roots and fundamental freedoms or marking a victory for Shariah and the surrender of the west to a pernicious political form of Islam.
Please read it.
Clare M. Lopez:
When Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders goes on trial this week in the
Netherlands, he will stand alone before a Dutch court. But make no mistake: it
is the very principle of free speech which hangs in the balance there. Brought up on charges of inciting hatred, Wilders is one of the few leaders anywhere in the Western world who dares to denounce a supremacist Islamic doctrine that commands its faithful to jihad and terror against non-believers. As he showed so honestly in his courageous film, ‘Fitna,’ a system of pluralist, tolerant, liberal democracy is fundamentally incompatible with literal, textual Islam as presented on the pages of the Qur’an.
Increasingly, Wilders’ fellow countrymen and lovers of individual liberty under rule of man-made law across Europe are responding to his call to confront those who would follow the way of Islamic jihad. We all are beginning to understand that Geert Wilders is Everyman—every man and woman who believes in the freedom to speak one’s mind, to express truth as he sees it without fear of repression or prosecution. Free speech means nothing if it does not include the right to offend, and no belief system, not Islam and not any other, can be exempt. To speak the truth is no crime—but to rise up in gratuitous violence at the sound of truth, however offensive, ought to be.
Daniel Pipes:
Although I disagree with Wilders about Islam (I respect the religion but
fight Islamists with all I have), we stand shoulder-to-shoulder against this
lawsuit. I reject the criminalization of political differences and the attempted thwarting of a political movement through the courts. Accordingly, the Middle East Forum’s Legal Project has worked on Wilders’ behalf, raising substantial
funds for his defense and helping in other ways.
Wilders today represents all hose Westerners who cherish their civilization. The outcome of his trial has implications for us all.
David B. Harris
There are serious worries that, underlying the Dutch prosecution, is a wish
to silence someone who is embarrassing governing politicians wishing to
ingratiate themselves with the increasing numbers of fundamentalist Dutch
Muslims and mosques. There is also suspicion that anything less than
highly-visible state-persecution of Wilders could lead to Islamist assaults on Dutch interests, at home and abroad, similar to those that cost the Danes so heavily during the Mohammed Cartoon Affair. Genuine human rights activists worldwide, are mustering to Wilders’ side, in the growing conviction that Dutch law is being put to uses contrary to the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and more in line with sharia law standards and
sensibilities.
An indication of possible caprice in the matter, comes from a startling statement attributed to authorities:“It is irrelevant whether Wilder’s witnesses might prove Wilders’ observations to be correct”, the ‘Openbaar Ministerie’ stated, “what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal”. … (http://www.sappho.dk/shrugging-off-spinoza.htm)
Another invitation to disbelief is the fact that, despite the manifest risks to Wilders’
life, the Dutch government is refusing to try the case in a secure courtroom of
the sort that was provided for van Gogh’s Islamist killer. This has driven
columnist Mark Steyn to raise a thought that, in other days and times, would
have been inconceivable: “You’d almost get the impression it would suit them if
he failed to survive till the verdict.” (http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?
David Yarushalemi:
Wilders’ crime is not his speech. It is his commitment to the truth of
existence of a Dutch people and nation grounded in Christianity. That truth
violates the principles of the Enlightenment now engraved in the tablets of a
Western world where the only truth permitted men in the public sphere is a
multicultural pluralism devoid of any truthful content but that there is no
truthful content.
To that breach of peace, Wilders is guilty. To be sure, his
legal team will defend him in the context of the Enlightenment’s new truth. They
will argue a technical compliance with the new hate crimes by claiming that he
criticized a scripture not Muslims. They will argue that he called for no
violent acts or discrimination only peaceful and lawful responses to a violent
threat. This defense will echo meaninglessly within the judicial chambers.
Wilders will be found guilty as charged and, given the law as written, he is
guilty.
The only rational defense to the charges is that the Dutch statutes
which Wilders is accused of violating are themselves a violation of what it
means to be a Dutchman. If that defense fails, there is no such thing as a
Dutchman and in time there will only be Muslimen in the Netherlands. And, with
that, the Enlightenment will have reached its necessary end.
And of course Mark Steyn:
A couple of years back, the novelist Martin Amis went to see Tony Blair and
brought up the European demographic scenarios of my book. When the British
Prime Minister got together with Continental leaders, Mr Amis wondered, was this
topic part of “the European conversation”? Mr Blair replied, with disarming
honesty, “It’s a subterranean conversation.” “We know what that means,” wrote Amis. “The ethos of relativism finds the demographic question so saturated in revulsions that it is rendered undiscussable.”
Geert Wilders is on trial for wanting to discuss it. The European political class will not permit this – even though what is “undiscussable” in polite society is a statement of the numbingly obvious if you stroll through Amsterdam and Rotterdam, not to mention Antwerp, Clichy-sous-Bois, Malmo, or any old Yorkshire mill town. The Dutch establishment is effectively daring the citizenry: “Who ya gonna believe – the
state-enforced multicultural illusions or your lyin’ eyes?” Lest you be tempted
to call their bluff, the enforcers are determined to make the price of dissent
too high.
In the Low Countries, a pattern is discernible. Whenever politicians seek to move the conversation from the “subterranean” to the surface, they are either banned (Begium’s Vlaams Blok), forced into exile (Aayan Hirsi Ali) or killed (Pym Fortuyn). Given that the court provided greater security to Theo van Gogh’s killer than to Mr Wilders, you might almost get the impression that the authorities are indifferent as to which of these fates consumes him.
Behind this disgraceful prosecution lies a simple truth that the Dutch establishment cannot tell its people – that, unless something changes, their nation will become more and more Muslim and, very soon, slip past the point of no return. They understand the tensions between their ever more assertive Muslim population and an aging “native” working class, but they believe that the problem can be managed by placing “the European conversation” – the non-subterranean conversation – within ever narrower constraints, and criminalizing any opinions outside those bounds. Some of them are blinkered and stupid enough to think that they need to do this in order to save the tolerant multicultural society from “right wingers” like Wilders. In fact, all they are doing is hastening the rate at which their society will be delivered into the hands of the avowedly intolerant and unicultural. In its death throes, Eutopia has decided to smash the lights of liberty.
