Free Speech - Geert Wilders

The Freeing Of Geert Wilders

Posted 06/23/2011 03:58 PM ET

Right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders appears in an Amsterdam court Thursday to hear he is acquitted of charges that his statements about Muslims... View Enlarged Image

Political Correctness: The acquittal, on hate-speech charges, of the Dutch politician who spoke the truth about Islamofascism is a victory for freedom and free speech. The truth may yet keep us free.
Somewhere Voltaire is smiling, for he would have defended to the death the Dutch politician's right to speak his mind about militant Islam and immigration and the threats he felt both posed to his country and democracy at large.
Geert Wilders is a leader in the Dutch Freedom Party who has been a thorn in the side of politically correct Europeans cowered by their increasing Muslim populations into accepting the creeping Islamization of Europe, or Eurabia, as some, including ourselves, have dubbed it.
In March 2008, Wilders posted a film about the Koran, "Fitna," on the Internet. It equated Islam with violence and the Koran with Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf," at least in the sense of the advocacy of obscene violence against humanity and as a blueprint of things to come.
The opening scenes of "Fitna," a Koranic term sometimes translated as "strife," shows a copy of the Koran followed by footage of the attacks on the U.S. on 9/11, followed by London in July 2005 and Madrid in March 2004. Subtle he is not. But neither is he a criminal.
It did not help that Wilders included in the film a scene showing Muslim protesters holding signs reading "God Bless Hitler" that would tend to lend credence to Wilders' thesis. Mention of Hitler and Nazism in any context is a touchy subject in Europe to this day, as is criticism of anything Muslim.
In 2009, the Dutch Court of Appeals ordered a criminal prosecution of Wilders, a member of the Dutch Parliament. "The Amsterdam appeals court has ordered the prosecution of Member of Parliament Geert Wilders for inciting hatred and discrimination, based on comments by him in various media on Muslims and their beliefs," the court said in a statement.
The case began last Oct. 4, but it collapsed after three weeks when a special legal panel ruled the judges may have shown partiality after a string of legal blunders. New judges were then sworn in, and the case was heard again this year.

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One of those blunders was allowing only three of 18 requested defense witnesses to testify, including academics critical of militant Islam. Among the requested defense witnesses was Mohammed Bouyeri, the convicted murderer of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. The defense wanted to prove Wilders' criticisms were true and therefore not an incitement.
Van Gogh, the great-great-grandson of the famous artist, was shot and his throat slit on an Amsterdam street after making the film "Submission." It criticized, many would say accurately, the Islamic world for its harsh treatment of women. But strangely, it was not considered a hate crime.
The presiding judge of the new trial said on Thursday that Wilders' remarks were sometimes "hurtful, shocking (and) offensive," but that they were made in the context of a public debate about Muslim integration and multiculturalism, and therefore not a criminal act. Amen to that.
As Wilders' film shows, his "hate speech" largely amounted to quoting the Koran accurately and reporting the statements of Muslim organizations and their supporters, many of which cannot be repeated here.
Wilders is in fact guilty of nothing but resisting the Islamization of Europe and the attempt to impose Shariah law on the West. Suppressing all criticism of and debate about Islam is part of that move. Free speech and Shariah law are incompatible.
Columnist Mark Steyn felt Wilders' pain in 2008 when he went on trial for "Islamophobia" in Canada. As with Wilders, this consisted largely of quoting Muslim speakers verbatim and then drawing some obvious conclusions. Steyn ultimately prevailed, without civil libertarians warning of any "chilling effect" on public discourse from the experience.
Geert Wilders is once again free to speak his mind. We look forward to his next speeches and films.

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