By Bruce BawerThe Freedom Party (PVV), read yesterdays press release, is shocked by the Amsterdam Court of Appeals decision to prosecute Geert Wilders for his statements and opinions. Geert Wilders considers this ruling an all-out assault on freedom of speech.
The appalling decision to try Wilders, the Freedom Partys head and the Dutch Parliaments only internationally famous member, for incitement to hatred and discrimination against Islam is indeed an assault on free speech. But no one who has followed events in the Netherlands over the last decade can have been terribly surprised by it. Far from coming out of the blue, this is the predictable next step in a long, shameful process of accommodating Islamand of increasingly aggressive attempts to silence Islams criticson the part of the Dutch establishment.
What a different road the Netherlands might have taken if Pim Fortuyn had lived! Back in the early spring of 2002, the sociologist-turned-politicianwho didnt mince words about the threat to democracy represented by his countrys rapidly expanding sharia enclaveswas riding high in the polls and appeared on the verge of becoming the next prime minister. For his supporters, Fortuyn represented a solitary voice of courage and an embodiment of hope for freedoms preservation in the land of the dikes and windmills. But for the Dutch political class and its allies in the media and academiavariously blinded by multiculturalism, loath to be labeled racists, or terrified of offending MuslimsFortuyn himself was the threat. They painted him as a dangerous racist, a new Mussolini out to tyrannize a defenseless minority. The result: on May 6, 2002, nine days before the election, Fortuyn was gunned down by a far-left activist taken in by the propaganda. The Dutch establishment remained in power. For many Dutchmen, hope died that day.
Fortuyns cause was taken up by journalist, director, and TV raconteur Theo van Gogh, who was at work on a film about Fortuyn when he was slaughtered on a busy Amsterdam street on November 2, 2004. The killer, a young Dutch-born Islamist, had been infuriated by Submission, van Goghs film about Islamic oppression of women. Epitomizing the Dutch elites reaction to the murder was Queen Beatrixs refusal to attend van Goghs funeral. Instead, she paid a friendly visit to a Moroccan community center.
The spotlight then shifted to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the brilliant Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament and cowriter of the script for Submission, who, rejecting the Islam of her birth, had become an eloquent advocate for freedom, especially for the rights of Muslim women facing no less oppression in the Netherlands than they had back in their homelands. Hirsi Ali was lucky: she wasnt murdered, only hounded out of the parliament, and out of the country, by a political establishment that viewed herlike Fortuyn and van Gogh before heras a disruptive presence.
That was in 2006. In that year, as if to demonstrate the gulf between popular and elite views, a poll showed that 63 percent of Dutchmen considered Islam incompatible with modern European life. Yet Piet Hein Donner, Dutch Minister of Justice, insisted that if two-thirds of all Dutchmen wanted to introduce sharia tomorrow . . . it would be a disgrace to say this is not permitted!
With Hirsi Ali abroad, the torch passed to Geert Wilders. At times, it seems that he is the last prominent Dutch figure willing to speak bluntly about the perils of fundamentalist Islam. The same people who demonized Fortuyn have done their best to stifle Wilders. In April 2007, intelligence and security officials called him in and demanded that he tone down his rhetoric on Islam. Last February, the Minister of Justice subjected him to what he described as another hour of intimidation. The announcement that he was making a film about Islam only led his enemies to turn up the heat. Even before Fitna was released early last year, Doekle Terpstra, a leading member of the Dutch establishment, called for mass rallies to protest the movie. Terpstra organized a coalition of political, business, academic, and religious leaders, the sole purpose of which was to try to freeze Wilders out of public debate. Dutch cities are riddled with terrorist cells and crowded with fundamentalist Muslims who cheered 9/11 and idolize Osama bin Laden, but for Terpstra and his political allies, the real problem was the one Member of Parliament who wouldnt shut up. Geert Wilders is evil, pronounced Terpstra, and evil has to be stopped. Fortuyn, van Gogh, and Hirsi Ali had been stopped; now it was Wilderss turn.
But Wilderswho for years now has lived under 24-hour armed guardwould not be gagged. Thus the disgraceful decision to put him on trial. In Dutch Muslim schools and mosques, incendiary rhetoric about the Netherlands, America, Jews, gays, democracy, and sexual equality is routine; a generation of Dutch Muslims are being brought up with toxic attitudes toward the society in which they live. And no one is ever prosecuted for any of this. Instead, a court in the Netherlandsa nation once famous for being an oasis of free speechhas now decided to prosecute a member of the national legislature for speaking his mind. By doing so, it proves exactly what Wilders has argued all along: that fear and sensitivity to a religion of submission are destroying Dutch freedom.
The appeal court in Amsterdam must decide whether the State may ignore protests from neighbours if it shelters politicians under death threats in accommodation near them. The Supreme Court on Friday overturned a verdict by the appeal court in The Hague regarding Ayaan Hirsi Ali's protection.
A number of recent apologies made to the Muslims by non-Muslim leaders clearly indicate that the world has grown increasingly fearful of the Muslim rage. Political Islam, as is obvious by the reactions of the socio-cultural and political institutions in countries of Europe, Britain and the U.S. has come of age. It has been able to install itself in a position from where it can manipulate the host countrys social and political systems to its advantage. The significance of this achievement cant be denied. Political Islams disabling fear has already deprived much of the West of its ability to stand up and defend its values.
Should I as a Muslim be happy about the situation? After all, these apologies and advances made by radical Islam confirm that the Muslims are winning in their jihad against the infidel world. The Judeo-Christian World is on the defensive and has chosen to lay down its arms at the feet of the religious fascists instead of standing up for its ideas about openness, tolerance and freedom.
The Dutch Minister of Justice 