Archive for January 19th, 2010

Western Civilisation gets its day in court tomorrow - your freedom of speech hangs in the balance

The politically-motivated show trial of Geert Wilders, arguably The Netherlands’ most popular politician, begins tomorrow. Much rests on the outcome. The ‘Openbaar Ministerie’ (‘Public  Ministry’) is bringing him to court over allegations by a group including the ruling body of an Amsterdam mosque, a well-known Dutch stand-up comedian, a left-wing university professor and a lawyer, that he ‘insulted Islam’ when he compared the Qur’an to ‘Mein Kampf’ and suggested that Muslim immigration be halted in the Netherlands.

A technical court ruling last week (where, suspiciously, reporting was prohibited) prevented the prosecution’s case being derailed at the last minute by a challenge from Wilders’ legal team and he will stand trial tomorrow.

For those unfamiliar with the accused (of whom there should be very few in Europe by the end of this week, whatever the outcome of the case), Wilders is the head of the PVV (Party for Freedom), a Dutch Libertarian/Conservative political party – hardly a ‘far right’ organisation, as his leftist opponents and the liberal media often claim  - ‘far-right’ has become a convenient sobriquet applied indiscriminately by the left to those that disagree with them – and which conjures up images of despots, Nazis and facsists. Wilders is nothing of the sort.

He is, however, rather outspoken on a wide variety of issues, including the Islamisation of Europe, free speech and immigration. He is against the accession of Turkey into the EU. Somewhat controversially (and here we do not agree with him), he would like to see the Qur’an banned along with Mein Kampf, which is banned from sale in the Netherlands (but not from possession). We at Un:dhimmi do not think that any book should be banned. Read the rest of this entry »