Geert Wilders is an extraordinarily courageous political leader in the Dutch parilament. He has been relentlessly sounding the alarm about the dangers of Islam throughout Holland and the rest of Europe, in Israel and in the United States. He receives so many death threats from Muslims that he lives in several undisclosed locations, has 24-hour protection and appears in public in Holland mostly on the floor of parliament. He has been honored by many for his courage, including being named "Man of the Year" for 2008 by Front Page Magazine published by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. We have noted his fine work on earlier occasions, such as here, here and here.
In December he was featured at the "Facing Jihad" conference in Jerusalem where he showed the compelling short film Fitna he produced, which uses quotes from the Koran sujperimposed on scenes of Muslim violence. (Fitna can be seen on the website of that conference as well as here.)
For telling the truth about Islam he has now been ordered to stand trial in the Netherlands for "inciting hatred" aganst Muslims by, among other things, making the film Fitna. In 1992 it was an obscure Pakistani-born Muslim who became a Dutchman who was similarly charged (and convicted) for warning the Dutch about the danger of Islam. Now it is a world-prominent member of parliament facing criminal charges for warning his countrymen about the existential threat to their society from the alien ideology of Islam.
Here's what's happened:
On Wednesday, freedom of speech in Europe took a new and devastating turn, as a Dutch appellate court ordered the prosecution of Geert Wilders, parliamentarian and filmmaker, charging him with "inciting hatred and discrimination" against Muslims for his film exposing the threat of radical Islam.
What does it mean?
When members of a democratic country's legislature can be arrested and tried for expressing ideas that some find objectionable, that country's status as a free and fair democracy is in serious doubt.
Read the report and, not just weep for Wilders but for ourselves. We in the United States must come to understand the relentless war that is being waged to subdue the world to Islam. Islm cannot defeat us militarily, as President Obama correctly stated in his Inaugural address, but by a thousand cuts it can prevail.
We can do something:
Defenders of free speech to sign this letter of protest against the Dutch Government.
