{"id":200,"date":"2009-01-22T09:45:02","date_gmt":"2009-01-22T09:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/01\/defending-geert-wilders.html"},"modified":"2009-01-22T09:45:02","modified_gmt":"2009-01-22T09:45:02","slug":"defending-geert-wilders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/01\/defending-geert-wilders.html","title":{"rendered":"defending Geert Wilders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Incendiary Dutch politician Geert Wilders will be brought to trial for comparing Islam to Nazism<\/a>:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Geert Wilders made headlines in March 2008 for his short-film Fitna<\/em>, which juxtaposed shots of the 9\/11 attacks on the US with quotations from the Quran, <\/em>the text Muslims believe to be divinely revealed.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2007 he had called for a ban on the Quran<\/em> and compared Islam to Nazism.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Amsterdam’s appeals court ordered his prosecution,
\noverruling the public prosecutor who had previously decided against a
\ncriminal trial.<\/p>\n

A
\nsummary of the court’s decision read: “The court considers this so
\ninsulting for Muslims that it is in the public interest to prosecute
\nWilders.<\/p>\n

“The court also considers appropriate criminal prosecution for
\ninsulting Muslim worshippers because of comparisons between Islam and
\nNazism made by Wilders.”<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m no fan of Wilders but this is indeed an affront against free speech. It should be noted though that the West’s own tradition of free speech is a recent invention, and almost entirely an American one. Europe has never been a bastion<\/a> of free speech, with Holocaust denial laws (see the case of David Irving<\/a>), bans on hijab, and opposition to mosque construction<\/a> are just a few prominent examples of the double standard when it comes to “protected” speech<\/a> for Jews and Christians, but not for muslims. <\/p>\n

Personally, I would prefer to see all restrictions speech dropped – the best answer to bad speech is more speech, not less<\/a>. As an American, we can criticize by comparison, but there is nothing profoundly or inherently anti-Western about silencing Wilders. Calling it dhimmitude<\/a> is an excercise in denial; when the same self-styled defenders of Western ideals call for abolition of all speech laws in Europe, then we can take them seriously. <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Incendiary Dutch politician Geert Wilders will be brought to trial for comparing Islam to Nazism: Geert Wilders made headlines in March 2008 for his short-film Fitna, which juxtaposed shots of the 9\/11 attacks on the US with quotations from the Quran, the text Muslims believe to be divinely revealed. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}