Stop the Trial of Geert Wilders

[Warrior-Mentor]

Stop the Trial of Geert Wilders
A Dutch court is forced to compare Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' and the Quran.
By LEON DE WINTER
January 26, 2010

What started as a trial against Geert Wilders for alleged Islamophobia has nearly turned into its opposite: a historical case about the message of the Quran.

The Amsterdam court trying the controversial Dutch politician is now preoccupied with the question of whether this book [the koran], sacred to more than a billion believers, can be compared to one of the most vile publications in the history of Western civilization—Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

What could possibly go wrong?

In his writing and speeches, Mr. Wilders has found these two works to be similar in terms of their anti-Semitism and incitement to hatred, and has thus called for a publishing ban on the Quran similar to the one in place for "Mein Kampf." This is what triggered Mr. Wilders's prosecution for discriminatory and insulting remarks against Muslims and Islam. The Dutch politician, though, denies having insulted Muslims. He insists his focus is on radical Islam and the Quran, which he considers to be not only a religious text but also a political pamphlet encouraging Muslims to discriminate against and, if necessary, kill Jews, Christians, apostates and other unbelievers. That's why Mr. Wilders claims the right to criticize and condemn Islam.

Following complaints brought by mostly Muslim and radical leftist activists, Amsterdam's district attorney in 2008 at first found no legal basis for prosecuting Mr. Wilders. Prosecutors were forced to change course only after an activist appeals court last year ordered Mr. Wilders's prosecution—basically condemning the politician before any trial could even begin and before Mr. Wilders had a chance to defend himself. The court's unusual intervention illustrates the Dutch confusion about the conflict between two essential rights: the right to free speech and the right to protection from discrimination.

[COMMENT: Isn't it ironic that, in conducting this trial, the Dutch are effectively defending islam's right to discriminate?]

According to polls, Mr. Wilders's Freedom Party, a libertarian-conservative movement with populist tendencies, is currently the most popular political party in the Netherlands. If elections were held today, Mr. Wilders would be a serious contender for the position of prime minister. Mr. Wilders's detractors are mistaken if they think a conviction would hurt him politically.

The trial is a win-win situation for him:

- If the court rules to restrict Mr. Wilders's right to free speech, many Dutchmen will interpret this as an effort by the politically correct establishment to limit the growing strength of the Freedom Party, which would widen its appeal to many voters.

- If, on the other hand, the prosecution fails to prove that Mr. Wilders has purposely insulted Muslims because of their religion, Mr. Wilders's views will be seen as vindicated. Again, he will gain politically.

More importantly, Mr. Wilders's prosecution may in the end inadvertently create a crisis between the Netherlands and the Islamic world.

On trial is not so much Geert Wilders, but the Holy Book of Islam. On Jan. 20, the first day of the case, Mr. Wilders' defense team presented the court with a list of expert witnesses. It is indicative of his strategy. The expert witnesses, a group of internationally renowned academics on the one hand and, on the other, radical Islamists (among them Mohammed Bouyeri, the killer of Theo van Gogh, and the influential Iranian Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, an outspoken anti-Semite and religious mentor of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad), are requested to testify about the Quran's message and Mr. Wilders's comparison of the Quran to "Mein Kampf."

As Mr. Wilders stated on the first and, so far only, session in court, if his statements about the Quran and "Mein Kampf" are correct, he cannot be convicted for telling the truth. So Mr. Wilders's defense team will concentrate on the extreme and violent paragraphs in the Quran, and compare them to paragraphs in "Mein Kampf."

The prosecution did not object to calling the witnesses for the purpose of shedding light on the Quran and "Mein Kampf" and only objected to the high number of witnesses named (17). The court will thus most likely allow most witnesses on the list to testify. Without doubt, there are many anti-Jewish remarks in the Quran. According to some researchers, there may be more of these in the Quran than in "Mein Kampf." So it is quite conceivable that the court will judge that Geert Wilders was within his right to compare the Quran to "Mein Kampf." Anything is possible in this absurd trial.

The three judges hearing the case—no doubt decent, modest, postmodern Dutchmen with a minimum knowledge of Islam and its culture and traditions—will now be forced to debate the nature of a religious text, something that should have never been heard in the court of an enlightened society. In front of the judges and television cameras, the ancient founding text of an entire civilization will be criticized and weighed against one of the most inhumane texts written in the 20th century—without any doubt a deep insult to Muslims, radical or not.

There is a way out. The district attorney's office has complied with the appeals court's order to prosecute Mr. Wilders. The trial has started. It should now ask the court for an acquittal. This preposterous trial needs to be stopped right now.

Mr. de Winter is a Dutch novelist and adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute.

SOURCE:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...europe_opinion

[Team Sergeant]

So much for European "Free Speech".

This is how "socialists" treat "Free Speech", and it's coming to America, just ask your union rep.

Team Sergeant

[Warrior-Mentor]

Have you been reading Mark Steyn?

http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Out-Isl...4606485&sr=8-2

[dadof18x'er]

Originally Posted by Warrior-Mentor

According to polls, Mr. Wilders's Freedom Party, a libertarian-conservative movement with populist tendencies, is currently the most popular political party in the Netherlands. If elections were held today, Mr. Wilders would be a serious contender for the position of prime minister. Mr. Wilders's detractors are mistaken if they think a conviction would hurt him politically.

The trial is a win-win situation for him:

wow we need one of these over here for the SCOTUS

[Team Sergeant]

Originally Posted by Warrior-Mentor

Have you been reading Mark Steyn?

http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Out-Isl...4606485&sr=8-2

No, I think Mark Steyn has been reading Professionalsoldiers.com boards.....

[Utah Bob]

Originally Posted by Team Sergeant

No, I think Mark Steyn has been reading Professionalsoldiers.com boards.....

It can only make him a better man.

[Warrior-Mentor]

On Trial for Telling the Truth
By Douglas Murray
January 28th, 2010

There is nothing hyperbolic in stating that a trial which has just started in Holland will have unparalleled significance for the future of Europe. It is not just about whether our culture will survive, but whether we are even allowed to state the fact that it is being threatened.

The trial of Geert Wilders has garnered hardly any attention in the mainstream press here. Fortunately the blogosphere can correct some of this.

Wilders is a Dutch MP and leader of Holland’s fastest-growing party, the Party for Freedom. Just a few years ago he was the sole MP for his party. The latest polls show that his party could win the biggest number of seats of any party in Holland when the voters next go to the polls.

His stances have clearly chimed with the Dutch people. They include an end to the era of mass immigration, an end to cultural relativism, and an end to the perceived suborning of European values to Islamic ones. For saying this, and more, he has for many years had to live under round-the-clock security protection. Which you would have thought proves the point to some extent.

Now the latest attempt of the Dutch ruling class to keep Wilders from office has begun. Last week, apparently because of the number of complaints they have received (trial by vote anyone?) the trial of Wilders began.

The Dutch courts charge that Wilders ‘on multiple occasions, at least once, (each time) in public, orally, in writing or through images, intentionally offended a group of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion’.

I’m sorry?

Whoa there, just a minute.

The man’s on trial because he ‘offended a group of people’?

I get offended by all sorts of people. I get offended by very fat people. I get offended by very thick people. I get offended by very sensitive people. I get offended by the crazy car-crash of vowels in Dutch verbs. But I don’t try to press charges.

Yet, crazily, this is exactly what is going on now in a Dutch courtroom. If found guilty of this Alice-in-Wonderland accusation of ‘offending a group of people’, Wilders faces up to two years in prison.

If anyone doubts the surreal nature of the proceedings now going on they should simply look through the summons which is available in an English translation here. It shows that Wilders is on trial for his film Fitna. And for various things he has said in articles and interviews in the Dutch press.

Now some people liked Fitna and some people didn’t. That’s a matter of choice. But by any previous interpretation it is not the job of courts in democratic countries to become film-critics. In fact it would create a very bad precedent. I thought the latest Alec Baldwin film stank. But I don’t think (though the temptation lingers) Baldwin should go to prison for it.

I’ve seen Fitna a number of times. Recently in the House of Lords, at a meeting Wilders couldn’t attend because our then Home Secretary temporarily decided he shouldn’t even come into this country. And I’ve just watched it again. And you can do so, too. It keeps getting pirated on YouTube but I think this is a good link here.

WATCH FITNA:

PART 1: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgQdZgojOFI
Alternate link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kcev1K-NOc

PART 2: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eIgMSAIIG0

Parts of Fitna – which is a compilation of documentary footage – are very disturbing. And very offensive indeed. The clips of Muslim clerics calling for the murder of infidels. Very offensive. The clips of Muslims holding banners saying ‘God bless Hitler’. Very offensive. The clip of a three-year-old Muslim girl indoctrinated and brain-washed to describe Jews as ‘Apes and Pigs’. Very offensive. The passage of the Koran, Surah 47, verse 4: ‘Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them.’ Very offensive.

Just to confirm – I find all these things very offensive. But Wilders didn’t say them. He is being tried for pointing out the fact that some – in some cases many – Muslims do. If there are to be prosecutions they should be of the clerics and leaders who advocate this nightmarish version of Islam. But not of Wilders.

There are quotes from Wilders in the summons, though. It states for instance that he has said, and he has (I love the detective-work the court implies when citing op-eds from national newspapers): ‘Those Moroccan boys are really violent. They beat up people because of their sexual orientation. I have never used violence.’ This is true. As a number of gay Dutch men and women can attest, Muslim youths are behind a rise in homophobic attacks in what used to be the most gay-friendly country in the world. Bruce Bawer and others have written about this at length. It is very disturbing. It is also a fact. There is no sanity at all in a court trying a man for saying something true.

Wilders is also being tried for saying things which some Muslims deem to be rude about the Koran. Another dangerous precedent. Will the Dutch courts now come after Ricky Gervais for the rude things he says about the Bible in his show Animals (on sale in Holland)?

Why the special laws for hurt Muslim feelings?
Just wait till the others get on the band-wagon! There won’t be room in the courts to prosecute the murderers and muggers. They’ll be too full up with the religious. Dutch Calvinist pastors madly petitioning for the extradition of Billy Connolly.

The whole thing is so farcical that it would be funny. If it weren’t for the fact that it is real. The most popular elected politician in Holland is on trial for saying things which the Dutch people are clearly, in large part, in agreement with. Things which, even if you don’t agree with them, must be able to be said.

Whichever way the verdict goes, it can’t do anything but good for Wilders’s poll ratings. But it is a terrible day for democracy. A political class so intent on criminalising the opinions of its own people cannot last very much longer.


SOURCE:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/do...ing-the-truth/

[Warrior-Mentor]

SOURCE 1:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/02/wi...trial-i-c.html

SOURCE 2:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE6120ME20100203

[Warrior-Mentor]

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 03, 2010
The Would-Be Witnesses
by Baron Bodissey
Below is the translated text of a slide show from De Volkskrant.

Each of the witnesses that Geert Wilders planned to call in his trial is briefly profiled here. Many thanks to our Flemish correspondent VH for the translation:

The 18 people Geert Wilders and Bram Moszkovicz wanted to call as witnesses:

Dr. Wafa Sultan became famous when she criticized Muslims in an interview on the Iranian channel Al Jazeera because they treat non-Muslims differently from Muslims. Her latest book is called “A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Radical Islam”. The court has approved the request by Wilders to call Wafa Sultan as witness.

Dr. Simon AdmiraalSimon Admiraal received his doctorate as an Arabist from Hans Jansen. He does research on radicalization in Arabic sermons. In the newspaper De Volkskrant he wrote the opinion articles “No integration, thanks to the headscarf brigade” and “Sharia contains every must, may, and may not of Allah”. The court has approved the request by Wilders to call Simon Admiraal as witness.

Dr. Hans JansenHans Jansen is known for his critical remarks about Islam. He compiled the book “End struggle: The final clash between the liberal West and traditional Islam” together with contributors such as Paul Cliteur, Mat Herben and Robert Spencer. The court has approved the request by Wilders to call Hans Jansen as witness.

Dr. Robert SpencerRobert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch and author of “The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion” (2006). Wilders has not been allowed to call Robert Spencer as a witness.

Dr. Andrew BostomThe Arabist published his book “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism” and the essay “Jihad means holy war.” Wilders has not been allowed to call Andrew Bostom as a witness.

Dr. Afshin Ellian Opinion writer warns against “Islamofascism”, political Islam, which according to him threatens the democratic rule of law. Ellian is a columnist for the newspaper NRC and blogs weekly for Elsevier. Wilders has not been allowed to call Afshin Ellian as a witness.

Prof. Theo de Roos is Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure and wrote about the Wilders case in the article “Enterprise and Criminal Law: Amsterdam Court interferes in political debate, the case of Wilders”. Wilders has not been allowed to call Theo de Roos as a witness.

Bill French, Director of Center for the Study of Political Islam in Tennessee, is cited in several blogs that are critical of Islam. His research showed that Muslims worldwide have killed 120 million people. Wilders has not been allowed to call Bill French as a witness.

Prof. Sam Solomon, ex-Muslim, Director of Fellowship of Faith for Muslims, expert in the area of Sharia Law and author of “The Mosque Exposed”. Wilders has not been allowed to call Sam Solomon as a witness.

Prof. Tom Zwart, head of the School of Human Rights Research. Zwart wrote in Dutch Jurist magazine the article “Wilders: Yes, allowed!”. Wilders has not been allowed to call Tom Zwart as a witness.

Prof. Raphael Israeli, author of the books “The Spread of Islamikaze Terrorism in Europe: The Third Islamic Invasion” and “The Islamic Challenge in Europe”. Wilders has not been allowed to call Raphael Israeli as a witness.

Judge Andras Sajo, judge at the European Court of Human Rights, disagreed with the ruling of the court that convicted National Front Politician Feret of discrimination. Sajo favors the freest possible debate, without judges interfering. Wilders has not been allowed to call Andras Sajo as a witness.

Prof. Henny Sackers in 2007 commissioned by the Minister of Justice to do research on blasphemy, and published “Blasphemy, discrimination expressions and hatred because of religion and hate statements: an inventory study”. Wilders has not been allowed to call Henny Sackers as a witness.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mohammed Bouyeri is the murderer of Theo van Gogh. Wilders has not been allowed to call Mohammed Bouyeri as a witness.

Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi said in 2000 that the death penalty for Salman Rushdie will never expire. Wilders has not been allowed to call Mohammad Yazdi as a witness.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati Wilders has not been allowed to call Mohammad Ahmad Jannati as a witness.

Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi is an influential Islamic scholar who in 1990 wrote that the Islamic revival movement is an organized effort to make the Islam once again the leading force for society and to install Sharia. Wilders has not been allowed to call Yusuf Al-Qaradawi as a witness.

Imam Fawaz Jneid cursed Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh in a sermon several weeks before the murder of Theo van Gogh. Fawaz would have issued a fatwa on the Amsterdam District chairman Ahmed Marcouch by calling him a “Munafiq”, someone who poses as a Muslim but does not believe. Wilders has not been allowed to call Fawaz Jneid as a witness.

SOURCE:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/20...ml#readfurther

[Warrior-Mentor]

An announcement from the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV):

Dutch politician Geert Wilders launches websites on political trial
Wednesday February 3rd 2010 Dutch politician Geert Wilders launches two websites on the political trial against him and the freedom of speech. From now on both the Dutch (www.wildersproces.nl) and the international public (www.wildersontrial.com) are able to keep up with the trials' proceedings.

Both websites not only include the latest news on the trial but also provide background information on the trials' participants, the summons, the cause and the importance of this trial for freedom of speech in the Netherlands and -possibly- for the whole of Europe.

Geert Wilders: "This trial is not just about me. It is about the future of freedom of speech in the Netherlands. The outcome of this trial affects the freedom of all Dutch citizens. With these websites, I want to make it possible for people to follow the latest developments concerning the trial."

Links to both websites:

· www.wildersontrial.com (International version)

· www.wildersproces.nl (Dutch version)