Geert Wilders' important victory
Geert Wilders is Dutch, not Canadian. And his acquittal this week on hate-speech charges was decided by a court in the Netherlands, not Canada. Nevertheless, his case deserves close scrutiny in our own country, because it points the way toward the correct balance between free speech and multiculturalism in all nations.
Mr. Wilders is perhaps the best-known third-party political leader in the world. That's not only because his populist Freedom Party holds the balance of power in the Netherlands' minority government, but because he has been full-throated in his denunciation of the threat to liberal values posed by unassimilated Muslim immigrants -a problem that most other Western politicians have dared not tackle.
Central to Mr. Wilders' viewpoint is the idea that Islam -in the way it is presented in the Koran and interpreted by fundamentalists -is a political ideology as much as a religion, and that this ideology is fundamentally incompatible with modern Western liberal values such as pluralism, feminism and gay rights.
"There is no 'moderate' or 'immoderate' Islam," he recently told a National Post reporter in an interview. "Islam is Islam, and that's it. This is the Islam of the Koran. Now, you can certainly make a distinction among the people. There are moderate Muslims -who are the majority in our Western societies -and nonmoderate Muslims. But Islam itself has only one form. The totalitarian ideology contained in the Koran has no room for moderation. If you really look at what the Koran says, in fact, you could argue that 'moderate' Muslims are not Muslims at all. It tells us that if you do not act on even one verse, then you are an apostate."
Mr. Wilders also has suggested that the Netherlands halt the immigration of Muslims until such time as it can assimilate those who already have arrived.
It was on the basis of remarks such as these -and, in particular, his 2008 film Fitna, which juxtaposed pages from the Koran with images of terrorism, women in burkas and radical Muslim demonstrators -that Dutch complainants launched a hatespeech case against Mr. Wilders. On Thursday, that case was dismissed. Marcel van Oosten, the presiding judge, declared that Mr. Wilders' comments were "crude and denigrating" -but also that such "statements are acceptable within the context of the public debate."
From across the Atlantic, we applaud the Dutch court's judgment. And we hope this precedent influences the development of jurisprudence in the field of hate-speech law globally.
In Canada, it is difficult to secure a criminal hate-speech conviction under Section 319 of our Criminal Code. And generally speaking, only the most repellant hatemongers, such as Alberta public-school teacher James Keegstra, have been convicted. But the standards used by our human-rights tribunals to launch investigations are much looser; and these investigations have swept up men, such as Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant, whose pronouncements about radical Islam have been quite mild compared to those of Mr. Wilders.
As we see it, the only people who ever should be targeted in hate-speech prosecutions are those who (1) communicate clear and explicit hatred against people belonging to an identifiable racial, ethnic, religious or sexual group; and (2) intend such communication as an inducement to violence against this group. Nothing that Mr. Wilders said rises to this level.
In fact, a close reading of Mr. Wilders' comments over the years shows that he does not hate Muslims per se. What he dislikes is Islam, which he likens to a dangerous and violent cult. Some may see this as a distinction without a difference, but there actually is an enormous difference: Classic hate-mongers -KKK racists, and anti-Semitic neo-Nazis, for instance -believe that Jews and blacks are debased and inferior on a genetic level. Mr. Wilders, on the other hand, has made it clear that he has no problem with Muslims who reject a literal reading of the Koran and assimilate into Western society.
Had Mr. Wilders been convicted of hate speech, the message from the court would have been that Dutch citizens are proscribed not only from expressing hatred of people, but also hatred of certain cultures and ideologies -in particular, those cultures and ideologies that happen to be embedded within religious-faith traditions.
That would be a very dangerous road for any Western society to go down, for it would effectively put a gag on every intellectual, pundit and politician seeking to protect Western values from the greatest current threat to the liberal tradition. Mr. Wilders has therefore scored a victory not only for himself, but also for intellectual liberty.
Mr. Wilders is perhaps the best-known third-party political leader in the world. That's not only because his populist Freedom Party holds the balance of power in the Netherlands' minority government, but because he has been full-throated in his denunciation of the threat to liberal values posed by unassimilated Muslim immigrants -a problem that most other Western politicians have dared not tackle.
Central to Mr. Wilders' viewpoint is the idea that Islam -in the way it is presented in the Koran and interpreted by fundamentalists -is a political ideology as much as a religion, and that this ideology is fundamentally incompatible with modern Western liberal values such as pluralism, feminism and gay rights.
"There is no 'moderate' or 'immoderate' Islam," he recently told a National Post reporter in an interview. "Islam is Islam, and that's it. This is the Islam of the Koran. Now, you can certainly make a distinction among the people. There are moderate Muslims -who are the majority in our Western societies -and nonmoderate Muslims. But Islam itself has only one form. The totalitarian ideology contained in the Koran has no room for moderation. If you really look at what the Koran says, in fact, you could argue that 'moderate' Muslims are not Muslims at all. It tells us that if you do not act on even one verse, then you are an apostate."
Mr. Wilders also has suggested that the Netherlands halt the immigration of Muslims until such time as it can assimilate those who already have arrived.
It was on the basis of remarks such as these -and, in particular, his 2008 film Fitna, which juxtaposed pages from the Koran with images of terrorism, women in burkas and radical Muslim demonstrators -that Dutch complainants launched a hatespeech case against Mr. Wilders. On Thursday, that case was dismissed. Marcel van Oosten, the presiding judge, declared that Mr. Wilders' comments were "crude and denigrating" -but also that such "statements are acceptable within the context of the public debate."
From across the Atlantic, we applaud the Dutch court's judgment. And we hope this precedent influences the development of jurisprudence in the field of hate-speech law globally.
In Canada, it is difficult to secure a criminal hate-speech conviction under Section 319 of our Criminal Code. And generally speaking, only the most repellant hatemongers, such as Alberta public-school teacher James Keegstra, have been convicted. But the standards used by our human-rights tribunals to launch investigations are much looser; and these investigations have swept up men, such as Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant, whose pronouncements about radical Islam have been quite mild compared to those of Mr. Wilders.
As we see it, the only people who ever should be targeted in hate-speech prosecutions are those who (1) communicate clear and explicit hatred against people belonging to an identifiable racial, ethnic, religious or sexual group; and (2) intend such communication as an inducement to violence against this group. Nothing that Mr. Wilders said rises to this level.
In fact, a close reading of Mr. Wilders' comments over the years shows that he does not hate Muslims per se. What he dislikes is Islam, which he likens to a dangerous and violent cult. Some may see this as a distinction without a difference, but there actually is an enormous difference: Classic hate-mongers -KKK racists, and anti-Semitic neo-Nazis, for instance -believe that Jews and blacks are debased and inferior on a genetic level. Mr. Wilders, on the other hand, has made it clear that he has no problem with Muslims who reject a literal reading of the Koran and assimilate into Western society.
Had Mr. Wilders been convicted of hate speech, the message from the court would have been that Dutch citizens are proscribed not only from expressing hatred of people, but also hatred of certain cultures and ideologies -in particular, those cultures and ideologies that happen to be embedded within religious-faith traditions.
That would be a very dangerous road for any Western society to go down, for it would effectively put a gag on every intellectual, pundit and politician seeking to protect Western values from the greatest current threat to the liberal tradition. Mr. Wilders has therefore scored a victory not only for himself, but also for intellectual liberty.
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