The Dutch politician and filmmaker Geert Wilders has lost his appeal to the Supreme Court, and will now go on trial on charges of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims.
He says, “It is a political trial. I am being prosecuted for saying about Islam what millions of Dutch people think. Freedom of speech is in danger of being sacrificed on the altar of Islam.”
We reported in January that he faced a lengthy legal battle. Now it’s confirmed.
Our friend Monitor over at MediaWatchWatch reckons Wilders is probably secretly quite pleased at the prospect.
He will, of course, be dismissed as just a Right-winger. I’m not too fond of the Right myself, but we must not let emotion cause us to conflate the message with the messenger.
Wilders’s film Fitna – at the bottom of this post – looked at verses in the Muslims’ hate manual, the Koran, and juxtaposed what he took to be matching examples of atrocities and human-rights abuses.
Shamefully, he was banned from the UK by NuLabour, even though he’d been invited by a member of the House of Lords to show and talk about his film.
(You wonder how they can find the time to worry about such things as a banning order when keeping their snouts in the trough and taking advantage of an overgenerous expenses system must take up a lot of energy.)
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