A great victory for the Muslim community

Geert Wilders has been banned from entering Britain by the Labour government. On February 12 he was to attend a meeting with members of the House of Lords to screen his anti-Islamic film, Fitna, and to answer questions concerning it, at the invitation of the Lords.

One Muslim Lord, Nazir Ahmed, had threatened to turn out 10,000 Muslims in the streets to block him from getting to the meeting. On learning of the ban, Ahmed declared it a “great victory for the Muslim community”.

If the prevention of the exercise of free speech by a member of a Parliament of an EU member is great victory for the Muslim community, then what does that say about the Muslim community? It says exactly what Geert Wilders says about it – it is totalitarian in outlook and intolerant of liberal-democracy.

Lord Pearson renewed the invitation and published the following media release:

Despite threats of demonstration from a British Peer and Muslim community leaders, the meeting will go ahead. Wilders’ film Fitna features verses from the Quran alongside images of the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001, Madrid in March 2004 and London in July 2005. The film equates Islam’s holy text with violence and ends with a call to Muslims to remove ‘hate preaching’ verses from the Quran. It provoked protests in Muslim-majority countries including Indonesia and Pakistan.

The leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, Wilders has lived under 24 hour police protection since 2004. Following Fitna’s release online in March 2008 al-Qaeda issued a fatwa calling for Wilders’ murder.

Wilders currently faces prosecution in Holland for incitement to hatred and discrimination. The charges are based on his film Fitna and comments in the Dutch press last year in which he argued that as Mein Kampf has been banned in Holland, the Quran should similarly be banned under Dutch incitement laws.

Wilders called the Dutch Court of Appeal’s decision to prosecute an attack on freedom of expression. “Participation in the public debate has become a dangerous activity. If you give your opinion, you risk being prosecuted,” he said.

Wilders has indicated his intention to go to London despite the ban.

While many people support Wilders campaign to prevent the Islamification of Europe, they are disturbed thar he seems hypocritical by advocating a ban on of the Koran. In fact, his point is that the Netherlands bans Mein Kampf and ought to be considering the Koran in the same light. Wilders should just have called for an end to the ban on Mein Kampf.

In Canada, the huge retail bookstore chain, Chapters Indigo, that controls about 80% of the retail book trade in Canada banned Mein Kampf from its stores. But you can still get the Koran if you go to this site.