Heading for the exits in droves, even before the fat lady sings

Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician whose popular Party for Freedom (PVV) did so well in the recent election to the European Parliament, appears to have Dutch Muslims on the run. A poll taken amongst Muslims in the Netherlands suggests more than half of them would consider leaving the Netherlands.

One Dutch-Muslim politician warned that Wilders' political rise is fueling a growing radical Islam in the Netherlands.

That’s odd, because I thought it was the other way around. A growing radical Islam and its enablers in the multicultural and politically correct establishment, that killed Theo Van Gogh, drove Ayaan Hirsi Ali out of the country, celebrated the murder of Pim Fortuyn, and the 9/11 atrocity, is attempting to prosecute Wilders, and causes Wilders to travel with police protection and to keep his whereabouts a secret, are the reasons why he has become popular in the Netherlands.

I am betting that those Dutch Muslims who express such victimization in the current political climate do not have to travel around with a police escort to ensure they are not murdered.

Apparently, when asked what they should do about this, 40% of them said they should just ignore the PVV. Twenty-five per cent said they should debate Wilders and his followers. Another 35% said they should “vociferously” protest. And just 11% thought they should get politically active and form a political party to represent Muslim interests.

Here’s another idea that seems not to have occurred to the respondents. Simply abandon Islam and embrace liberal secular values. Maybe then Wilders’ party will have more appeal to them.

Valentine's Day, and "The times they are a changing"

Valentine’s Day is for lovers.

This Valentine’s Day should be dedicated to the lovers of free speech who are living in cultures that are committing suicide.

It seems hard to believe, but it was 20 years ago today that the world was shocked to learn that some bearded cleric in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, could issue a death warrant against an author in Britain, Salman Rushdie, that would cause that writer to go into hiding and receive police protection for the next decade. Because the alleged offense was dressed up in the guise of insulting a religion, the leaders of other religions rushed to condemn the author for causing the trouble.

What have we learned from this?

Considering the history of the conflict between Islam and western liberal-democracies since that day, I would have to conclude very little.

Each time somebody raises their head to say or write or cartoon something about Islam, out come the religious fanatics in terrifying displays of violence and threats. But more frightening than this is the reaction of the authorities in western societies. They have taken their cue from the “leadership” displayed by the Christian and Jewish clergy towards Rushdie and have applied it to those who question either Islam or the wisdom of permitting large scale immigration from Muslim countries.

I saw Kathy Shaidle on TVO’s public affairs program, The Agenda, this week, making a point that the decline of Christianity as a popular religion has “caused” its replacement by Islam in western Europe. Not exactly. Large scale immigration of young Muslims contributes to this phenomenon, as well as aging, non-reproducing Europeans.

In Britain, it is the mouthing of the Christian clergy suggesting that Sharia law should be incorporated into Britain’s legal system that is contributing to the robustness of the Islamic project. The Christian and Jewish clergy continue to be an obstacle to understanding the threats to liberal democracy with all their nattering on about “the commonality of the faiths” and their inter-faith dialogues.

To parapharase the old Bob Dylan anthem:

Come priests, rabbis
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside raging
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a changin’

In Sweden, Belgium, France, Britain, Spain, Germany and especially the Netherlands, the “troublemakers” are suppressed to appease the angry Muslims. Muslims parade through the streets of European cities with posters and banners calling for the downfall of western societies and the replacement of their liberal-democracies with Islam and the odious Sharia law -- these would be the non-troublemakers, by the way, if you forgot to buy a program before the parade.

Politicians who speak on behalf of their constituents against this rising tide of Islamic hegemony are beaten by police or criminally charged with “disturbing the harmony” of the community. Their homes are invaded by police without warrants to remove symbols Muslims claim are offensive. At least one Dutch politician, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, fled to the United States when the state turned on her for raising issues that affected Muslim women in the Netherlands. Another, Geert Wilders, has been denied entry to a fellow member state of the EU, Britain.

Publishers in Britain have been forced to shred books about Muslims that might subject them to financially ruinous lawsuits from wealthy Arabs. One American publisher refused to print a novel about one of the wives of Mohammed for fear of reprisal by Muslims.

In Canada, the shameful human rights tribunals have been turned into state-supported fatwa-issuing organs for Islamic activists. Even reform-minded Muslims have been threatened with death by Muslim extremists (to date, nobody charged with the crime) and told to tone it down so that “harmony” will prevail. Despite the increasing boldness of Islamic advocates to choke off any rational discussion of Islam, Barbara Hall, Ontario’s Human Rights Commissioner, foolishly proposes even more legislation to provide better tools for Islamists to crush free speech.

Internationally, the Organization of Islamic Countries (57 members) has promulgated its own human rights code that declares the supremacy of Sharia law, notwithstanding their members prior agreement to the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. As well, the OIC has obtained a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly to criminalize criticism of religion.

This step has enabled the state of Jordan to issue a warrant for the arrest of Geert Wilders for insulting Islam should he travel outside the territory of the Netherlands.

The mainstream media has been generally unhelpful to the cause of free speech. In Canada, they woke up very late in the game when the charade conducted by human rights tribunals against Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine was well underway. The blogosphere was ahead of the curve on that one, and remains ahead of it.

When the MSM are not asleep at the switch they are thoughtlessly dismissing Islamic critics as a bunch of Islamophobes (bigots) – a term coined by Islamists as an aid to the politically correct police to further stifle commentary about Islam.

And they wonder why they are losing market share!

Even today, you will see pundits and columnists writing stuff like this: “Well, I don’t much like or agree with Mark Steyn or Geert Wilders, but I do support free speech.”

Why the Pontius Pilate posturing of washing your hands before making the statement about free speech? Can’t you just say that they are being unfairly targeted for their opinions, which, in a free liberal democracy they are supposed to be able to voice, without this politically correct preamble? What are you afraid of – Islamic retribution – other people in society who think there shouldn’t be free speech (people you should be shunning anyway) -- Barbara Hall?

Hmmm. On reflection, perhaps you should be afraid of Barbara Hall.

I see no silver lining.

In defense of a culture

Geert Wilders is a Dutch nationalist. He is also the leader of a right-of-centre party in the Netherlands that represents about 15% of the popular vote. Here is some background on him.

He doesn’t care for the EU and he doesn’t like the impact of Islam on Europe and the Netherlands in particular. Wilders is very outspoken about these things and as a result he has 24 hour police protection because of death threats. In the Netherlands, when one challenges Islam, the resulting death threats are taken seriously. A Dutch filmmaker died at the hands of an Islamic religious fanatic and another member of the Dutch parliament, who was associated with the filmmaker, fled to the United States where she is under police protection.

But the government of the Netherlands considers those who openly question the political, cultural and economic value of having mass immigration from Muslim countries to be “troublemakers”. The government likes to shut up troublemakers. So, Wilders will now be charged under some Dutch law for inciting hatred against Muslims because he produced and distributed a short documentary film, Fitna, on the excessive violence fostered in the name of Islam.

The problem is, as I have written before in this blog, Wilders did not say anything against Muslims. His focus is the religion, which he correctly identifies as an authoritarian political ideology with a deity attached to it. In effect, the Dutch government is trying him for “criminal blasphemy” under the guise of vague “self-esteem” laws that we are all too unfortunately familiar with here in Canada.

One wonders what they teach in European schools.

Europe was formed in opposition to Islam, when Charlemagne made a deal with the Pope and united the Frankish tribes in the 9th century CE. Islamic armies had invaded the Iberian Peninsula a century before that and were pushing into what is now France in an effort to encircle the remnants of the eastern Roman Empire centred in Constantinople. Charlemagne drove them out of France and closed that border to Islam for good, and, in the process, started a distinct European culture which has lasted for more than a 1,000 years.

Wilders is defending that culture. The Dutch government is intent on destroying it.

My late father went to war 60 years ago and helped to liberate the Netherlands from another authoritarian ideology. He nearly lost his life there twice.

Let us hope the Dutch will learn to liberate themselves this time and no Canadians will have to risk themselves to save Europeans.

Protecting the Constitution

The following is a piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal by two U.S. Senators who are sponsoring a free speech bill in the Senate. In this country, we have been treated to the spectacle of a human rights investigator with the Canadian Human Rights Commission sneering at the idea of free speech, declaring it an "American concept" that has no relevance in Canada. We also saw the mind-boggling interview on CBC when an intellectually-challenged Avi Lewis accused Ayaan Hirsi Ali of being brainwashed when she declared the United States to be a truly free society. Her rebuttal is well worth the five minutes it takes to watch this tape.

Methinks we could learn a few things from our American cousins.

Our Constitution is one of our greatest assets in the fight against terrorism. A free-flowing marketplace of ideas, protected by the First Amendment, enables the ideals of democracy to defeat the totalitarian vision of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

That free marketplace faces a threat. Individuals with alleged connections to terrorist activity are filing libel suits and winning judgments in foreign courts against American researchers who publish on these matters. These suits intimidate and even silence writers and publishers.

Under American law, a libel plaintiff must prove that defamatory material is false. In England, the burden is reversed. Disputed statements are presumed to be false unless proven otherwise. And the loser in the case must pay the winner's legal fees.

Consequently, English courts have become a popular destination for libel suits against American authors. In 2003, U.S. scholar Rachel Ehrenfeld asserted in her book, "Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It," that Saudi banker Khalid Bin Mahfouz helped fund Osama bin Laden. The book was published in the U.S. by a U.S. company. But 23 copies were bought online by English residents, so English courts permitted the Saudi to file a libel suit there.

Ms. Ehrenfeld did not appear in court, so Mr. Bin Mahfouz won a $250,000 default judgment against her. He has filed or threatened to file at least 30 other suits in England.

Fear of a similar lawsuit forced Random House U.K. in 2004 to cancel publication of "House of Bush, House of Saud," a best seller in the U.S. that was written by an American author. In 2007, the threat of a lawsuit compelled Cambridge University Press to apologize and destroy all available copies of "Alms for Jihad," a book on terrorism funding by American authors. The publisher even sent letters to libraries demanding that they destroy their copies, though some refused to do so.

To counter this lawsuit trend, we have introduced the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008, a Senate companion to a House bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Pete King (R., N.Y.) and co-sponsored by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.). This legislation builds on New York State's "Libel Terrorism Protection Act," signed into law by Gov. David Paterson on May 1.

Our bill bars U.S. courts from enforcing libel judgments issued in foreign courts against U.S. residents, if the speech would not be libelous under American law. The bill also permits American authors and publishers to countersue if the material is protected by the First Amendment. If a jury finds that the foreign suit is part of a scheme to suppress free speech rights, it may award treble damages.

First Amendment scholar Floyd Abrams argues that "the values of free speech and individual reputation are both significant, and it is not surprising that different nations would place different emphasis on each." We agree. But it is not in our interest to permit the balance struck in America to be upset or circumvented by foreign courts. Our legislation would not shield those who recklessly or maliciously print false information. It would ensure that Americans are held to and protected by American standards. No more. No less.

We have seen this type of libel suit before. The 1964 Supreme Court decision in New York Times v. Sullivan established that journalists must be free to report on newsworthy events unless they recklessly or maliciously publish falsehoods. At that time, opponents of civil rights were filing libel suits to silence news organizations that exposed state officials' refusal to enforce federal civil rights laws.

Now we are engaged in another great struggle -- this time against Islamist terror -- and again the enemies of freedom seek to silence free speech. Our legislation will help ensure that they do not succeed.

Mr. Specter is a Republican senator from Pennsylvania. Mr. Lieberman is an Independent Democratic senator from Connecticut.