Robert Sibley on Geert Wilders and Freedom

Most of the (liberal) media has ignored the trial of Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician currently being prosecuted (I almost typed persecuted . . . that too) in the Netherlands for making Muslims feel bad by criticizing violent tendencies in Islam. Yes, you read that right.

But Robert Sibley of the Ottawa Citizen has been making a valiant effort to bring the attention of Canadians to this travesty of justice. Here are three of his recent columns. Below are a couple of excerpts and my comments.

Jan. 21, 2010 "The cases of Geert Wilders and Zakaria Amara share one thing: naive western attitudes"

Jan. 22, 2010 "Wilders’ court speech shows courage in defending western culture against Islamization"

Feb. 3, 2010 "Geert Wilders calls on a Muslim woman to defend him against charges of being anti-Muslim"

Here is a part of the Jan. 21 article:

"Wrap your head about this.

Geert Wilders, the highly popular Dutch politician, is on trial in Amsterdam on charges of inciting hatred against Muslims. If convicted he faces 15 months in prison. Many regard the case, which has received world-wide attention, as a litmus test of free speech in Europe.

Meanwhile, back here in the peaceable kingdom, a Toronto judge sentenced a 24-year-old Brampton man, Zakaria Amara, the leader of the so-called Toronto 18, to life in prison for planning acts of terror that could have killed thousands of Canadians.

Yet, thanks to Canada’s “progressive” legal system, Amara could be back on the streets in just 6½ years and, perhaps, laughing all the way to some Al Qaeda training camp. (Another youthful terrorist, Saad Gaya, received a 12-year sentence, but he is eligible for parole in a year-and-a-half.) Clearly “life in prison” doesn’t mean what the words say it means.

Admittedly, there is no direct connection between the Wilders’ case and that of Amara’s. Yet, it strikes me as odd that in one western country you can be imprisoned for two years for exercising your right to free speech, while in another western country you need serve only thrice that number of years for planning mass murder.

The Globe and Mail editors (much to my surprise) pretty much summed up my views: “‘Life’ and “12 years” may sound tough, but the real message is soft: Set out to kill hundreds of your fellow Canadians when you are 18 to 20, and be let free, or at least become eligible for parole, by age 25 or 30.”

But then it seems that in the liberal progressive West, it is worse to express politically incorrect views of people than it is to actually plot their deaths. (Did anybody think to prosecute Amara and his colleagues for hate crimes?)

This is a dangerously naïve attitude."

Here is an excerpt from the Jan. 22 article:

"Of late, though, it too often seems, whether in Europe or, indeed, in Canada, that there is, in Caldwell’s words, “a special regime for speech concerning Islam.”

I can only conclude the Western power elites are for some reason afraid to defend their own culture. Thus, the real issue in Wilders’ trial is whether the citizens of the Netherlands (and European and the West, in general) still care about the responsible use of freedom and have the courage to defend it.

Say what you will about Wilders, agree with him or not, but he’s one of the few Western politicians with the courage — Daniel Pipes refers to him as “the most important European alive” and the singular European politician with “the potential to emerge as a world-historical figure” — to defend his cultural heritage. That comes through clearly in his opening address to the court."

Sibley joins a chorus of other voices who believe that the liberal and socialist elites of the modern West are simply too lacking in courage to defend Western culture against Islamic aggression. They are pacifist because they are afraid and they have gone so far in attacking, undermining and seeding hatred for their own heritage that they lack the passion to defend it and fear anyone who has passion to aggressively attack it. So they retreat one law and one case at a time.

What is difficult to understand is that Western liberal and socialist elites are signing their own death warrants by capitulating one step at a time to an enemy that, unlike Christianity, is intolerant of their sexual decadence and their relativistic ethics. The day is going to come when homosexuals and atheists in Europe are going to look back on the era of Christian cultural dominance as "the good old days." If they thought Constantine was bad, wait until they live under Sharia Law for a while.