Geert Wilders' Wake-Up Call

 

by Evelyn Markus

At the same time President Obama was greeting King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in Europe last week, Dutch MP Geert Wilders was receiving standing ovations in California for expressing exactly the opposite message: do not bow down to Islam.

Wilders is on tour in various Western countries to raise the consciousness of politicians and the public on the  advancement of Islam in Western societies. During his lectures, he urgently calls for stopping this progress in order to preserve our human rights such as freedom of speech, the equality of women and gays and other precious liberties. He was invited by the David Horowitz Freedom Center to speak in California for the first time. 

Surrounded by an army of security comparable to that of his fellow countrywoman Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wilders gave the following message to his audiences: Islam is not a religion but a totalitarian ideology aiming for world domination and for the total submission of everyone who is non-Muslim. There is no freedom or egalitarianism or human rights in Islam. Islam is not peace, but violence. To illustrate this point, Wilders showed his film Fitna. In Fitna, Mr. Wilders compiles various verses of the Koran that call for Muslim domination, hatred and violence, as well as media footage showing death threats, terror attacks, executions and hate speech that are in line with these Koranic imperatives. It also demonstrates the small steps by which Sharia law is introduced in Western societies, such as Halal banking, Jihad lessons in elementary school, Muslims hindering doctors taking care of women, and certain imams legalizing violence against gays.

The statement Mr. Wilders makes in his film is that it is not poverty or Western oppression which is the main driver of Muslim intolerance, aggression and violence but Islam itself.  

As expected, these statements were not tolerated by most Muslim countries and an economic boycott of the Netherlands was organized for allowing production of this ‘insulting’ film. Furthermore, the Kingdom of Jordan is currently threatening to bring Mr. Wilders before it’s high court in an attempt to convict him there for ‘insulting Islam’. But even more alarming, the freedom to make such statements is threatened in Western countries as well. In the Netherlands, Mr. Wilders is currently being prosecuted for alleged ‘incitement of hatred’ and in France a French human rights group recently filed suit against him for “hate speak” against Muslims. Last month, the British border police rejected his entrance into the UK, where he was invited by a member of the House of Lords to show Fitna in Parliament. In the opening remarks of his lectures last weekend in California, Mr Wilders thanked the US border police ‘for allowing me to enter into the US and speak out freely’.  

Mr. Wilders is constantly demonized as a hater of Muslims, a racist and a fascist in the politically correct Dutch media. If he had criticized Christianity instead of Islam, he would not have been rejected with the same passion. Today, cultural relativism is the norm, with a one-sided embargo on criticizing non-Western cultures, such as Islam, out of feelings of ‘white guilt’.

Wilders doesn’t hate Muslims though as he welcomes all immigrants who want to integrate and adhere to Western values. However, he does advocate for a halt of the mass immigration from Muslim countries into Western societies. This is not because he doesn’t like the people or because he thinks all Muslims are terrorists, but because Muslim immigrants tend to bring Muslim values with them from their countries of origin which Wilders considers a threat to democracy and freedom. Values of Muslims in Europe are often pre-modern and resistant to change since the Islamic religious rules and the Muslim community do not allow such changes. There are no institutions in Islam that have the authority to alter these pre-modern values and rules.  

To label Wilders a racist, a xenophobe or a fascist is false. Instead, he should be seen as a democrat who seeks to protect modern democratic societies against the realistic threat of a stealth Islamic revolution, evolving from mass immigration, step by step introduction of Sharia law, and restriction of freedom of speech. He proposes a First Amendment for freedom of speech in Europe and discourages the US from joining the UN Human Rights Council which tries to ban freedom of speech for people critical of Islam. Mr. Wilders applauds legislation that would prevent the introduction of Sharia law. He calls cultural relativists the ‘useful idiots’ – a term coined by Lenin - who unknowingly facilitate this stealth revolution. 

Cultural relativists in the Netherlands usually belong to the highly educated socio-economic elite and tend to live in the best parts of town where hardly any immigrants live. It is in the lower income neighborhoods, with mostly less educated people, where cultures mingle and clash. It is primarily in these neighborhoods where anti-Muslim sentiments rapidly evolve. The problems that people of native Dutch backgrounds meet in their co-existence with Muslim immigrants are mostly ignored by the established political parties. This lack of understanding by the ruling political class makes the party Mr. Wilders leads -  the Freedom Party - into the biggest party in his country in the polls of today.  It is noteworthy to point out that many Dutch citizens who would vote for Mr. Wilders now could at some point be attracted by political movements more to the right if he were not part of the political spectrum.  

Therefore, instead of calling Mr. Wilders a fascist, it seems more appropriate to see him as a fervent democrat who is saving the Netherlands from two forms of fascism: Islamo-fascism and the ultra-right.

In June, his Freedom Party will participate in the elections for European Parliament and it will be interesting to see how his leadership will develop on a European scale. 

 

Evelyn Markus is a psychologist specialized in conflict, aggression and violence and works in the Netherlands and the United States. She publishes in Dutch newspapers on Islam in the West and anti-Semitism.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.