Any day now, a film made by the controversial Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders is due to be released which it is feared will unleash a new wave of violence in the Netherlands and around the Islamic world to rival the reaction against the Danish cartoons. In this film ‘Fitna’, Wilders reportedly tears a page from the Koran and, denouncing it as akin to Mein Kampf, calls for it to be banned. This deliberate act of provocation is designed to throw down the gauntlet on behalf of the principle of freedom of speech within a free world which has been progressively cowed into sacrificing this principle under threat from radical Islamism.
In the Wall Street Journal Pete Hoekstra, the senior Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, robustly defends Wilders’s right to say something deeply offensive and disrespectful about religion on the basis that, if such expression is suppressed freedom dies. And having itemised the violence around the world associated with the Danish cartoons and the onslaught against human rights by radical Islamism in general, he voices his dismay at the supine response by the western intelligentsia to such developments:
What is particularly disturbing about these assaults against modern society is how the West has reacted with appeasement, wilful ignorance, and a lack of journalistic criticism. Last year PBS tried to suppress ‘Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center,’ a hard-hitting documentary that contained criticism of radical jihadists. Fortunately, Fox News agreed to air the film.
Even if the new Wilders film proves newsworthy, it is likely that few members of the Western media will air it, perhaps because they have been intimidated by radical jihadist threats. The only major U.S. newspaper to reprint any of the controversial 2005 Danish cartoons was Denver’s Rocky Mountain News. You can be sure that if these cartoons had mocked Christianity or Judaism, major American newspapers would not have hesitated to print them…
I do not defend the right of Geert Wilders to air his film because I agree with it. I expect I will not. (I have not yet seen the film). I defend the right of Mr. Wilders and the media to air this film because free speech is a fundamental right that is the foundation of modern society. Western governments and media outlets cannot allow themselves to be bullied into giving up this precious right due to threats of violence. We must not fool ourselves into believing that we can appease the radical jihadist movement by allowing them to set up parallel societies and separate legal systems, or by granting them special protection from criticism.
I was only present for part of the meeting, but much of what I heard was — with a few brave exceptions, such as a statement that Saudi Arabia was responsible for funding extremist mosques in Britain and promulgating hatred of other faiths, and another statement that radical Islamism was the ‘default position’ among British Muslims prominent in public life including those working in government — an unchallenged sanitising by both Muslims and non-Muslims of the utterly unacceptable. There was the usual outrage that Islam was being demonised as ‘threatening’ to European values when it was, we were assured, nothing of the kind. Yet in the next breath, on the core issue of freedom of speech, Wilders’s film and the Danish cartoons were represented over and over again as acts disrespectful of Islam that should not be permitted. One speaker stated that the issue had
Publication of such material was thus said to be ‘hate speech’ which would have terrible consequences. Yet how absurd is this! For the truly terrible consequences and eruption of hatred which followed from the Danish cartoons (and which are so feared in connection with the Wilders film) were not directed at Muslims but emanated from Muslims. The Islamic violence that erupted, the riots murders and kidnappings, did in turn inflame people against the Islamic world; but this was on account of what that world was itself doing, not on account of some drawings — which were in any event in themselves a protest against Islamic violence in the first place. To say that a protest against violence committed in the name of a religion is to display hatred towards that religion is an attempt to shut down legitimate and indeed neccessary debate.
There were a couple of brave souls at yesterday’s meeting who tried to put the other side of the argument, but they were outnumbered. With facts, reason and logic turned on their heads over and over again by people deemed to be ‘moderate’ and endorsed by others deemed to be ‘enlightened’, the discussion felt like a dialogue of the demented. This kind of establishment initiative which is so typical is itself part of the problem rather than the solution, because it provides a high-level platform for yet more mind-bending dissimulation. There were repeated statements at this meeting that Europe no longer stood for any recognisable values. They should have been howled down; but apart from some rather feeble disagreement, too many Europeans present either seemed to agree or kept their mouths zipped.
This is surely how a civilisation dies — with a whimper.