Dutch court refuses to ban Wilders’ Fitna

A court has refused to ban Geert Wilders’ internet-based film, Fitna, which robustly criticises the Koran.

A group representing Dutch Muslims had sought an injunction banning the right-wing Wilders’ film which links terror attacks by Muslim extremists with texts from the Koran.

In a written judgment a civil judge at The Hague District Court said Wilders’ right to free speech allows him to criticise radical Islam and passages from the Muslim holy book.

Mr Wilders put the film on the internet the day before lawyers representing the Netherlands Islamic Federation argued it should be outlawed because it was insulting to Muslims.

Meanwhile the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has condemned the film in the strongest terms, saying that it was “a deliberate act of discrimination against Muslims” designed to “provoke unrest and intolerance.” This statement closely follows the OIC’s March meeting in Senegal, where they developed what AP called “a battle plan” to defend Islam “from political cartoonists and bigots.”

Says Robert Spencer, in an article this week in FrontPageMagazine.com:

Wilders’s film is obviously just the sort of thing they had in mind.

He then points out:

At the Senegal conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OICâ’s secretary general, declared: “Muslims are being targeted by a campaign of defamation, denigration, stereotyping, intolerance and discrimination.” The Associated Press reported that OIC delegates were given a voluminous report by the OIC that recorded anti-Islamic speech and actions from around the world. The report concludes that Islam is under attack and that a defence must be mounted. Ihsanoglu stated that “Islamophobia cannot be dealt with only through cultural activities but (through) a robust political engagement.”

What kind of robust political engagement? Nothing less than restrictions on freedom of speech, of course. Abdoulaye Wade, the President of Senegal and chairman of the OIC, said: “I donâ’t think freedom of expression should mean freedom from blasphemy. There can be no freedom without limits.”

These words, and the OIC’s â”legal instrument” in general, demonstrate why the foundations of a free society cannot take root where Islamic Sharia law prevails.

Once you declare one group off-limits for critical examination or declare that these people must at all costs not be offended, or that if they are they’re perfectly within their rights to stone, or lash, or imprison, or kill the offender, then you have destroyed free speech. In a free society, people with differing opinions live together in harmony, agreeing not to kill one another if their neighbor’s opinions offend them. Whenever offensive speech is prohibited, the tyrant’s power is solidified. No less in this case, although the tyrant in question is of a different kind.

That’s why all free people should oppose the OIC’s legal initiative. Not only does it threaten the foundations of Western society, but as it would render us unable to analyze it, it is an attempt to leave us defenceless against the jihad threat.

And Spencer asks:

Will it soon be illegal to speak about the use that Islamic jihadists make of Islamic texts and teachings to justify violence and supremacism? If it is, the only ones who will benefit will be the jihadists themselves – advancing the jihadist agenda far more effectively than riots ever could alone. The demonstrations on the one hand and the calls to limit free speech on the other neatly coalesce into a carrot-and-stick strategy. The message to the West is that speech about Islam that the Islamic world dislikes could lead to violent reprisals – but if the West heeds the voice of reason and clamps down on free speech and free inquiry, this violence will melt away. It is a message that all too many Leftist, appeasement-minded European and American leaders will find quite enticing. And that could be the most serious threat of all to our survival as a free people.