A blow for the Enlightenment: Dutch revoke blasphemy laws in favour of free speech

A blow for the Enlightenment: Dutch revoke blasphemy laws in favour of free speech

 http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2012/12/01/a-blow-for-the-enlightenment-dutch-revoke-blasphemy-laws-in-favour-of-free-speech/

December 1, 2012. 12:05 am • Section: Opinion

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Robert Sibley's Ideas & Consequences

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In these days of draconian political correctness, neurotic anti-hate speech laws and dictatorial human rights police, I have sometimes fretted that the western tradition of free speech is in jeopardy.
No doubt it is, in some quarters at least. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants “Islamophobia” declared as “a crime against humanity” and “international legal regulations against attacks on what people deem sacred.”

Likewise, the Arab League has called for the development of an international legal framework to criminalize blasphemy. Ditto the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of 57 Muslim countries, which wants Western countries to make it an international crime to criticize Islam or Mohammed – all on the name of “religious tolerance.” (Naturally, there’s no mention of not insulting — or persecuting — Christians and Jews.)

Of course, all this is to be expected from the Muslim world, which insists that only Muslims get to define what constitutes an insult — which is  an insult to intelligence.

Unfortunately, there are too many western politicians so frightened of appearing intolerant — and of losing Muslim votes, I suppose — that they kowtow to these kind of asinine dictates.
Not all, though, I’m happy to report. At least some European politicians possess sufficient backbone to stand up for Enlightenment traditions.

This week the Dutch parliament revoked a decade-old blasphemy law from its statute book. Insulting Allah (or God or Yahweh or Buddha or Vishnu, I presume) will no longer be a crime in the Netherlands.

The Dutch politician who can take some credit for this reinforcement of the liberal tradition of free speech is Geert Wilders.

Geert Wilders (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wilders was prosecuted — some say persecuted – for alleged hate speech crimes against Muslims, including referring to the Koran as a “fascist book” that promotes ideological views comparable to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and saying that if the Prophet Muhammad were alive today he would “be hunted down as a terrorist.”

In the end, though, a Dutch court agreed that while Muslims might regard his views as insulting, he had even right to hold them and to speak them.

I’ve written on Wilders regularly over the last few years, admiring his courage in expressing his views even though he lives under the threat of death.

In a 2010, when Wilders was on trial, I wrote:

“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.”

In 2011 I reported on a speech Wilders gave to a sell-out crowd at the National Arts Centre in which he argued “Islam and freedom are incompatible.”

He also warned about the downside of multiculturalism, with its naive premise of the equality of all cultures, has been a “disaster” in Europe because “because it is being used as a tool to promote Islam.”

Canadians, he said, will see the erosion of their cultural values, including freedom of speech, if they, too, to follow multicultural policies that allow the Islamization under the guise of tolerance and respect for diversity.

In its ruling this week, the Dutch court observed that Wilders’ statements were directed as Islam as a religion, and not at Muslims. While his views may be “gross and denigrated” to Islam, they were still “acceptable within the context of public debate.”

Hear, hear. Too many of the “elites” – liberal and socialist — who dominate contemporary western culture lack the courage to defend the very traditions by which they enjoy their comfortable lives. Indeed, warped by guilt over the West’s imperial past, they devote themselves to undermining that culture to the point where it is in danger of being unable to defend itself intellectually or spiritually against the Islamist campaign.

I don’t understand how these “elites” – politicians, academics, journalists – can so readily surrender to a fundamentalist creed that if it acquired political power in the West would enact laws to destroy liberal traditions that sustain women’s equality, acknowledge the rights of homosexuals and even tolerate atheism.  None of these “liberal” practices would be tolerated under Sharia law, but, somehow, the elites figure westerners have to tolerate those who promote them.

In this light, the decision by the Netherlands’ parliamentarians constitutes a small victory in a very long historical battle.

To read more on this specific case, click here.
To read some of my other commentary on Wilders, click here, here and here.