Dutch MP Geert Wilders to be prosecuted for criticising Islam...

...the suicide of the West continues...
From The Australian...
...when complaints in the heart of Enlightenment Europe lead prosecutors to put Wilders on trial, facing a jail term of two years for expressing his opinions, then the tyranny of thought police has truly taken hold in the West...
From Cranmer...
...Mr Wilders has not criticised individual Muslims, or defamed Mohammed, or blasphemed against Allah (directly). But what if he had? Is one no longer free to pour scorn upon a god in whom one does not believe, mock a prophet one deems to be false, or question an ideology one considers repugnant?
Mr Wilders is simply of the view that in 1945, Nazism was defeated in Europe; in 1989, communism was defeated in Europe; and in now Islamic ideology has to be defeated.He has called the decision to prosecute him for making a film about this view ‘an attack on the freedom of expression’.And he is not wrong.This will be a defining trial of the age. It will polarise communities, divide the Netherlands, and the eyes of the world shall be upon the European Union as it wrestles with the seismic consequences of whatever verdict is delivered.
Geert Wilders called the Qur'an a ‘fascist book’.This is apparently a crime; specifically that of inciting racial hatred.Cranmer would like to know why those Muslims who refer to the Holy Bible as flawed and full of lies have not been similarly prosecuted for inciting racial hatred...
...Make no mistake about it, this is a founding nation of the EU limiting freedom of expression by appealing to a notion of blasphemy, under the pretext of preventing civil strife. The only religion which is being protected in law is Islam. Cranmer has previously observed this development in the UK.
...Atheists/satanists/goths/dingbats of all persuasions beware. It is obviously no longer tolerable to advertise your beliefs, at least in the EU...people of religous persuasion will enforce prosecution... although why is this protest (left) not subject to similar legal threat ?
More from the incandescant Cranmer here...
and from CityLife...The appalling decision to try Wilders, the Freedom Party’s head and the Dutch Parliament’s only internationally famous member, for “incitement to hatred and discrimination” against Islam is indeed an assault on free speech. But no one who has followed events in the Netherlands over the last decade can have been terribly surprised by it. Far from coming out of the blue, this is the predictable next step in a long, shameful process of accommodating Islam—and of increasingly aggressive attempts to silence Islam’s critics—on the part of the Dutch establishment....
From Mark Steyn...
...The Dutch, like the Canadians, think they can maintain social peace by shriveling the bounds of public discourse and bringing what little remains under state regulation. But one notices that the coercive urge, which comes so naturally to Euro-progressives, only goes in one direction. The Swedish Chancellor of Justice shuts down the investigation into the Grand Mosque of Stockholm for selling tapes urging believers to kill "the brothers of pigs and apes" (ie, Jews) because that's simply "the everyday climate in the rhetoric". The masked men marching through the streets of London with placards threatening to rain down another 9/11 on the infidels are protected by a phalanx of Metropolitan Police officers. The PC nellies of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, happy to hound the last neo-Nazi in Saskatchewan posting to the Internet from his mum's basement, won't go anywhere near Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Dameus al-Hayitia, the big-time Montreal imam whose book says infidels are "evil people", Jews "spread corruption and chaos", and homosexuals should be "exterminated"...
A suggested letter to the Dutch Embassy as protest, follows...
With respect, may I offer a protest to you on behalf of free speech ?
I refer to the intended prosecution of Mr Geert Wilders, MP, for expressing views likely to incite hatred.
Irrespective of Mr Wilders' film and opinions, it is remarkable that your Government has seen fit to attempt to discourage any opinion on religious or political matters.
If it is considered acceptable to protest against and offend Christians, then I cannot see that it should be unacceptable to protest against and offend people of other persuasions.
Again, with respect, I point out that this intending prosecution risks labelling The Netherlands as a laughing stock throughout the free and liberal world society.
Sincerely...