Title: Geert Wilders to Be Charged with Hate Speech in Netherlands
Time/date: Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:27:31 am

Dutch MP Geert Wilders is going to be charged under the Netherlands’ absurd anti-free speech laws: Islam film Dutch MP to be charged.

A Dutch court has ordered prosecutors to put a right-wing politician on trial for making anti-Islamic statements.

Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders made a controversial film last year equating Islam with violence and has likened the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. “In a democratic system, hate speech is considered so serious that it is in the general interest to... draw a clear line,” the court in Amsterdam said.

Mr Wilders said the judgement was an “attack on the freedom of expression”.

“Participation in the public debate has become a dangerous activity. If you give your opinion, you risk being prosecuted,” he said. Not only he, but all Dutch citizens opposed to the “Islamisation” of their country would be on trial, Mr Wilders warned. “Who will stand up for our culture if I am silenced?” he added.

Wilders, however, has called for the Koran to be outlawed. In other words, Wilders wants to ban books with which he doesn’t agree. If there’s one thing we should have learned from history, it’s that book-banning never turns out well—and it’s anathema to the American ideals of free speech and free choice of religion.

This prosecution is disgusting and wrong, but it’s difficult to cast Wilders as an icon of free speech when he explicitly advocates taking away the rights of others.