Thou Shalt Not Offend Islam by Thierry Baudet - City Journal

Thou Shalt Not Offend Islam by Thierry Baudet - City Journal: "A firsthand account of the Dutch trial of Geert Wilders
19 January 2011

Last year, I attended the Dutch trial of the century: that of Geert Wilders, leader of the third-largest party in the Dutch parliament. Sparking the charges against Wilders were about 50 statements that he had made about Islam. Three of the most widely circulated, from newspaper columns that Wilders wrote, will give an idea of the rest: “The heart of the problem is the fascist nature of Islam, the sick ideology of Allah and Mohammed as laid down in the Islamic Mein Kampf: the Koran”; “We have a huge problem with Muslims which crosses boundaries in every field, and we come up with solutions that wouldn’t make a mouse go back into its cage”; and “Islam is a violent religion. If Mohammed were living here today, Parliament would instantly agree to chase him out of the country in disgrace.”

Wilders was charged under articles 137c and 137d of the Dutch penal code, which forbid group insult, hate speech, and incitement to discrimination. The trial was hugely controversial, partly because the articles—which were passed in the 1930s as an attempt to halt rising anti-Semitism—have rarely been invoked. Further, the fact that the leader of a powerful anti-establishment party was standing trial for his opinions inevitably cast a political shadow over the affair.

The trial dominated public debate in the Netherlands for months and captivated Europe as well. It will probably continue to do so for at least another year, because Wilders’s lawyers successfully appealed for a declaration that the judges in the Amsterdam District Court had appeared biased. The trial will now have to start all over again. What follows is an account based on my firsthand observations of this tawdry episode.

Wilders’s prosecution came about in a most unusual way. The public prosecutor, Paul Velleman, initially refused to prosecute him because, in his view, Wilders’s statements did not break the law. In refusing to press charges, Velleman acknowledged that Wilders’s statements “may have been insulting for Muslims,” but concluded that Wilders was not guilty of lawbreaking, since the statements were made “in the context of public debate.” Velleman added that Wilders didn’t incite hatred or call for discrimination, as his comments “concerned Islam the religion and not Muslims as human beings.” The relevant laws did not forbid merely criticizing a religion, he maintained.

But Gerard Spong, a prominent defense lawyer and critic of Wilders’s, appealed Velleman’s decision to the Court of Appeal, which, according to Dutch law, can order the prosecutor to prosecute anyway. On January 21, 2009, that’s just what it did. After stating that they “disagreed with the public prosecutor,” the court’s three judges concluded that Wilders’s statements were “punishable under Dutch law” and added that “in the past, others, including politicians, have been convicted for less.” (In an accompanying footnote, the court referred to only one case.) By ruling that Wilders “abuses the liberty of expression” and “incites discrimination and hatred against a group of people or a community of believers,” the Court of Appeal scandalously exceeded its authority. The presumption of innocence is, after all, one of the central principles of a fair trial. It is not up to the Court of Appeal to decide whether the accused is guilty, only to decide whether a prosecution is warranted. If Wilders is ever found guilty and chooses to appeal the verdict, he would have to appeal to a court that had pronounced his guilt before trial.

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