Go, Wilders, Go!

Geert Wilders is facing death for publicly stating that in his opinion, Islam is a fascism, that the Qur'an promotes violence,and that the Qur'an, like Mein Kampf, should be banned from the Netherlands. OK, the Pope quotes a Byzantine emperor discussing Reason and God's plan for Humanity: it sets off riots and murder among Muslim nations, Muslims go berserk and kill people. A Danish newspaper prints innocuous cartoons of Mohammed, and, yes, the same result. I sneeze in the bathroom, no riots as yet but I'm holding my breath.

Geert Wilders is a Dutch parliamentarian. In the greater scheme of things he's only marginally more visible to the public than I or than you. But he is under 24 hour per day guard by the Dutch secret police to keep Muslims from murdering him. Wilders is only one of a growing number of private and public figures in the same position, under threat of murder by Muslims, under guard by police. The fact is, we in the West are all in something like the same position: the police and militaries of our various nations conducting round the clock exercises to ensure that we too aren't murdered by Muslim fanatics and or their sympathisers as were Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh. It's only going to get worse. Lots of our own are pretending this is not happening, that what's happening isn't important, that this effort to kill at random is not the fault of jihadis but is due to the existence of Israel, due to American imperialism, is due to the Moon being in Virgo. Uh huh. We are all to some extent in the same position Geert Wilders is in. We face death at the hands and by the designs of jihadis.

Wilders is trying to show a short film, a 15 minute film, to give a sense of why Muslims are doing this outrageous thing to the world. He is being stymied at every turn. It is to our collective benefit that he succeed here, and we are being cheated by nearly everyone in a position to make his effort successful. It's up to us to ensure his success. We have to support our own freedom by supporting Wilders' efforts to show his film, especially because so many Muslims don't like it. They aren't special and they have to know it concretely. Muslims are no more privileged than anyone else. If they don't like criticism of their religion, such as it is, then too bad for them. We must do what we can to make them get over it, even if it means rubbing the noses of Muslims everywhere in the images of hostile films.

Too! Bad! Get over it.

CNN during the cartoon intifada ran a banner each day for weeks reading "Out of respect for Islam CNN is not showing the Danish cartoons." Today CNN runs some older news about another censorship effort from America:

CNN) -- A Web site promoting a Dutch lawmaker's film critical of Islam has been suspended by its host company after the firm received unspecified complaints about its content, the company disclosed Sunday.

"This site has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site's content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy," the company said in a posting on the Web site set up to promote the film. "Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation."

[....]

The company did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

Network Solutions' terms of service ban material "that is obscene, defamatory, libelous, unlawful, harassing, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, constitutes an illegal threat, violates export control laws, hate propaganda, fraudulent material or fraudulent activity, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable material of any kind or nature."

Last month, Pakistan's government blocked the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube because of a "highly blasphemous" and "anti-Quranic" video featuring Wilders, according to a government news release. The video was reportedly a trailer for his movie....

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/03/24/dutch.koran/

That blurb was about Geert Wilders and his film Fitna. Network Solutions is an American company Wilders used to show the trailer for his up-coming film on the Internet.They shut him down due to "complaints." Maybe they don't think of themselves as similar to the Pakistani government. I see them as similar. I also await CNN's efforts to show Wilders' film on video through their network. In that case I am not holding my breath.

If we don't care about democracy and our Modernity, then there are many others around us who are happy to take it from uw, to destroy it and enslave us, literally and more or less permanently. End of your life as you've always lived it. Some work hard toward that end, some of our own, some of our good-intentions Left, our church goers, our politicians, our business people. Wilders stands up to all this. I'm going to stand with him, here in my isolated little place in Canada. I'm going to demonstrate in support of Wilders and his film. It's not a big splash, not like CNN doing the news, but I'll be in the open and I'll show my support for the good, which is something you'll likely never see from CNN and the others of that ilk. I hope you'll attend here and join me when the time and place are known. It's democracy, and I intend to exercise my right to it.

For further details, please turn to http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com till I can catch up here with the general outline.

"Islamophobic" Dutch gays swing to the Right

Multicultural civil war grows in Holland as "islamophobic" Dutch gays respond to homophobic muslim immigrants, in a contest making strange bedfellows out of "right-wing" politicians and Dutch libertines.

A gay activist interviewed in the article named Frank van Dalen does much to reveal the dishonesty and arrogance preventing us so often from moving towards a less violent accommodation of opposite beliefs. If the article is representing his statements in a trustworthy context, he comes across as an unsympathetically self-deluded thinker. It cautions us all to be honest in formulating our opinions of others, and to value truth when seeking a balance between looking for the legitimate good in people, and yet still seeing what is really there...

Translated, [faithfully, I hope, by myself, despite dubious help from babel fish], from the left-leaning 360 degree magazine's website, we can read of Insecurity and immigration: dutch gays caught in a bind :

...
The picture postcard of an open and tolerant Amsterdam is increasingly fading: a month does not go by without the national gay organization COC not reporting at least one, even two or three homophobic aggressions. According to police statistics, it is already up to 31 since the beginning of the year. And the incidents do not proceed any old place: "When there is violence, or more often still, provocation or intimidation, it is most of the time in the gay districts, on our streets", explains Frank van Dalen, president of the COC. However, in Amsterdam as in other large cities of the Netherlands, it is the young people of arabic-muslim origin, in particular the moroccans of the second or third generation who are singled out. An ethnic dimension which weighs very heavy in the current political climate.

While incivilities, violence and confrontations between young people of foreign origin and the police make the media headlines, the crisis of Dutch identity is also playing out in the background of demographic upheavals. Indeed, according to official projections, the muslim populations should form the majority of the large cities of the country within three years. "All political discussions are centered on these questions of integration of the moroccans and of religions", summarizes Philippe Esnault, a Genevan long living in Amsterdam.
"All these speeches do not reassure the homosexuals, who are taking refuge in populist rhetoric in order to protect their gains."

In fact, the massive rallying of homosexuals to the populist right, had just been predicted by a survey of the magazine Gay Krant, which foresees a [political issue?] for the local “iron lady", Rita Verdonk, ex-minister known for for her xenophobic declarations and her tough stands regarding immigration. The politician has started a new movement baptized Trots op Nederland ("Proud of the Netherlands"). "She is the homosexuals’ diva", says Laurent Chambon, French sociologist and elected Labour official in Amsterdam, with amusement. "Because of her, homosexuals on the right are coming out of the closet."

In a style inaugurated by the gay tribune Pim Fortuyn who was assassinated in 2002, Rita Verdonk and Geert Wilders, the other leader of the populist right-wing, became masters of the art of waving the scarecrow of Islamism after each incident implicating young people of muslim origin. A technique which works on gays at least as well as upon the rest of the population. "There is islamophobia among gays, I would have preferred that it is not the case, but it is a fact", concedes Frank van Dalen.

Frank van Dalen is not easily deceived on the motives which push the youths to attack homosexuals: "I believe that islam hardly plays any role in it. In truth, it is a question of social position, lack of education and of group behavior... the young people simply use it [islam] as an excuse." For Laurent Chambon, the phenomenon is the symptom of a more general malady, which has nothing specific to do with homosexuals. It particularly fits within a territorial dimension, because of the privatization of the municipal real estate, driving out the lower classes from the downtown area. "If the young morrocans come to play the strong arm in the center it is also because themselves, or their close relations, have just been elbowed out of it, sometimes with brutality, in order to make room for white bobos", he explains. "Gays are the first [targets?] because they are perceived as weak [links?]... In that, they pay the price for their visibility... "

This rise of insecurity coincides with a fall of vitality in the local gay scene. A decline that many Amsterdam citizens interpret as the sign that a "moral blanket" is falling upon the city, as bars close and restrictions multiply. Some put forth even the hypothesis that the parties in power (Labour and Christian Democrats) would benefit from the current tensions in order to “clean up” the gay scene, and to roll back certain gains of the homosexual community.

A vision that the COC president contests, for whom there is not any doubt that the authorities support gays, more than ever. "For the first time, the struggle against homophobia has been integrated in the coalition program. We have a minister of State in charge of the dossier and a more important budget to improve measures in education ", explains Frank van Dalen.

The reinforcement of educational measures for diversity are only a single part of the demands of the Dutch gay movement, which call for draconian measures of repression. It thus obtained an increase on required penalties for offences of a homophobic character. Last June, the COC even proposed the installation of a perimeter prohibiting known delinquents around the gay district. Immediately labeled the "gay ghetto", the idea caused an outcry. It measures in any case the confusion of the [gay and lesbian] community vis-a-vis this new phenomenon.

In response to requests from the gay community, the Amsterdam police force innovated by assigning gay and lesbian officers at heart of a special liaison unit, the Homonetwerk, which informs the remainder of the police force about the [gay and lesbian] community and encourages the victims of aggression to come forward with charges. ...

At the risk of sounding repetitive, I can't help but read this story as another example of how humility is such an essential component to searching for truth. Can a lifelong atheist not question their certainties about whether they truly do understand religious motivation? Can a die-hard socialist not push aside their own financial obsessions long enough to succeed in imagining something other than money alone as the motivating force behind any choice of behavior?
How authoritatively can we each see the unseen in our lives, to what degree can one man claim to sufficiently understand another, as difference after difference separate their personal experiences, further separating their common frames of reference?

Can the besieged Frank van Dalen really believe he knows what is in the heart of the thugs that repeatedly assault his friends? Is he honestly reporting on what is in his **own** heart, is he being honest with himself, when he claims that the "young people" are simply "...using islam as an excuse"...!?! What does that even mean, anyway; is he promoting the politically incorrect blasphemy that islam is a religion condoning violence, and that young muslims are using this as a license to indulge in all-too-typical adolescent urges to be violent? Does he have the courage of his convictions to follow links of one thought to another, or do his thoughts trespass into a "no-go zone" of the mind? For if the youth were indeed using islam as an "excuse" for their violent homophobia, what does that suggest should be the fate of islam itself in the tolerant Netherlands..? Where does he disagree with Rita Verdonk?

Silently missing from the discussion, as usual in these articles, are what the violent moroccan youths themselves think. In their mind, are they beating up gays because of an oppressively "unfair" distribution of capital?
Why deign to ask them, I suppose, when experts already portend to "know" what the youth believe......