Holland is scared - Hoofdinhoud
Holland used to be all tulips and wooden clogs, windmills and bicycles, flatlands and dikes; quite idyllic, except for the drugs and red-light district, and children having to stick their fingers into those dikes to save the country from flooding.
Today, however, Holland is homosexuals who are afraid to go out for fear of being beaten up by Muslim gangs, women threatened in the street for not dressing modestly or not covering their heads, and Theo van Gogh, the filmmaker whose throat was cut by a Muslim fanatic.
But it also Geert Wilders, a blond Dutchman who has his finger in a different kind of dike.
Wilders is a member of parliament and leader of the Freedom Party, which polls indicate is on course for victory in the election scheduled for June. In 2008 he produced a film called "Fitna" where he draws parallels between verses from the Koran calling for shocking acts of violence, and actual events that have occurred in recent history.
Wilders argues that more than a religion, Islam is a totalitarian ideology, and as evidence he points to the violence and absence of basic human rights in Muslim communities. In the film he presents customs such as executions by stoning, female genital mutilation, beheadings, family-honor killings, hangings of homosexuals and forced juvenile marriages.
The Dutch are among the most moderate people in Europe. A hundred years ago, there were only some 50 Muslims in the country, whereas today there are a million. Wilders sees them as a Trojan horse, and fears that European civilization will be lost if the trend of blind, post-modern, multicultural, suicidal tolerance is allowed to continue unchecked.
After extremist Muslims put a price on his head six years ago, Wilders surrounded himself with a team of six bodyguards, a decision also affected by the murder of van Gogh in Amsterdam.
As he sat on his balcony, surrounded by guards, I asked Wilders if what he was doing was worth his loss of privacy and a normative family life. He explained what I had hoped to hear, what I longed to hear, and I thought I would not hear.
"Yes. It is worth it. I tell the truth," he said. "There are people who are frightened of hearing it, who are willing to kill me so that I will be silent. I am not frightened."
Because of a high birthrate and swelling immigration, Europe is becoming more and more Muslim every day. Islamic culture, dress and religion are so starkly different that Europeans have begun feeling like strangers in their own homes.
Against this feeling, Wilders is able to act with confidence. He is facing charges of incitement and discrimination against Islam, but instead of stammering apologetically he has turned the proceedings into a show trial in which he intends to demonstrate the dangers of multiculturalism, all that is violent and murderous in Islamist ideology. He plans to show that while not all Muslims are terrorists, the vast majority of terrorist acts in the world are perpetrated by Muslims in the name of their religion.
I watched interviews that Wilders gave after a hearing in his trial. He unblinkingly declared that if he is elected prime minister he will outlaw the wearing of burkas, ban the construction of additional mosques and stop immigration from Muslim countries. Would anyone dare to say these things here?
Wilders is a prominent figure in Dutch politics, and his views are backed by many. How is it conceivable that in Holland the arguments against Islam are much more extreme than in Israel, which is saturated with Islamic terror?
The prosecution in his trial claims that it is of no importance at all whether Wilders is speaking the truth, because what he is saying is illegal. If the truth is illegal, there is something hugely wrong with the law.
This postmodernist bubble is going to blow up in all our faces soon - for the better if Wilders is acquitted and a truthful and courageous prime minister arises in Europe, and for the worse if opponents of sharia law have their throats cut.