Geert Wilders' provocations

In our country we have nine members of parliament (out of 150) who are strongly opposed to any Muslim influence in the Dutch society. It’s the PVV (Party for Freedom), which grabs every occasion to criticize Muslim traditions, culture and religion. The Netherlands is a small country with 16 million people, of which about 1 million Muslims. PVV's chairman is Mr. Geert Wilders, who recently declared that the Koran should be forbidden because of its, in his eyes, prescriptions to exert (sometimes lethal) violence to everybody who insults the Prophet Mohammed, to Muslims who leave their religion, and other severe punishments to people criticising Islam, Koran or Mohammed.
It’s true, most Muslims who immigrated into the Netherlands since about 25 years have totally different and often even opposite values and norms and also lifestyles, than the Dutch have. The language is also totally different: mostly Moroccan-Arabic or Turkish. They are very proud people, and where “guilt and forgiving”, “love thy neighbour” and “freedom of speech and writing” are core values in Dutch society, we saw that “upholding respect”, “pride” and “watching your words to avoid offence” are core values of the immigrants. Many small and big conflicts arose, enhanced by nine-eleven (when we asked Muslims why they didn’t protest) and the murder attack on Theo van Gogh because of his insulting Mohammed and Muslims. Everywhere we see how Muslims, full of self-confidence, demonstrate their presence, building mosques, refusing to shake hands with women, organizing their own Muslim schools giving subsidy-money to friends and family by giving them jobs in the schools without any application procedures, etc. etc. When asked, a great deal of them give priority to the Muslim-law “sharia” above Dutch law. Their culture doesn’t know separation between state and religion. If Islam is the only true religion, why shouldn’t government or legal courts obey the Koran? Sounds logical.

We also see how Muslim people protest against any restrictions on their way of life, using “freedom of religion and speech” as an argument, when they are said that Islam also restricts these freedoms severely, they answer that this isn’t true, because Islam is the only justified world religion and within the norms of Islam every speech or act is free.

Many Muslims, however, very well adjust themselves to Dutch society, but these people are the better-educated. For them it’s often impossible to obey norms and traditions of many Muslim brothers and sisters, because their jobs wouldn’t allow them to.

Now Mr. Wilders has announced a film he is making, heavily criticising Islam and Koran. He does so because Theo van Gogh has also been killed because of a film he made, and to make a statement against what he sees as a threat to Jewish-Christian civilisation, and the acquirements of Enlightenment, namely separation of the three forces, separation of church and state and parliamentary democracy. But above all he criticises the Muslim physical violence and death penalties because of religious views people have. Now he says: I have the freedom to make that movie, why should I yield to death threats?

And yet I think he isn’t right in acting this way, he provokes. His message is only negative and appeals to fear. I think it’s far better to identify the differences again and again, but also to call for mutual tolerance. A great deal of mutual mistrust comes forth from ignorance and fear for strangeness. I also think that the Dutch welcome Muslim people: they let them build, because of the freedom of religion, huge Mosques in their cities, they give them Dutch nationality, and accept them as their fellow-countrymen. Mr. Wilders, please point to these positive developments. Islam will eventually shed off violence, taking the Koran that literal isn’t possible in an industrialized, democratic country with many views and lifestyles. People calling themselves “the true Muslims” who refuse to accept this, must be isolated and if they put their opinion into practice by using violence, they must be punished. Mr. Wilders provokes these people deliberately, this solves nothing, but confirms them in their views, they see: there is the enemy, let's burn Dutch flags!

For the rest I find that everybody is allowed to utter his opinion of views. But this is a matter of provoking people who think that everything not fitting in their view, is a provocation. When innocent people are held as hostages, the police or any sensible human will not provoke the hostage-holders with a reference to freedom of speech.