Dutch Mp Tried For His Views On Islam

[Formosus]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' post='1766852' date='Jan 30 2009, 05:09 PM']You claimed all sort of people were murdered in the US over free speech, I asked for stats. Pointing out one death is not quite the same, is it?[/quote]


I am not a bank of knowledge filled with such things. Pointing out the death of someone as well known and important as Martin Luther King Jr, should be proof enough that such things happen and have happened in our country. It really should not be so surprising. Here are a few other prominent people.

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medgar_Evers"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medgar_Evers[/url]
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lincoln_Rockwell"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lincoln_Rockwell[/url]
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X[/url]
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Berg"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Berg[/url]
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauncey_Bailey"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauncey_Bailey[/url]
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gwatney"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gwatney[/url]
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lennon"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lennon[/url]

[CatherineM]

The Southern Poverty Law Center keeps a lot of statistics on similar topics. Don't know if they track that specific thing though.

[homeschoolmom]

[quote name='Winchester' post='1762460' date='Jan 26 2009, 02:35 PM']There are only two things I hate; those who are intolerant of other people's cultures. And the Dutch.[/quote]


[quote name='cmotherofpirl' post='1766219' date='Jan 29 2009, 09:21 PM']No.
In a civilized society, death is not the consequence of free speech.[/quote]
Amen, sister...

[quote name='Formosus' post='1766937' date='Jan 30 2009, 07:22 PM'][url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lennon"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lennon[/url][/quote]
So... John Lennon was killed because of speaking openly about...?

[Madame Vengier]

[quote name='Winchester' post='1763853' date='Jan 27 2009, 06:53 PM']Well, some are. But I understand it, perfectly. They believe they are right. Every large belief group, religious or otherswise, tries to impose its belies upon everyone else.[/quote]


Yes, except that Islam teaches that its followers have the right to kill in order to impose their beliefs. I don't know any other religion that teaches this.

[Madame Vengier]

[quote name='Formosus' post='1766207' date='Jan 29 2009, 10:15 PM']I didn't know saying that "he asked for what he got" was equivalent to saying he deserved what he got. Someone who says racist and bigoted things, can only expect that people are going to get mad at him and some may even threaten his life. Van Gogh's career in angering islamic people goes much deeper then his one movie that you cited. I don't think that he deserved to die, nobody does. But there are some people where its understandable why someone would get angry enough to kill them, and Van Gogh was one of those people. Free speech is fine but you have to be willing to accept the consequences of what you say.[/quote]


It sounds like you just said that murder is an acceptable "consequence" of offense over someone's right to free speech. After all, you said we have to "be willing to accept it". Accept murder?

[Hassan]

[quote name='Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam' post='1766174' date='Jan 29 2009, 09:54 PM']The reason I don't think you understand my point is that you tried to break up my post into several points. It was only one point: no one has the authority to censure people.[/quote]

Your Church does not seem to accept such a view with all due respect.

[quote]If you censure ideas, the only one who will be able to voice their opinion without backlash will be the most powerful in society who will also be the ones who can manipulate the masses.[/quote]

I believe this mp's crime was tightly linked to his position as a politician. The point of the laws is to prevent the powerful from using their position to scapegoat and vilify a minority population. Your use of the term "idea" is very vague.

[quote]Your point of navigating the waters i believe is invalid.[/quote]

let's see

[quote]We haven't navigated the waters because we said everyone has a right to freedom of expression[/quote]

I don't know what country you are talking about, because I assure you the enslaved populations had very, very little freedom of speech. Nor did individuals who wished to express their religious beliefs by refraining from saying the pledge of allegiance. We have had alien and sedition laws etc.

[quote](notice it is not an expression of one's ideas to yell fire in a crowded theatre b/c that is not an idea but an action).[/quote]

Any speech [i]act[/i] is an action, that argument falls flat on its face with all due respect.

[quote]As for your Jews example, people did speak out against it and they were censured (in that they were either sent to the death camps, killed upon apprehension, or forced to flee) by the government who had the most power as well as by the majority of the people who decided to go along with the Nazi's.[/quote]

It was not passive assent.

[quote]In my understanding it was not the freedom of expression/ideas that harmed the Jews in Germany but rather it was the censuring of ideas deemed "harmful" by a regime and the people (one can see this in the massive book burnings that Germans organized).[/quote]


I'm not a history major but I'd be willing to be that the ability of a charismatic, popular politician to use his national platform to play to Germany's historic anti Semitism sure didn't hurt.

[Hassan]

[quote name='Madame Vengier' post='1766956' date='Jan 30 2009, 08:39 PM']Yes, except that Islam teaches that its followers have the right to kill in order to impose their beliefs. I don't know any other religion that teaches this.[/quote]

How do you define "impose their beliefs"?

[Winchester]

They don't have to kill--they can impose a tax on them.

[Formosus]

[quote name='Madame Vengier' post='1766958' date='Jan 30 2009, 08:41 PM']It sounds like you just said that murder is an acceptable "consequence" of offense over someone's right to free speech. After all, you said we have to "be willing to accept it". Accept murder?[/quote]


I never said it was a just consequence or a moral consequence, but it is a type of consequence and Van Gogh surely knew what he was saying and doing was going to make a lot of people angry. Sometimes when people (that perhaps aren't in the best health mentally) get angry they go out and commit horrendous acts of violence. Its a consequence.


As for John Lennon, he was killed supposedly for his hypocrisy. He said all sorts of things but never followed through because he was a capitalist so he was killed by a unstable person who was angered by his hypocrisy.

[Madame Vengier]

[quote name='Formosus' post='1767758' date='Jan 31 2009, 04:43 PM']I never said it was a just consequence or a moral consequence, but it is a type of consequence and Van Gogh surely knew what he was saying and doing was going to make a lot of people angry. Sometimes when people (that perhaps aren't in the best health mentally) get angry they go out and commit horrendous acts of violence. Its a consequence.


As for John Lennon, he was killed supposedly for his hypocrisy. He said all sorts of things but never followed through because he was a capitalist so he was killed by a unstable person who was angered by his hypocrisy.[/quote]


No matter how you change the words around, you are BLAMING the victim. Sorry, but you are. And I find that really cruel and offensive.

[ardillacid]

He was killed because Chapman didn't have all four wheels on the road

[Hassan]

This was interesting. I noticed it when I was reading the paper yesterday.

[url="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/opinion/30buruma.html?th&emc=th"]http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/opinion/...l?th&emc=th[/url]
Totally Tolerant, Up to a Point
By IAN BURUMA
Published: January 29, 2009
IF it were not for his hatred of Islam, Geert Wilders would have remained a provincial Dutch parliamentarian of little note.


He is now world-famous, mainly for wanting the Koran to be banned in his country, “like Mein Kampf is banned,” and for making a crude short film that depicted Islam as a terrorist faith — or, as he puts it, “that sick ideology of Allah and Muhammad.”

Last year the Dutch government decided that such views, though coarse, were an acceptable contribution to political debate. Yet last week an Amsterdam court decided that Mr. Wilders should be prosecuted for “insulting” and “spreading hatred” against Muslims. Dutch criminal law can be invoked against anyone who “deliberately insults people on the grounds of their race, religion, beliefs or sexual orientation.”

Whether Mr. Wilders has deliberately insulted Muslim people is for the judges to decide. But for a man who calls for a ban on the Koran to act as the champion of free speech is a bit rich. When the British Parliament refused to screen Mr. Wilders’s film at Westminster this week, he cited this as “yet more proof that Europe is losing its freedom.” His defenders, by no means all right-wingers, also claim to be standing up for freedom. A Dutch law professor said he found it “strange” that a man should be prosecuted for “criticizing a book.”

This seems a trifle obtuse. Comparing a book that billions hold sacred to Hitler’s murderous tract is more than an exercise in literary criticism; it suggests that those who believe in the Koran are like Nazis, and an all-out war against them would be justified. This kind of thinking, presumably, is what the Dutch law court is seeking to check.

One of the misconceptions that muddle the West’s debate over Islam and free speech is the idea that people should be totally free to insult. Free speech is never that absolute. Even — or perhaps especially — in America, where citizens are protected by the First Amendment, there are certain words and opinions that no civilized person would utter, and others that open the speaker to civil charges.

This does not mean that religious beliefs should be above criticism. And sometimes criticism will be taken as an insult where none is intended. In that case the critic should get the benefit of the doubt. Likening the Koran to “Mein Kampf” would not seem to fall into that category.

If Mr. Wilders were to confine his remarks to those Muslims who do harm freedom of speech by using violence against critics and apostates, he would have a valid point. This is indeed a serious problem, not just in the West, but especially in countries where Muslims are in the majority. Mr. Wilders, however, refuses to make such fine distinctions. He believes that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. His aim is to stop “the Islamic invasion of Holland.”

There are others who share this fear and speak of “Islamicization,” as though not just Holland but all Europe were in danger of being engulfed by fascism once again. Since Muslims still constitute a relatively small minority, and most are not extremists, this seems an exaggerated fear, even though the danger of Islamist violence must be taken seriously.

However, a closer look at the rhetoric of Mr. Wilders and his defenders shows that Muslims are not the only enemies in their sights. Equally dangerous are the people whom Mr. Wilders and others refer to obsessively as “the cultural elite.”

What they mean are liberals who are so concerned about Western racism that they find it hard to tolerate any criticism of non-Western people or non-Western faiths. There are such people, to be sure, but even among my fellow Dutch citizens political correctitude of this kind is becoming increasingly rare.

In the past, it is true, legitimate debates about cultural and religious tensions arising from the poor integration of ethnic minorities were often stifled by an excess of liberal zeal. Doubts about the official drive toward pan-European unity and over liberal policies over guest workers and refugees were too often dismissed as ultra-nationalism or worse.

In a bewildering world of global economics, multinational institutions and mass migration, many people are anxious about losing their sense of place; they feel abandoned by their own elites. Right-wing populists like Geert Wilders are tapping into these fears.

Since raw nativism is out of fashion in the Netherlands, Mr. Wilders does not speak of race, but of freedom. His method is to expose the intolerance of Muslims by provoking them. If they react to his insults, he can claim that they are a threat to our native liberties. And if anyone should point out that deliberately giving offense to Muslims is neither the best way to lower social tensions nor to protect our freedoms, Mr. Wilders will denounce him as a typical cultural elitist collaborating with “Islamo-fascism.”

The lawsuit against Mr. Wilders has been hailed in the Netherlands as a good thing for democracy. I am not so sure. It makes him look more important than he should be. In fact, the response of Dutch Muslims to his film last year was exemplary: most said nothing at all. And when a small Dutch Muslim TV station offered to broadcast the film, after all other stations had refused, the grand champion of free speech resolutely turned the offer down.

Ian Buruma is the author of “Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance.”

[Jesus_lol]

really, consequences wise formosus is right.

he shouldnt have been killed, it isnt a just punishment, but he did kind of bring it on himself.
if i went into a bar and started insulting some big dudes girlfriend, and i got the croutons kicked out of me, that would be because i brought it on myself, even if it was an illegal act to hurt me.

it isnt really blaming the victim, it is still the killers fault that he is dead, it is lamenting the victims stupidity in getting himself in such a situation.
you park your car in the bad part of town with the engine running, it is your fault that it gets stolen.

[Hassan]

[quote name='Jesus_lol' post='1768003' date='Jan 31 2009, 09:59 PM']really, consequences wise formosus is right.

he shouldnt have been killed, it isnt a just punishment, but he did kind of bring it on himself.
if i went into a bar and started insulting some big dudes girlfriend, and i got the croutons kicked out of me, that would be because i brought it on myself, even if it was an illegal act to hurt me.

it isnt really blaming the victim, it is still the killers fault that he is dead, it is lamenting the victims stupidity in getting himself in such a situation.
you park your car in the bad part of town with the engine running, it is your fault that it gets stolen.[/quote]


I don't feel sorry for that slime ball in the least, however I'm a bit disturbed by the logic here.

If, as has happened, an Israeli girl goes through a Orthodox Jewish community in "unmodest" dress and gets acid thrown on her was she "asking for it" or being "stupid"? I understand your point and to an extent I share it. But this line of reasoning can be a slippery slope. If a women walks around immodestly and gets raped is she simply getting the fruits of her stupidity. I don't think so.

Edited February 1, 2009 by Hassan

[Socrates]

I wonder if someone were being tried for speaking out against Christians and the Bible, rather than Islam, would the bleeding hearts be singing the same tune?
Or would they instead preach the importance of free speech, and how Christians need to tolerate it?

Edited February 1, 2009 by Socrates