Israel Matzav: Stop the Geert Wilders trial? Hell no!

Stop the Geert Wilders trial? Hell no!

Dutch politician Geert Wilders is on trial in an Amsterdam courtroom for 'Islamophobia' and Dutch novelist Leon DeWinter believes that the trial should be stopped (Hat Tip: Pamela Geller).

According to polls, Mr. Wilders's Freedom Party, a libertarian-conservative movement with populist tendencies, is currently the most popular political party in the Netherlands. If elections were held today, Mr. Wilders would be a serious contender for the position of prime minister. Mr. Wilders's detractors are mistaken if they think a conviction would hurt him politically. The trial is a win-win situation for him: If the court rules to restrict Mr. Wilders's right to free speech, many Dutchmen will interpret this as an effort by the politically correct establishment to limit the growing strength of the Freedom Party, which would widen its appeal to many voters. If, on the other hand, the prosecution fails to prove that Mr. Wilders has purposely insulted Muslims because of their religion, Mr. Wilders's views will be seen as vindicated. Again, he will gain politically.

More importantly, Mr. Wilders's prosecution may in the end inadvertently create a crisis between the Netherlands and the Islamic world. On trial is not so much Geert Wilders, but the Holy Book of Islam. On Jan. 20, the first day of the case, Mr. Wilders's defense team presented the court with a list of expert witnesses. It is indicative of his strategy. The expert witnesses, a group of internationally renowned academics on the one hand and, on the other, radical Islamists (among them Mohammed Bouyeri, the killer of Theo van Gogh, and the influential Iranian Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, an outspoken anti-Semite and religious mentor of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad), are requested to testify about the Quran's message and Mr. Wilders's comparison of the Quran to "Mein Kampf." As Mr. Wilders stated on the first and, so far only, session in court, if his statements about the Quran and "Mein Kampf" are correct, he cannot be convicted for telling the truth. So Mr. Wilders's defense team will concentrate on the extreme and violent paragraphs in the Quran, and compare them to paragraphs in "Mein Kampf."

The prosecution did not object to calling the witnesses for the purpose of shedding light on the Quran and "Mein Kampf" and only objected to the high number of witnesses named (17). The court will thus most likely allow most witnesses on the list to testify. Without doubt, there are many anti-Jewish remarks in the Quran. According to some researchers, there may be more of these in the Quran than in "Mein Kampf." So it is quite conceivable that the court will judge that Geert Wilders was within his right to compare the Quran to "Mein Kampf." Anything is possible in this absurd trial.

Yes, of course the trial is absurd. But it's high time that that the nature of Islam be exposed to one and all. Showing that the Quran is similar to Mein Kampf may well be the most efficient way of showing that Islam is a religion of hatred.

Sure I want Wilders to be acquitted. But he has a mission to accomplish first: To expose the truth about radical Islam to the milquetoast, complacent Western world.

Israel Matzav: Stop the Geert Wilders trial? Hell no!