On February 12, the British government denied Geert Wilders entry into Britain. Wilders is the Dutch parliamentarian who is being criminally prosecuted in Amsterdam because he made and propagated an anti-Koran film which depicts acts of violence by Muslims and because he compared the Koran with Mein Kampf. The British authorities said that “people who carry extremist, hate and violent messages are not welcome in our community.” It should be noted that Wilders was not running from Dutch law. He had been invited by some members of the British Parliament to present his views.Pat Condell is a brilliant British on-line satirist who has commented on the Wilders case in the past. Check him out by clicking on Pat Condell's
In his comments, Condell really lets the Dutch have it. But now, it seems that the British authorities have joined the Dutch in their idiocy and cowardice.
As to where I stand, let me make the following points:
1) The Dutch authorities - and now the Brits - are very wrong. I wont re-iterate the reasons why. Pat Condell discusses them far more eloquently than I ever could.
2) Let’s be emphatically clear that the issue has nothing to do with Arabs (or with Iranians, Pakistanis, Indonesians and all the other people whose majority religion is Islam).
3) The problem lies with fundamentalist religion and religious intolerance, including radical Islam.
4) Condell and others may be fervent atheists. I am not. I am indifferent to religion. I am not as animated against religion as Condell and others. In fact, I am against the harassment of religious people. I find it lame when Macy’s forbids its employees to wish people “Merry Christmas,” when municipalities forbid crèches in public areas, when there is a crusade to delete “In God we Trust” from our money, etc.
I find militant atheism and mandated atheism (as in the former USSR) a mirror image of theocracy. Soulless, scientific materialism doesn’t have all the answers, either. After all, the crisis of modernity is upon us, right now, isn’t it?
Let’s not toss out the spiritual and the transcendental altogether. The question should not be: Religion, yes or no? But: What sort of spirituality? We have much to learn from Buddhism, Zen and other Eastern traditions.
5) But this huge topic is not what today’s post is about. Today, I just want to stress the evils of religious bigotry. Today, militant Islam is the prime example of this, and yet the European authorities are punishing Geert Wilders, who is no more than the messenger.
6) Religious bigotry is evil wherever it occurs, and it also occurs in Christian countries. But currently, US fundamentalists do not stone women to death because they had a cup of tea with a man they are not married to. They do not send 16-year old suicide bombers (often girls, lately) to kill innocent men, women and babies. They only vote to ban such things as homosexual marriage. That’s a bit of a difference.
7) The media have told us about Sharia law, the Madrassas, and the Mullahs. I don’t know with how much negative bias these terms are used in the West. Perhaps some of the religious schooling undergone by young Muslims is okay. But there is no doubt that some of this “religion-based” education inspires the atrocities and the mayhem, including anti-Western terrorism, and that it fuels enormous hatred of Western culture. The greatest obscenity is that the “religious leaders” are often old men, while those they send to blow themselves up are often children. But I suppose that’s always been the way of war - old men sending children to die.
8) So now Geert Wilders becomes a cause célèbre, due to the stupidity and cowardice of (some) Europeans.
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