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Fitzgerald: The Great Undoing

Mar 3, 2008 12:44 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald

The Dutch government was today examining the legality of banning a film attacking Islam amid fears that it would fan sentiment against the Netherlands in Muslim countries.

The Telegraaf newspaper reported that the coalition government was divided on the film, with the Christian Democrats leaning towards a ban but Labour favouring freedom of expression and calling on Muslim countries to prevent violence against the Netherlands. — from this article

If the Netherlands bans the Geert Wilders film on the Qur’an, it will be one of the most important acts in the history of free speech. It will constitute an act of Great Undoing, in response to threats from maddened primitives, of the most important political right acquired, over time, by individuals in the Western world — a right that, without which, all other rights are essentially meaningless.

This has to be understood. If the Netherlands, and if the countries of NATO (who are now involved), cannot permit, and will by fiat end, freedom of speech when it comes to perfectly legitimate criticism of Islam, then the civilization of the West will have suffered an immense blow. Not everyone will mind, or even notice. Some will tell themselves that this “right-wing” politician Wilders was looking to stir up trouble by criticising Islam. And if he was? Isn’t it better that the “trouble” be stirred up now, while the West can still defend itself, especially within its own lands, but can do so only if it recognizes the meaning, and the menace of Islam and Jihad?
And others will say something like “oh, but there will be greater danger to Dutch troops” in Afghanistan. And still others will add, “yes, and even to the troops from the other NATO lands.” And perhaps that is true. However, if it is true, perhaps it is NATO forces that should rethink their “mission” in Afghanistan, and what is achievable there. Perhaps NATO should rethink whether “helping” people who would eagerly kill them because of the refusal of the Western world to abandon freedom of speech in the case of a fifteen-minute film in the Netherlands, is really the wisest course of action. Perhaps NATO should consider what that tells us about the nature of the people in Afghanistan, or in any other Muslim state or society, whom we complacently or desperately assume are not our sworn enemies, are not hostile to the non-Muslims of the world. (For yes, that hostility can exist side-by-side with a desire to get from the West all the benefits that West clearly offers, including every sort of aid. It can even be present among people who decide to move to and settle within that same West. That is, even those who leave the misrule of Islam can continue to harbor that hostility to non-Muslims. Unlike refugees from the Nazis or the Communists or other examples of misrule, all too many of these immigrants bring with them, in their mental baggage, the very thing, Islam, whose effects, especially those of political despotism and economic paralysis, are what caused them to leave such hell-holes as, say, Somalia, or Pakistan, or the Maghreb, in the first place.

This suppression, by the Western world, of free speech, will have grave and long-lasting consequences. For if this movie is suppressed, one assumes that all other such movies will be suppressed. And the demands, by Muslims inside and outside of Europe for still more to be censored, including the written word, will only increase, with that well-known triumphalism that feeds each new demand, as Muslims demand more and more concessions to ensure that they will never feel offended, neither within their own lands, nor within the historic heart of the free and advanced West. For if they are offended, the consequences will be greater than what the West wishes to pay. It need not be soldiers in Afghanistan. It could be, say, a threat to blow up one of the Oxford colleges, or the Louvre, or the Alte Pinakothek, or the Uffizi or the Vatican. Oh, it could be any number of things. Do what we want, submit to our Diktat….or else!

The stand has to be taken now. Not later. Later will be too late.

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