Douglas Murray points out some of the many, many absurdities of the Wilders free speech trial in the Netherlands. “The trial of Geert Wilders: why we won’t be hearing about camel urine,” by Douglas Murray in the Telegraph, February 4 (thanks to Pamela):
[…] When the trial opened a fortnight ago, Wilders asked for a rather sparky list of 18 expert witnesses. They included some noted experts on Islam and social cohesion. And also a few, ahem, practitioners of the same. They were to include Mohammed Bouyeri, who shot, stabbed and partly beheaded the film-maker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam in 2004. And also Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the jihadist cleric who was given the red-carpet treatment in London by former mayor Ken Livingstone a few years back.
Sadly the Dutch court haven’t allowed these witnesses or most of the others, leaving the defence with only three witnesses. They are expert Simon Admiraal and leading Dutch scholar Hans Jansen (author of numerous scholarly books and the hilariously titled recent Islam for Pigs, Donkeys, Monkeys and Other Beasts). Most interestingly the court has allowed Wilders to call as an expert witness the brave and eloquent Wafa Sultan.
Sultan made her name – and garnered her first fatwas – for a blinding hit-the-ball-out-of-the-stadium interview on Al Jazeera a few years ago viewable here. It caused terrible convulsions across the Muslim world, and also apparently in Sheikh al-Qaradawi who described her home-truths session as consisting of “unbearable, ghastly things that made my hair stand on end.”
I much look forward to seeing Wafa Sultan take the stand. Though I slightly pity the prosecution for having to attempt to cross-examine her.
But I can’t help feeling disappointed that Qaradawi won’t be appearing. Although he believes talking about the contents of the Koran is “unbearable, ghastly and makes his hair stand on end”, I have always thought it interesting that he doesn’t find at all hair-raising – in fact he has even been quoted on his own website as defending – certain forms of female circumcision.…