How do you say “free speech” in Dutch? Apparently, you don’t.
Dutch MP Geert Wilders appeared yesterday in an Amsterdam court to face criminal charges for, essentially, criticizing Islam.
The hate-speech charges stem largely from Wilders’ film warning of the Islamization of Europe, which connected verses from the Koran with scenes of Islamist terror.
If convicted, he faces up to two years in jail.
Actually, he might consider such a sentence a lucky break: In 2004, Islamist assassin Mohammed Bouyeri gunned down Theo Van Gogh, one of the last Dutchmen to make a movie critical of radical Islam.
After the shooting, Bouyeri used a knife to affix a five-page note threatening Jews — and the West in general — to Van Gogh’s dead body.
Add to that, say, the attempts on the life of Danish “Muhammad cartoonist” Kurt Westergaard and the creeping reach of Sharia law in Britain, and you have ample grounds for a hard look at the impact on Europe’s political and cultural fabric of a growing and assertive Muslim population.
Yet the courts appear set on aiding the thugs with guns in squelching all debate.
Wilders, to be sure, is hardly a posterboy for free speech and liberal democracy: Some of his proposals for dealing with the issue — including banning the Koran — are as offensive as the show trial he now faces.
But last time we checked, confident, free societies don’t lock people up for simply expressing their views.
Holland is rapidly becoming anything but.