Geert Wilders Goes To Temple
DONALD HOPKINS
On October 20th 2009, Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, visited Temple University, in hopes of giving a talk on "free speech." Geert Wilders is a member of People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy and a well known right wing politician. His political positions include:
1. An immigration ban of five years for immigrants from non-western countries. Foreign residents no longer shall have the right to vote in municipal elections.
2. A ban of five years on the founding of mosques and Islamic schools; a permanent ban on preaching in any language other than Dutch. Foreign imams will be forbidden to preach. Radical mosques will be closed; radical Muslims will be expelled.
3. Banning the Koran as well as a $1500 excise tax on headscarf wearing.
Mr. Wilders also produced a controversial film called Fitna which argues that Islam is a political ideology that advocates violence and terrorism against non-believers. He was invited to Temple University by two Student organizations: The Temple College Republicans and Temple University Purpose—a social work organization supposedly devoted to social justice and presenting unconventional viewpoints. The David Horowtiz Freedom Center originally proposed his visit to the Temple Republicans, offering to pay for the talk.
Upon the announcement of his impending visit, many Temple Students were angered by the visit of a well known hate preacher. The Temple Muslim Association expressed its anger with a letter to the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which responded by publishing an article called "Jihad at Temple" which claimed that the Temple MSA supported Hamas and proceeded to print personal contact information of the President of the Temple MSA. The decision was made by a coalition of progressive student groups, including Temple’s YDS chapter: The Temple Democratic Socialists, to form a counter-protest in response to Geert Wilders visit. We proceeded to embark upon a massive awareness campaign throughout the campus, attempting to get as many of the progressive student organizations involved, as well as having a strong presence at the Temple Student Government meeting (who proceeded to pass a resolution condemning the visit).
The David Horowitz Freedom Center, perhaps sensing a heavily publicized political battle was afoot, decided at the last minute to send David Horowitz to the talk. The night of his visit, we showed up in force bringing a large crowd of protesters including members of Temple Democratic Socialists, Queer Student Union, Temple University All Sides, Students for Justice in Palestine, The Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, and of course The Temple Muslim Student Association. We made a very rigorous effort to make sure the protesters remained peaceful and calm, aware that if things got out of hand, Horowitz and his goons could easily portray us as a bunch of violent “Islamo-fascists.”
When the event began the opposition to Geert Wilders was clearly the majority in the room. Wilders proceeded to present his film (a movie not only intellectually fraudulent but badly produced as well) and then began his talk on free speech. He informed the audience that Islam was threatening Europe’s “Judeo-Christian” heritage. Islam, he maintained, was a fascistic political ideology that threatened freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and Europe’s “Western Civilization.”
Then came the question and answer period. To Geert Wilders (and Horowitz’s) dismay, the questions were not particularly friendly. Students, who had received copies of Wilders’ article where he argued that the Netherlands ban the Koran (printed and distributed by us), demanded to know how he could advocate for free speech and yet want to censor books and how he could call Muslims fascists when he himself argued for authoritarian policies in his home country. An attempt was made to present Mr. Wilders with a gift copy of the Koran, presented by Temple’s progressive student leaders, but we were informed we would not get a chance to speak at this “free speech event.”
As it became more and more obvious that the crowd did not appreciate his presence, the organizers announced that the event would be ending an hour early, as our unfriendly questions were apparently making Mr. Wilders uncomfortable. The crowd, who had been told that this event was supposed to be about free speech, were not pleased that they were not being given a chance to speak. As Geert Wilders hurried away to give interviews to the media and David Horowitz’s face began to turn a shade of red that I did not know existed, the message of our counter-protest became abundantly clear: Fascists are not welcome at Temple University.
An excellent demonstration of YDS’ potential to bring a broad coalition of progressive interests together and spearhead an effective campaign against the forces of intolerance and injustice. Well done!
“An excellent demonstration of YDS’ potential to bring a broad coalition of progressive interests together and spearhead an effective campaign against the forces of intolerance and injustice. Well done!”
This whole thing, including your reply and applause of the misguided students, would be laughable if it weren’t dagerously idiotic. Our western societies, of which only the U.S. now has free speech (the hate speech laws have effectly destroyed free speech in Europe and Canada), can and should tolerate every kind of speech, EXCEPT that which will destroy free speech.
In every country, without exception, where islam dominates (which is always and everywhere its goal), there is no freedom. Even now in our own country, many will not speak out against its satanic treatment of women and other evils because of fear (cowardice), but they will try to endear themselves to muslims, like they think muslims will tolerate them, because they joined the attack against the voices like Geert who tell the truth about islam.
You are sadly mistaken. When they gain the power they seek, you will lose your freedom too! Just name one islamic country where anyone not muslim can serve in government, speak out about atrocities, and etc. Young girls in our own country, have been killed by their fathers in its name.
And now I hear the lame reply, “well Christians have done great evil and murder in the name of Christianity”. This has meaning only to those who want it to, and refuse to hold it up to critical examination. Anyone can do anything in the name of anything else. But who does true Christianity follow and what does it teach? When being taken by violent men, Jesus told his followers to put down the sword, he said “they that live by the sword shall die by the sword”. And when He was being killed by violent men, He said, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”
mohammed slaughtered innocent people, raped little girls, and told his followers to take up the sword against any who would not voluntarily yield to islam.
You foolishly aid those who, when they come to power will destroy you and your children. Geert said it best…
“Multiculturalism is a disaster. Almost everyone acknowledges this today, but few dare say why. Let me tell you why: Multiculturalism made us tolerate the intolerant, and now intolerance is annihilating tolerance.”
Thanks Geert, some of us are listening.
Excellent report. I loved this part: “As it became more and more obvious that the crowd did not appreciate his presence, the organizers announced that the event would be ending an hour early, as our unfriendly questions were apparently making Mr. Wilders uncomfortable. ”
Tough guy could try to make war with a whole culture, but can’t deal with a few questions from university students.
By “Europe’s Judeo-Christian heritage”, he must have meant the 1500 years of oppression against Jews under Christian rule.
Daniel,
I have to say, your comment is perhaps the most shallow in this entire list. How about flipping on the little brain switch and actually considering what it means to have the “Judeo-Christian heritage”. Was there shameful oppression of the Jews, yes (and it is sadly being started again by the islamo-fascists).
If you haven’t had any real history, let me fill you in on a few things. Many more Christians died and were oppressed at the hands of the so called “Christian rule” than Jews did…by far! Christianity is not a political party, nor is it the last name of a ruling dynasty that held sway in Europe in the past. The only thing that can constitute “Christian rule” is when a true Christian rules, and follows the teachings of the New Testament. There has been little to none of that in Europe’s past.
So what does it mean to have a Judeo-Christian heritage?
It means that the moral laws of the Old Testament form our foundation…Thou shalt have no other gods before me…Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain…Thou shalt not kill…Thou shalt not steal… Thou shalt not lie (bear false witness)…Thou shalt not commit adultery…Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors goods…Honour thy father and thy mother.
These laws give us direction to, among other things, honour women, build and keep a family as well as do no harm to other families, respect property rights and etc.
I hope you can see that this is the very foundation that has allowed the U.S. to excell.
Now it is under attack by progressives and islamists. The progressives don’t respect anyone’s property rights except their own. Look at the decadent mansions their leaders live in. They are for the poor man…yeah right! They covet everyone’s goods so they can get political power by taking them from one and doling them out to 10 others. You support them while you are on the recieving end…just wait. The elitists will norm everything at a very low level. The true middle class will be gone and there will only be the masses, waiting for the next dole from the elitists like Obama, who by the way, will be living in their gated communities.
The islamists, if they can will replace it with sharia.
Related to Daniel’s Comment: see the classic work by Karl Kautsky, Foundations of Christianity, here:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/
Anyone with eyes should be able to understand why an inflexible social/political/religious system with a history of abject violence, terrorism, and oppression would be considered a threat to the democratic institutions that make up Europe.
The inability and/or refusal by the Muslims to integrate within Europe are resulting in increasing acts of violence by Muslim extremists in those countries.
That there is an immediate threat to European democracy seems not to be important to the students who care more for the priciples of equality than for the system that allowed them to have free speech in the first place.
Fighting intolerance and Injustice is great, but understand that it is foolish to defend the very thing that seeks your destruction.
I don’t disagree with the Angry American regarding the danger of the radical agenda by some portion of the Islamic world, but I do disagree on two major points. First, the notion that there is no such thing as moderate Islam, which Wilder claims, is blatantly false. Second, though the Muslims who don’t support free speech do
indeed threaten ours, the way to combat it is NOT by threatening theirs. To quote several of my favorite progressives:
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
…………
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~ John Stewart
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. ~Noam Chomsky
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. ~John F. Kennedy
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. ~Voltaire
Alan,
The thing here that is blatantly false, is your assertion that there is a moderate islam. The only sect that could remotely fit that description is the Druze sect, and they are hated and killed by the others. They usually are found on the side of Isreal because they desire freedom.
As Geert so correctly points out, there are moderate muslims, but no moderate islam. Just name one islamic nation (ruled by islamists) that does not oppress everyone but muslims. They allow no one else to be in government. There are muslims in the Israeli parliment. How many Jews or Christians are in Egypt’s, Syria’s, Turkey’s, Iran’s, Lybia’s or Pakistan’s government?
They suppress everything that is not islam! The evil so called “prophet” that began their system of domination didn’t preach peace and love or good will toward men, but domination, murder, and pedofilea.
If you are not sure that the way of freedom and resistance of the preaching of dominance and murder is the right opinion, then you and the idiotic progressive that said this are part of the problem. What a nonsensical mindless statement. The progressive mantra must be: “If it sounds good, say it”.
Would it have been an evil to stifle the hate and dominance of Mine Kampf before its proponents killed millions as the islamists will do if they can?
Comparing opposing the conquest of the West by this murderous, fem dominating, fatalistic, child indoctrinating, freedom destroying system that calls itself a religion, to simply silencing an opionion is analogous to fiddling while Rome burns. It’s murder not simply the expression of an opinion.
This man is warning us of what he sees happening in his homeland. Murder, intimidation, and dominance. These people would cut off John Stewart’s stupid head just as well as Daniel Pearl’s.
It is not about despising people and stifling their efforts to advance their agenda because it is an opinion we oppose. Their efforts are to dominate us and rob us of our freedom. If we don’t oppose this, we will eventually yield to it, whether we like it or not. Then we will die for expressing our opinions like so many do in the islamic countries now.
We freedom loving people have no way to understand what seeks to dominate us in islam. We have expressed our opinions and disagreed about things for hundreds of years. islam is different. It will end that freedom if it can. We should do as GW has suggested and just as Germany did in the aftermath of WWII. They banned Mine Kampf because it was evil and dangerous without a single redeeming trait. It incited the sick minded, narcissistic, malcontents and others to not simply express an opinion, but to dominate and destroy.
islam is just the same. It teaches little children that Jews are “monkeys and pigs” and all deserving of death. It is nothing more than a totalitarian system masquerading as a religion. Ban islam, the immigration of islamists, and the building of mosques before their numbers reach the level of intimidation they have reached in Europe. Now those who will speak out against it face at best court fines or at worst death (as several who have spoken out against it have found)
WAKE UP!
The idea that Muslim students could not even be open to hearing an opposing position to their beliefs is laughable.
Educated individuals should be able to hear other messages that are not their own without throwing a temper tantrum.
Streets all over the Netherlands are Infested with Muslims who spit at local Dutch women because their heads are not covered. HOLLAND, the most OPEN country in the world, can No Longer have Open Discussions. This is why Geert lays out his three points.
WE SHOULD BE INTOLERANT OF THE INTOLERANT. Believe what you want to believe, but DONT Force it on others
For Understand Freedom, Alan, and An Angry American – so much truth in what you say. I do agree with Geert that Islam is a “backward” culture. All you have to do is look at the Middle Eastern countries and how they live, treat women, and devalue freedom of conscience. The countries that consider themselves Islamic are areas of the world torn apart by brutality, forcing sharia law rather than presenting the truth of their religion for individuals to accept or reject. So much Geert Wilders says is just common sense based on what he has observed in his own native country, and what he understands from the lessons of history. He is not dumb, and he is no coward. I admire him. I only wish he knew the love of God for him. We could indeed lose everything America was founded upon in one generation of “political correctness” which undermines anyone who thinks for themselves and thinks outside of the mainstream and is not afraid to speak out. Freedom of speech is our hard-earned right. Even freedom to speak against the Koran! (or the Bible, for that matter – although I believe what it says and am a Christian, personally). What is needed is true believers in Christ to be the salt and light of their communities all over the world, no matter how the prevailing pc media try to tell them all cultures are equal!
> Streets all over the Netherlands are Infested with Muslims who spit at local Dutch women because their heads are not covered.
is this true? do you have a link to article about this maybe? local non-muslim dutch women?
To Nick (who apparently has been dwelling in a cave with no Internet access): Here’s something to start with, concerning Egypt, but you’ll find this intolerance everywhere Islam (and Sharia) are implemented, all ending disastrously for Christians, women, homosexuals—- oh hell, anybody who doesn’t bend a knee to allah and his pig sucking prophet mohammad. Too harsh? f#ck it. I don’t give a rat’s ass…
http://ucministries.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/egypt-muslims-burn-christian-man-alive-stab-his-father-to-death/
You can also Google the other Islamic nations currently at odds, e.g. involved in military skirmishes with their infidel (but truly peace loving) neighbors. A rough count would have it at thirty some odd conflicts around the globe, all involving (gasp!) Islamic nations. Gee, what a surprise! It’s not a religion, certainly not peace loving, it’s an intolerant, fascist ideology…
Wow, and you call yourselves “free” countries… haven’t heard such garbage in all my life. People you fail to see the bigger picture here. Currently there is a war against Islam in the world, and what are you doing? You’re falling for the lies and propaganda the media feeds you.
You can’t call all Muslim people facists! we are different with different cultures, levels of education like all other religions in the world.
If I were to follow your theory here I should hate Christians who disturb me in my own home knocking on my door and shoving their beliefs down my throat, stopping me in the street, trying to brainwash me in school… telling me that I will burn in hell because I’m Muslim… I should hate all of you because you destroyed my beautiful country Bosnia, for raping/murdering and shooting at kids playing in the street, for killing children infront of the eyes of mothers… all because we were Muslim. I should hate all of you for stealing my childhood for robbing me of my father. I should hate all of you because you are all the same. This is exactly what you are doing! you are judging the good majority by the +*&%ed minority.
I used to live in the Netherlands as a 5 yr old child… who lost everything and was thrown out into the world.. and this beautiful country took me under its wing and helped me heal and pulled me to my feet again.. look what its come to.. its turned against me.
Aussie,
Yes, for the time being we are free, but it won’t last if your islamist dominators get power. Name one country dominated by the islamists where Christians and others enjoy the same level of freedom and privelege as muslims…you can’t!
The war is constantly waged BY islam against others, but seldom gets what it deserves in return. Only the heroic Israeli’s have stomped the cruel dogs as they deserved when they all together tried again and again to destroy this little nation. So much for allah’s power heh.
Is it the West’s “war” against islam that caused iran and iraq to kill each other or is it the West’s “war’ against islam that causes the evil islamasts to murder thousands in Somalia and other African nations? Evil islamists murder and mame in the Phillipines, Indonesia, India, Russia, Spain, Lybia, England, Israel, Egypt, and on an on.
These murderous dogs don’t deserve to be called facists, in that you are correct. We must apologize to all true fascists.
Do you call indoctrinating little kids to hate and kill and commit suicide while killing those who don’t believe like them education! They are nothing like other religions. They seek only to dominate, they are worse than fascists.
Probably the only reason you tolerate the free speech of Christians here is because you will be punished if you do otherwise. Everywhere your islam has the opportunity, they silence Christians and everyone else.
Geert Wilders publishes documented facts about the societies dominated by islam, and no one seems to want to comment on them.
As for you progressives, you are cowards and actively oppose those who you know won’t harm you, while you wink at unmentionable evil in those who will. The stench of cowardly progressivism is beginning to polute the whole nation. When you turn our society over to the islamist fascists, the pain they inflict on me will be mitigated soemwhat by seeing them give you what you seem so bent on recieving at their hands.
As for Bosnia, you seem to have gotten your facts all mixed up. Your own Bosnian people were giving the islamists what they had been recieving at their hands until we intervened. We were the ones who stopped the killing of muslims.
This is a beautiful country. I am glad you are healing, but I will not stand idly by, saying nothing, while you spout false islamist propaganda. The so called prophet killed and dominated and directed his followers to do the same to make more followers. Jesus told his followers to put up their swords. For those who put him to death, he had compassion and love, even asking the heavenly Father to forgive them.
It sounds that it is you who are turning against this free country. I urge you to follow the way of love and forgiveness, not domination and murder.
You can never rob me of my beautiful faith Islam, why? because its in my heart, I may not talk about it, I may not be covered, I may be blue eyed and white skinned and you will never know what I carry in my heart, because whats in my heart is mine and mine alone. As hard as you try you will never kill Islam. And those of you who want us eradicated will pay the ultimate price on judgement day. There is no need to war, for blood to be spilled because faith is in the heart and evil hearted people will pay the price with God in hell.