Excerpt:
If it were not for his hatred of Islam, Geert Wilders would have remained a provincial Dutch parliamentarian of little note.
He is now world-famous, mainly for wanting the Koran to be banned in his country, "like Mein Kampf is banned," and for making a crude short film that depicted Islam as a terrorist faith — or, as he puts it, "that sick ideology of Allah and Muhammad."
Last year the Dutch government decided that such views, though coarse, were an acceptable contribution to political debate. Yet last week an Amsterdam court decided that Mr. Wilders should be prosecuted for "insulting" and "spreading hatred" against Muslims. Dutch criminal law can be invoked against anyone who "deliberately insults people on the grounds of their race, religion, beliefs or sexual orientation."
Whether Mr. Wilders has deliberately insulted Muslim people is for the judges to decide. But for a man who calls for a ban on the Koran to act as the champion of free speech is a bit rich. When the British Parliament refused to screen Mr. Wilders's film at Westminster this week, he cited this as "yet more proof that Europe is losing its freedom." His defenders, by no means all right-wingers, also claim to be standing up for freedom. A Dutch law professor said he found it "strange" that a man should be prosecuted for "criticizing a book."