Xenophobe and racist Dutch MP Geert Wilders is at it again. Wilders leads the right-wing Freedom Party. Last year he released a controversial film that slams the Koran. At the time, Ernst Hirsch Ballin, the Dutch Minister of Justice, said Wilders had the right to make the film.
Today, the story changes. His tirades against immigration and Islam may land him in jail. In January, a ruling in an Amsterdam appeal court ordered the Public Prosecuting Office to prosecute Wilders for inciting violence.
Wilders has hired a top notch lawyer to drop the prosecution order on the pretext of free speech.
He compares Hitler's Mein Kampf to the Koran and labels all Moroccans as "street terrorists." The Netherlands has the second largest population of Muslims in Europe after France.
Wilders sees himself as a jealous guardian of free speech but sees no contradiction between his desire to ban the Koran and his free speech argument.
A poll claims the Freedom Party's popularity has since surged. This is not surprsing. A 2006 Pew Global attitudes study claims (link opens to openDemocracy article) the Netherlands is the only country in Europe where a majority of its citizens have an unfavorable view of Muslims.
