Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) in the Netherlands, is paying a visit to Capitol Hill this week. He will be speaking about the dangers of Islamization to members of Congress at the invitation of Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX).
However, there are at least two party-poopers who intend to keep him out of the country. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and André Carson of Indiana — both of whom are Democrats representing Islam, rather than their districts, in the House of Representatives — have written a letter to the State Department and Homeland Security requesting that Mr. Wilders be denied entry into the United States,.
What I find entertaining about this Foreign Policy article is the following assertion made by the author of the article, rather than some anonymous source quoted by him: “…foreign-policy hands on Capitol Hill widely view Wilders as an obscene bloviator”.
Now, that’s what I call objective reporting!
Below are excerpts from Mr. Hudson’s screed:
Democrats Want to Ban Islamophobic Lawmaker From the U.S.
By John Hudson
In a letter obtained by Foreign Policy, two Democratic members of Congress are urging President Barack Obama’s administration to ban a Dutch lawmaker from entry into the United States due to his controversial views on Islam.
The Dutch lawmaker, Geert Wilders, is scheduled to speak at a reception on Capitol Hill this month at the invitation of Tea Party firebrand Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas). In recent years, Wilders has become internationally famous for his bombastic broadsides against Islam, which include calls to ban the Quran in the Netherlands and to arrange for the removal of Moroccan immigrants from his country. In 2010 and 2011, Wilders was formally charged in the Netherlands with inciting hatred and discrimination and is currently facing charges for hate speech.
“We respectfully request that the U.S. government deny Mr. Wilders entry due to his participation in inciting anti-Muslim aggression and violence,” wrote Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and André Carson (D-Ind.) in the April 23 letter. “Mr. Wilders’ policy agenda is centered on the principle that Christian culture is superior to other cultures.”
The letter, addressed to Secretary of State John Kerry and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, calls on the officials to deny Wilders entry under the authority of the International Religious Freedom Act, which empowers the State Department to ban the entry of a foreign leader responsible for severe violations of religious freedom.
The somewhat obscure 1998 law has only been used to deny the entry of a foreign official once, when Narendra Modi, the current prime minister of India and former chief minister of Gujarat, was accused of failing to protect Muslims during communal rioting in 2002.
Wilders has called Islam the “ideology of a retarded culture,” and his writings were favorably cited by Anders Breivik, the Norwegian white supremacist responsible for murdering 77 people in the Oslo area in 2012. He was most recently in the news for recording a two-minute video titled “No Way,” in which he tells migrants not to come to the Netherlands.
While foreign-policy hands on Capitol Hill widely view Wilders as an obscene bloviator, some aides questioned whether banning him from entering the country violates basic principles of free speech.
“It’s a pretty heavy-handed use of that law,” said a Democratic congressional aide who oversees foreign relations issues. “And if you’re going to start banning people for saying offensive things against Islam, you’re going to have to deport half the Republican caucus.”
The letter anticipates such criticisms and attempts to justify banning Wilders on account of his alleged incitement to violence.
“In the U.S., freedom of speech is a bedrock principle that distinguishes free societies from ones living under oppressive regimes,” wrote Ellison and Carson. “Freedom of speech, however, is not absolute. It is limited by the legal and moral understanding that speech that causes the incitement of violence or prejudicial action against protected groups is wrong.”
Gohmert’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
The letter signed by Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, and Carson is available here.
Would Ellison rather live in the Netherlands in Iran?
OR in Iran
No. They wants to live in the USA, but convert it into a Sharia state.
They don’t want to live elsewhere, they want to transform where they live back to 7th Century madness.
They want to live here UNTIL they’ve dragged it back to 7th-century madness. Then they’ll try to find another infidel society to plunder (if there are any left).
Re: “…foreign-policy hands on Capitol Hill widely view Wilders as an obscene bloviator”.
This is a shoddy malpractice in the craft of journalism, indeed because it’s so general and anonymous. On the other hand, I would not put it past our stupid, uninformed-and-not-willing-to-be-informed foreign-policy hands on Capitol Hill to evince exactly that view as ascribed by Hudson, not to speak of the womyn who conduct our foregn policy i.e. Jarrett, Clinton, Rice and Power and other stalwarts of this regime e.g. the Islam lobbyist John Brennan who advises on “national security” and assorted hanger-on sleezoids like “Zbig” Brzezinski, etc., etc. etc.
The reporter John Hudson is editorializing rather than reporting when he uses the words “firebrand” and “bombastic”, but this quoted statement could indeed be objective reporting: it does not state the reporter’s view, but reports the views of others, and this indeed might be an accurate assessment of the opinions of foreign-policy hands on Capitol Hill.
But this is the first I have learned of the “somewhat obscure 1998 law” known as “the International Religious Freedom Act, which empowers the State Department to ban the entry of a foreign leader responsible for severe violations of religious freedom.”
So a foreign leader can be banned from entry into the United States for preaching that apostates should be executed? Who does this describe? As the Mikado says, “I’ve got a little list.”
It’s possible that “obscene” is Hudson’s own qualifier, but I don’t doubt at all that many in the foreign-policy establishment view Wilders as an obnoxious bloviator. After all, a bigwig at the State Department responded to 9/11 with a declaration that we needed to import more Muslims, the better to “understand” them — i.e. learn how to stop making them mad at us. And D.C. was not then so heavily infiltrated by Muslims, closeted and open, as it is in the Obama era.
“but I don’t doubt at all that many in the foreign-policy establishment view Wilders as an obnoxious bloviator.”
I choked when I read that. The fools in the “Foreign Policy Establishment” do not represent anyone or anything. It should be part of their job description to keep their mouths shut. In fact the governments to which they are being posted to should be notified ahead of time to ignore them. Nothing they say represents the actual opinions or beliefs of the American people. They are essentially worthless– like trained monkeys who are only good for eating cake and shaking hands. They are the same “Best and Brightest” who were responsible for, in what has to be their greatest accomplishment, the trillion-dollar fiasco in Viet Nam.
Geert Wilders has visited the U.S. and spoken here numerous times. I do not recall any instance where he has incited non-Muslim to commit violence against Muslims. If Ellison and Carson have a case, let them present it. Otherwise, this is just a desperate attempt to stifle free speech about a rather violent and oppressive ideology. This is a conversation we need to have in Congress and in America.
Not only to stifle free speech. This is betrayal of the people and nation: The real reason is to hide the process of surrendering the nation to islam. Wilders and others are trying to awaken the sleepy, the duggists, the addicts and the semi-seelp walkers to the danger of mosque goers and hijab attired. Hijab is a form of military uniform that’s is going to be replaced by a real one in 30 years.
Betrayal betrayal oh democracy in thy name dictators oppress.
Accordingly, Churchill’s speech ” We Shall Fight on the Beaches ” was an excitement to violence.
What perverted way of thinking!
” …. on the officials to deny Wilders entry under the authority of the International Religious Freedom Act….. ”
Not even the worst dictator could twist truth this way to justify their perverted decisions. Why is this Valley of Tears noble men like Hirsi Ali and Wilders are vilified.
Muslims have shown a pattern of claiming that any criticism of their creed is a violation of their religious freedom.
Muslims also regard the mere presence of infidels among them or alongside them, or anywhere on the planet, as an offense against Islam. Recently an ISIS jihadi told an interviewer that his religion commands him to attack infidels, and that such attacks amount to “defending Islam.”
That’s just a couple of the many ways that Islamic principles are an inversion of non-Islamic norms and understandings.
Notice that the only time the particular law has been used also involved muslims.
But it’s just fine for extremist muslims to visit the USA, even to get them visits to the White House to smooze with the Empty Suit of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Would that Obama was an Empty Suit. He is a determined underminer of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Wilders must be allowed to enter the U.S. and speak. If he is not, it must be fought tooth and nail.
“due to his participation in inciting anti-Muslim aggression and violence”
Of course Messrs Ellison and Carson well know that Geert Wilders does not preach violence against Muslims, he pointedly and scrupulously refrains from doing so because he eschews violence. So they do two things aimed at people who do not know this, ie the vast majority of people:
1) they whack “aggression” in there because aggression is perceptual, ie you’re looking at me aggressively, I find your words are aggressive; in fact aggression can be extended to somebody merely resisting physical force in self-defence;
2) “participation in inciting”, Mr Wilders may not propose violence against Muslims but his words, his political program COULD be used by others to justify violence against Muslims, it could incite them to violence. Just as my disparaging remarks over Asian female drivers’ road abilities COULD be used by or incite a psychopath to embark on a murder spree against Asian women. And then “participation” suggests that Mr Wilders, whilst perhaps not advocating or inciting violence himself, is nonetheless just one element of an anti-Islamic “broad church” and he contributes to and participates in an overall ideology that might …
Off topic: How wonderful to see the UK’s Labour leader Miliband making a naked pitch for Muslim votes by promising to outlaw “Islamophobia”. Lets hope the British working class see this for what it is and abandon Labour in droves. I hope it results in electoral carnage. (Or is that inciting violence?)
One thing’s for sure, you’ll never catch a Democrat “saying obscene things about Islam.”
That’s obscene truth about islam. yes. and yes.
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it OK for Muslims to lie to infidels to further the cause of Islam? Why should we ever believe anything a Muslim says?
I hope Wilders comes and I hope they have his speech on C-SPAN. I’ll be watching for it.
It’s time to start opening a few eyes within the Beltway, or, as I call it, the Bubble.
I am impelled at this juncture to point out that there is a line between freedom of expression and personal belief and participation in organized criminal activity. With regards to Geert Wilders, I have to say that his recommendation that people become involved in a legislative agenda focused on protecting Western Civilization is NOT a crime nor organization of a criminal activity. Notwithstanding that outright banning the Koran itself is not fully consistent with the principles of regular law, it is not unusually contrary to existing legal theory. On the other hand, those who advocate adherence to the program of murder outlined in the Koran ARE engaged in the organization of criminal activity, even if this organization is distributed rather than centralized.
I do not believe that the text of the Koran should be banned, but rather that exhorting people to act in accordance with the Koran, and thus commit crimes, should be recognized as a form of organized crime. We all recognize this distinction when praising (or condemning) the movie Fitna for revealing the Koran while criticizing it and condemning those who follow it, while abhorring (or accepting) the similar illustration of the implications of the Koran in for the very different purpose of demanding uncritical adherence to the Koran.
We cannot really “ban” the text, only make it the preserve of privileged scholarship…which is already is under Koranic Islam. What we must do is hold those who advocate adherence to the precepts of the Koran responsible for their role in the criminal activity that predictably results, which they advocated. This distinction between descriptive or even normative and imperative communication is essential. I don’t hold that there is anything wrong with describing the content of the Koran, nor even that there is anything necessarily criminal about lauding the Koran (at least, parts of it). But when you say that people who do not obey the Koran should be killed, that makes you responsible for the behavior of those who obey the Koran, because it is entirely possible that they do so not because they were intellectually persuaded it is in accordance with their own conscience, but rather because they fear being killed and do it despite their own conscience.
And yes, the Koran is unambiguous in asserting that those who do not obey the Koran should be killed, and thus a general statement about the Koran being morally correct intrinsically involves calling for the murder of those who do not obey the Koran. Thus general praise for the morality of the Koran rather than specific praise for particular verses in the Koran (which do not speak of killing infidels, of course) is innately a matter of organized crime.
Let me be absolutely clear, I do not believe a free society should attempt to criminalize all death threats, the statement of an intention to kill someone. Indeed, formal law is itself nothing more or less than a statement of the intention to kill people who persist in behaving in a manner which the law forbids. I also believe that an open society cannot long endure prohibition of statements of intention to kill those who do not behave in a non-criminal manner. But the threat of killing someone for failing to behave in a criminal fashion must be regarded as at least as criminal as, for instance, hiring someone to commit a crime, or providing some other material consideration in exchange for the commission of a crime.
Threatening to kill someone for committing a crime cannot be a crime, or there can be no formalized laws at all. But threatening to kill or injure someone for NOT committing a crime must itself be a crime. And it is on that basis that advocacy of the Koran as a complete moral code must be considered criminal. But this does not and cannot result in a total ban of all discussion about the text and meaning of the Koran.
Wilders likened the quran to Mein Kampf, which is banned in The Netherlands, and many other countries in Europe (but a best seller in the muslim world) and asked why, if Mein Kampf was banned, shouldn’t the same treatment be meted out to the quran?
And before that, Mein Kampf was liked to the Quran — or, at least, the newly emerging Nazis were likened to Muslims. That was when it was still permissible in Western societies to speak truthfully about Islam.
Your arguments always have a precise insight and you are right here too. But I wish to take another tack, perhaps against the prevailing winds in CJ circles.
I believe that the whole discussion about Koran is out of place. First, it only leads to multicultists’ pointing to passages in the OT Bible urging genocide or describing genocide by the Israelites against “infidels,” or lines in the NT Bible inciting to hatred of Jews, ascribing to them collective guilt, and inspiring future genocidal actions that did take place, multiple times.
Second, while I am neither a fan of Islam nor acultural egalitarian, it’s none of our business to criticize other peoples’ religions, beliefs, social norms etc. We have one business only: to protect our own peoples and our own culture and belief systems. And that calls for reversing the suicide-by-immigration that the Western countries have perpetrated on themselves.
It calls therefore for an act much bolder than Wilders’s: speaking out not against a book but against people: alien Third World people good or bad, Muslim and not so, who have inundated our countries in the last 50 years. As an aside, most of the Maghrebian “youths” who are ravaging countries like France and Netherlands are not religious, and hardly pay attention to the Koran. They are simply feral barbarians from a corrupt, failed, violent North African culture. The prey on stupid whitey because that’s the nature of predators, and not because the Koran tells them to.
The theme ought to be: “Go back, we don’t want you, we don’t need you, we never did. You are just the consequence of the treason of our political elites that we despise and repudiate. Go back, live in your own countries and then let’s try to respect each other and be friends. As long as you are among us, a wound festers in our body that will never heal.”
That is what Wilders ought to say. But he won’t, because it’s “too dangerous.”
Indeed, isn’t he being prosecuted for merely asking a crowd, “Do we want more Moroccans or fewer?” — and getting an honest answer.
I think Wilders is fully aware of the problems that come with Muslims themselves, whether or not they seem “radical” (i.e. devout). He probably thinks that as a practical matter he can get more political traction by saying that the problem lies in the belief system rather than in people who happen to have been born in Muslim countries, as the latter view can easily be portrayed as simple racism.
Percipient observers can see that people who come from Muslim countries (and even offspring of children who immigrated from Muslim countries) tend to harbor a disturbing set of attitudes toward the host country and to exhibit destructive behavior disproportionately. Wilders can say, “The problem is Islam, not Muslims as human beings,” and observant people will think, “Yes, but Muslims — even supposedly nominal Muslims — bring the problem of Islam along with them.”
But saying so can get you dragged through the judicial wringer.
You are right, of course. He is navigating a minefield, and even with that gingerly step of his he is alone there. I only wish he hinted publicly that there are further things to say, but they cannot be said because he lives in a fascist country, in a fascist supra-state that proscribes the truth and punishes severly those who try to voice it.
Re: Maghrebian youths
The best thing these people could do is rediscover their Berber and Christian roots.
Heck, even with all the restrictions and interference from the government and extremists the Berber enclaves in Algeria are far and away the most economically productive non-hydrocarbon related areas.
The problem of the Old Testament (and even a few especially good bits in the New Testament) is one of the reasons that, while the distinction between descriptive or even normative and imperative communication is very important, it can never be precise. The attempt to regulate speech by resort to government force is always fraught with difficulty, and ultimately it takes a sane, principled, publicly accountable, and morally aware judiciary to distinguish those cases where a threat of violence against those refuse to engaged in crime is genuine.
Except in the case of Koranic Islam…there, I think that anyone short of a totally delusional psychopath should readily be able to judge that the threats are indeed serious and directly motivate the criminal behavior.
In regards to application of appropriate punishments for engaging in violent crimes, I am minded to remain faithful to the principle that one cannot transgress the rights of a society, civilization, or even nation, since such entities have none except as derived from the property interests of particular citizens whose labors create and sustain the larger social organization. Conversely, I do not believe it is useful to talk of larger social organizations being responsible for anything, let alone crimes. A social organization is a construct, it may be distributed through vast libraries, monuments, temples, as well as innumerable lesser artifacts, but considered apart from individual humans, it is ultimately made up entirely of inanimate objects created by human efforts. Holding a nation responsible for a war is like finding a toaster guilty of murder. The toaster might well have been the instrument of murder, but it was not the murderer.
Often, when you punish a murderer, you confiscate the toaster (or other weapon). Sometimes the means of the murder is then disassembled or dismantled, both for investigative purposes or to prevent its further improper use. I have no objection to doing the same to a nation, or a national (or racial) identity, which has been used to commit serious crimes and does not seem useful for anything else. But this does not satisfy the demands of justice upon the murderers.
I do not subscribe to the MCPC idea that all cultures are equally valuable, even when it is turned around to say that Western nations also have a right to exist. The fundamental contradiction implicit in MCPC by rejecting the rights of Western nations is why I don’t accept it. But I can’t resolve that contradiction by extending the equal validity of all cultures and nations to Western cultures and nations, because an essential part of some cultures is to conquer and subjugate other cultures. You cannot possibly protect all cultures, some cultures can be expressed in no other way than by the destruction of other cultures.
And Western Civilization should be one of them. The intolerance for slavery (sexual, racial, religious, or otherwise) is one of the highest aspirations of the West. To say, “well, Europe can remain a haven for white people, as long as they do nothing against the assorted kinds of slavery which are fundamental to other cultures”, is to drive a stake right through the heart of the West.
We must judge crimes by the violation of individual rights, no matter how numerous the individuals whose rights are being violated. We must hold individuals accountable for those crimes, no matter how many criminals were involved. To that end, it may be (and in the case of most of the Islamic world, certainly is) necessary to dismantle or destroy some nations or national identities. I have no objection to a vigorous effort to stamp out all vestiges of legal and social privileges based on ‘racial grievances’. But we must not let anyone off the hook for their individual roles in the organized (if somewhat decentralized) crimes committed simply because they happen to be cultured whites descended from long European lineages.
Because they are the real danger.