Geert Wilders

I live in Amsterdam West among the flotsam and jetsam of the "Tsunami of Islamisation"  that Wilders so fears (Oct 2006) and it is indeed very unsettling to see a woman in burqa or niqab. However, to raise but one objection to the blunt means Wilders prefers for achieving his ostensibly honourable ends, many of these women (who represent a tiny minority of Amsterdam Muslims) may simply no longer be allowed to leave the house if they can’t don the burqa to do so.

By now Wilders has successfully cast himself as the latest hero of the depressingly durable reveille of the right in Holland. The conspicuously coiffured Southerner's newly founded party, the ironically named Freedom Party (PvV), won nine seats at the last election (Nov 2006) and is therefore a force to be reckoned with.

Despite the fact that the Freedom Party's slogan reads "Lower taxes, better schools, immigration stop", Wilders is not a xenophobe as he, and his party, keep on telling us. He couldn't be; he’s married to a Hungarian. Whatever, he is at the very least a rabid sectarian, as if that was somehow ok. His religion is "The Enlightenment", the religion he hates, Islam.

In an interview in February of this year Wilders informed the Muslims of The Netherlands that they would need to "tear out half of the Koran" to integrate successfully in Holland. According to the Limburger, this is necessary because there is so much of the Koran (which Wilders afterwards had to admit that he had never read) which is in conflict with
Dutch values, which, according to Wilders, are the values of "The Enlightenment". It does not seem to bother him however that the very same could be said of the bible, despite the fact that the vast majority of believers in Holland are Christian. Maybe he hasn’t read that book either.

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