Marked for Death: Islam's War Against the West and Me (31 page)

The prosecutor’s decision was roundly criticized by the multiculturalist establishment. “Some say [
Fitna
] was not as bad as expected. I disagree,” Amsterdam police chief Bernard Welten said at the annual police
Iftar
dinner marking the end of Muslims’ daily fasts during Ramadan. “The movie incorrectly suggests that violence and even terror are rooted in Islam.”
³¹

People even demanded my prosecution during ceremonies honoring victims of Nazi Germany. “
Fitna
stigmatizes and incites hatred,” former Labour Party leader, Minister of the Interior, and Mayor of Amsterdam Ed van Thijn declared during a commemoration of the anniversary of
Kristallnacht.
He bemoaned that “expressions of Muslim hatred are a frequent phenomenon in Parliament,” adding that “exactly because
Fitna
is part of a political debate it has to be combated.”
³²

Another speaker at that ceremony was Moroccan-born former parliamentarian Mohamed Rabbae of the far-left Green Left Party, who compared my attitude toward Muslims in the Netherlands to the Nazis’ persecution of Jews. Rabbae further demanded that I be prosecuted over
Fitna.
That was unsurprising, since he’d previously demanded a ban on Salman Rushdie’s novel
The Satanic Verses
for supposedly insulting Islam.
³³

A ceremony for Jewish victims of Nazism was hijacked by activists demanding censorship and decrying free expression—that was a chilling sight. Sadly, it seemed to characterize the overwrought reaction my short movie provoked both in the West and in the Middle East. Still, I took some comfort from the thousands of supportive emails I received from people all over the world, including Muslims in Islamic countries. They showed that, although we’re not supposed to talk about the problems of Islam, people everywhere are intimately familiar with them.

“If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly,” Ronald Reagan declared in his 1982 speech to the British Parliament in Westminster.
³⁴

I was going to use Reagan’s quote in a speech I had prepared for a meeting with British parliamentarians slated for February 12, 2009. The meeting had been arranged by Baron Malcolm Pearson of Rannoch and Baroness Caroline Cox of Queensbury, who had both invited me to show
Fitna
in a conference room of the parliament building.

I had met Malcolm and Caroline in November 2008, when they hosted me at lunch in the restaurant of the House of Lords. (Before I flew to London, the Dutch government asked their British counterparts to guarantee that I would not be arrested during my trip and extradited to Jordan.) I found that I had much in common with Caroline and Malcolm, who are both Eurosceptics, supporters of Israel, and long-standing human rights activists. Caroline also heads a charity that supports Christian minorities in Islamic countries, and she has worked with organizations that raise money to free slaves. We agreed that I would return to London in early February to show
Fitna
in the Palace of Westminster and to discuss my movie and my policy proposals with British MPs.

The following January, however, when Malcolm and Caroline sent out invitations to British parliamentarians to attend the
Fitna
screening, Lord Nazir Ahmed went into a rage. The Pakistan-born Ahmed, Britain’s first Islamic peer, was made a baron in 1998 and took his oath on the Koran. In 2005, he hosted a book launch in the Palace of Westminster for Isreal Shamir, who used the opportunity to call on the Islamic community in England to “turn the tide” of “Zionist infiltration” of Britain’s political parties and mass media.
³⁵
In 2007, Ahmed protested the knighting of Salman Rushdie, accusing the author of having “blood on his hands” because he had “provoked violence” by writing
The Satanic Verses,
among other things.
³⁶

Ahmed told Malcolm he did not want me visiting the Palace of Westminster. He wrote to the British Home Office, the speaker of the House of Lords, and Black Rod, the head of security at the Palace of Westminster, to warn that my presence “would lead to the incitement of religious and racial hatred, which constitutes a public order offence.” He advocated banning me not just from Parliament, but from Britain altogether.
³⁷
Malcolm stood firm and went to see Black Rod, who assured him that he would draft extra police to deal with any threats. Due to security concerns, however, we had to postpone the screening of
Fitna
from January 29 to February 12.

I was in the
Tweede Kamer
on the afternoon of February 10 when the British embassy in The Hague delivered an official letter informing me that Jacqui Smith, the British Home Secretary, had declared me
persona non grata
and barred me from entering the United Kingdom. “The purpose of this letter,” the document read, “is to inform you that the Secretary of State is of the view that your presence in the UK would pose a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society. The Secretary of State is satisfied that your statements about Muslims and their beliefs, as expressed in your film
Fitna
and elsewhere, would threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK.”

This was too much—I had been banned from Britain for showing how the Koran advocates violence. The faithful who teach and recite these violent injunctions in mosques across the world are left alone, and I didn’t see why I should be singled out merely for showing what they are saying and doing. So I decided to challenge the ban by flying to London as scheduled—at the very least, I’d make a public stand for free expression. As William McKinley said, “That’s all a man can hope for during his lifetime—to set an example—and when he is dead, to be an inspiration for history.”
³⁸

I landed in Heathrow on February 12 with dozens of Dutch and British journalists in tow. Upon arrival, I was met by two immigration officials who told me that I was being refused entry to the country. Despite being accompanied by the Dutch ambassador, I was locked up for three hours in a Heathrow detention room and then put on a flight back to Amsterdam.

The Dutch Prime Minister and Foreign Minister lodged formal protests with Britain over my treatment.
³⁹
Also supporting me were Lord Pearson and Lady Cox—who accused the British government of “appeasing violent Islam”—as well as the British National Secular Society, which wrote a letter to Home Secretary Smith defending my right to free expression.
⁴⁰

Much of the British establishment supported my expulsion, however. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband defended my deportation on the grounds that
Fitna
is “a hate-filled film which is designed to stir up religious and racial hate”—though he admitted he had not actually seen the movie.
⁴¹
Britain’s Liberal Democrats also backed the ban, with party spokesman Chris Huhne declaring, “There is a line to be drawn even with freedom of speech, and that is where it is likely to incite violence or hatred.” The “revolting”
Fitna
movie, he said, crossed that line.
⁴²

Unfortunately for Huhne, the ban on me was overturned when I challenged it before the British Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. On October 16, 2009, three days after the ruling, I returned to London to meet with Malcolm Pearson in Westminster and plan our showing of
Fitna.
About forty men from the organization Islam4UK demonstrated in front of the building. Dressed in Middle Eastern garb, they demanded that Sharia law be introduced in Britain and chanted slogans ranging from “Freedom go to hell” to “Wilders go to hell.”
⁴³

On March 5, 2010, at the invitation of Caroline Cox and Malcolm Pearson, I was finally able to show
Fitna
at the Palace of Westminster and discuss the issue of Islamization with my British colleagues. There were no incidents and no disturbances of Britain’s “fundamental interests,” “community harmony,” or “public security.”

My visit to London followed an international campaign I organized to show and discuss
Fitna
with politicians and citizens. In some places, such as the Danish Parliament, I spoke without trouble. I was, however, banned from screening
Fitna
at the European Parliament (EP) despite an invitation from EP member Gerard Batten. In fact, even before
Fitna
had been released, the EP’s Conference of Presidents prohibited showing the “movie on caricatures of Islam by Mr Wilders” in “any space in the European Parliament.” I visited the EP building in Strasbourg, but the EP president told me that screening
Fitna
anywhere on the EP premises, including in the private offices of parliamentarians, was forbidden. So Gerard and I had to limit ourselves to holding a press conference.
⁴⁴

America behaved as befits a free country. On February 26, 2009, I showed
Fitna
at the U.S. Capitol at the invitation of Arizona Senator Jon Kyl. I also screened the movie without incident in several other U.S. cities, though the Marriott Hotel in Delray Beach, Florida, and the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, both cancelled conferences when they learned I was involved.
⁴⁵

One of the most memorable events was my February 2009 visit to Rome, where I received the Oriana Fallaci Free Speech Award. Italian authorities provided intense security, organizing an escort of ten police cars that halted traffic during morning rush hour to take me from the airport to my hotel. All the parked cars in front of the hotel were towed away, while an army of heavily armed policemen and soldiers guarded the hotel. They even posted snipers on the surrounding rooftops. When I went to the bathroom in the hotel lobby, thirty-five policemen—my colleague actually counted them—guarded the door.

It was the best-protected pee of my life.

Islam’s leftist fan club in the West has proven time and again that it will go to extraordinary lengths to protect Islam from criticism. In my case, after failing to prevent me from releasing
Fitna
in the first place, they dragged me to court to shut me up.

As previously mentioned, in June 2008, the Amsterdam public prosecutor ruled that he would not prosecute me for producing
Fitna
or for my statements about the Koran and Islam. The Netherlands, however, is one of the few countries in the world where individuals who claim to have a direct interest in the prosecution of a crime can appeal against the prosecutor’s decision not to pursue a certain case.
⁴⁶
If the Court of Appeal subsequently rules that the suspect should be prosecuted, the prosecutor is obliged to do so.

This is what happened after leftist groups, Islamic organizations, and various other parties appealed against the prosecutor’s ruling on my case. On January 21, 2009, the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam ordered the prosecutor to try me in an Amsterdam court. The court argued that, based on the standards set by the European Court of Human Rights, criminal prosecution is appropriate for “insulting Muslim worshippers” by making “comparisons between Islam and Nazism.”
⁴⁷

Ultimately, I faced five charges: group insult of people, i.e. Muslims based on their religion; the two charges of incitement of hatred and incitement of discrimination against people, i.e. Muslims because of their religion; and the two charges of incitement of hatred and incitement of discrimination against people, i.e. non-Western foreigners and/or Moroccans because of their race.