Free speech stoned to death
Miranda Devine
The Sunday Telegraph
February 24, 2013 12:00AM
IF you needed proof that free speech in Australia is on the run, look at what happened when Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders came to town.
With 10 per cent of the vote in Holland, Wilders is a mainstream politician, leading the third largest political party in one of the most tolerant liberal democracies in the world. Yet in Australia he is treated like a pariah, denied a visa for months, and unable to secure a venue for his speaking tour in Perth.
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Instead of a "welcome to country" before he spoke to audiences in Sydney and Melbourne last week, organisers had to read aloud a statement of Victoria's racial and religious tolerant act.
As much as anything, this curious legal requirement adhered to by the Melbourne-based Q society which hosted Wilders, explains why Australians are open to his message of creeping Islamisation.
That and the enormous security needed to guard him from assassins 24-hours-a-day.
It is shameful that of all the Western democracies Geert Wilders has visited it turns out, Australia is the most repressive.
Not only did more than 30 venues refuse to host him or cancel at the last minute, politicians denounced him and in Melbourne protesters tried to block the entrance of the function hall where he was speaking and pushed at least one attendee to the ground in violent clashes.
This of course is great publicity for Wilders. When you meet him in person, he is much more normal than his image would suggest. The shock of hair isn't quite so yellow and he presents as a tall, well-dressed, quietly spoken, articulate politician with perfect English.
"I have no problem with Muslims," he said reasonably on a balcony in an undisclosed location on Sydney harbour, with yachts clinking nearby, and an armed bodyguard even nearer.
"The majority of them are not extremist. But there is no such thing as moderate Islam."
As proof he spoke of of gays being beaten up by Muslims in Amsterdam "once the most tolerant city in Europe", of high crime statistics for Moroccan youth in Holland, the over-representation of Somalis on welfare, of suburbs looking like Mecca. In Europe he says "it is almost too late, but Australia can learn from the mistakes."
He says although he is not religious, he feels a sense of "mission" which he loves, although he has had to sacrifice his freedom, living with his Hungarian-born wife Krisztina for nine years like a prisoner, surrounded by bodyguards, moving from safe house to safe house.
He is strongest on his attacks on cultural relativism which he calls "the biggest political disease which says that all cultures are equal.
"They are not. I'm proud to say our Judeo Christian humanist culture is much better than the barbaric Islamic culture."
It was a message that struck a chord in Sydney, on Friday night, at speeches hosted by the Q society, which is named after the Melbourne suburb of Kew where its first meeting was held, and is dedicated to "preserving western values and making the discussion of Islam a respectable topic of debate," says member Marshall Ahern, a Lidcombe businessman. Unlike in Melbourne, the unionists and student socialist groups protesting outside the Liverpool function hall on Friday night were fairly quiet.
"I don't think he should be able to come here and say disgusting racist ideas," said Amy Thomas, 26, a UTS arts student.
Inside, Wilders said he just wants the right to state his views without being killed or put on trial as he was in Holland. The threat of an assassin is real. Two weeks ago his friend, Lars Hedegaard, a 70-year-old Danish journalist and a critic of Islam, was shot at.
Wilders invited the audience to "make up your own mind on who I am and what I really stand for."
Then he claimed Sydney was the Australian city "where Islamisation has progressed the worst.
"This city needs to hear the truth about the dangerous ideology of Islam ."
He complained that he had to wait five weeks for a visa to Australia.
But a radical sheik who calls Jews "rats, apes and monkeys or the scum of the human race" and will be visiting Sydney in a few weeks, "gets a visa within a day".
He said he wanted to warn Australia about Islam which he claims is "predominantly a totalitarian ideology striving for world dominance.
"I believe Islam and freedom are incompatible.
"The more Islamic a society becomes the less free and tolerant it will be even when the majority of Muslims are tolerant."
He cited suburbs in Holland, France and in Europe which have become no go zones for non-Muslims, where gays are attacked, alcohol confiscated, non-Muslim women forced to cover up, polygamy and female genital mutilation practised and the police dare not enter. Do you want all this to happen in Australia," he asked.
"No" shouted the audience.
He claimed Australia is heading down the same path.
"Your country too is facing stealth Jihad, and Islamic attempts to introduce Sharia law bit by bit.
He pointed to a proposed "Muslim enclave in Riverstone" , a Sydney sheik "who performs female genital mutilation, women walk around in hijabs, banks offer financial services compliant with Sharia law, separate segregated swimming hours for Muslim women, universities cater to Sharia demands for students but at the same time refuse to allow me to speak at their premises."
There was applause when he explained his platform: "No Sharia ... No more mosques. No more immigration from Islamic countries." But he received his loudest applause when he slammed as "most dangerous of all are the attempts of governments all over our Western societies to draft bills that restrict our freedom of speech under the pretext of discrimination or hate speech.
"I say we have to let the law protect us against Islam instead of selling us out to it."
The second loudest applause came when he praised Israel.
Much of what he says about the difficulties of Muslim integration in Europe is true.
But I couldn't help but wonder how it would feel for the decent law-abiding Australian Muslims I know to sit in that room.
What is wrong with a Muslim women wearing a headscarf?
What is wrong with painting an arrow on the floor of a jail cell pointing to Mecca?
What is wrong with Muslims building a mosque to pray in?
And why keep calling Muhammed a paedophile?
Some of what Wilders says is calculated to cause offence, and so if he is snubbed, he can blame himself.
But you don't have to agree with everything he says to acknowledge that he has the right to say it.
And as one audience member on Friday night said: "If he's a far right extremist, he's the first one I've heard who supports Jews and gays."
