Geert Wilders, Or, A Daniel Come to Judgment “More In Sorrow”

by Hugh Fitzgerald

In March 2014, during a political rally at The Hague, Geert Wilders asked his audience whether they wanted “more or fewer Moroccans” in The Netherlands. “Fewer, fewer,” his supporters chanted. And then he promised them that “then, we will arrange that.” He meant, of course, that if his party were to do well in the next election, he would limit the number of “Moroccans” entering the country. He did not denounce all “Moroccans.” He did not say he would be forcibly removing “Moroccans” from the country. All he did was utter less than a dozen words, lasting less than 30 seconds. There was no ranting, no mocking of Moroccans. But out of that briefest of exchanges with his supporters a hysterical case has been concocted by the Dutch state against Wilders, who is now on trial, put there by those who think that his question-and-answer constituted “racism” and “discrimination” and “hate speech.”

Where should we begin with this? Wilders has never made a comment on a race, though he is forever being accused of “racism.” “Moroccans” are not a “race,” and it is not “racist” for a Dutch citizen to worry aloud about the observable effect of their increasing presence in the Netherlands. Nor do Moroccans constitute an ethnicity; there are both ethnic Arabs and ethnic Berbers who are “Moroccans.” “Moroccan” signifies a national identity, albeit one that is inextricably linked to Islam. Wilders said nothing to whip up “hate” against “Moroccans.” He merely asked his audience whether, given their own experience with Moroccan immigrants, they wanted more or fewer such migrants in the Netherlands. For experience had shown that those “Moroccans” continue to make heavy demands on the generous Dutch welfare state, soaking up funds (for housing, medical care, education, unemployment benefits, etc.) that are then no longer available for needy Dutch people, and that the rates of criminality, and expensive incarceration, among “Moroccans,” have been many times larger than the rates among the native Dutch. As of 2011, 65% of all Moroccan males between 12-23 years of age have been detained by the Dutch police at least once. One third of this group has been detained five or more times. Moroccan criminals are convicted at  four times the rate of Dutch suspects. These numbers were steadily increasing when reported on in 2011, and it is reasonable to conclude they have continued to rise since then, though no more recent reckoning has been made public. It may be that the Dutch government doesn’t want figures to get out that would alarm the populace still further. And European officials, including the police, often discourage the reporting of crimes by Muslim migrants.

Wilders did not discuss in detail the high rate of Moroccan criminality. But he knows, and his Dutch supporters know, and for that matter even those putting Wilders on trial know, that it has to do not with their being Moroccans, but with their being Muslims. First, as Muslims, they are inculcated with contempt and hatred for non-Muslims. It is not just that Infidels are described in the Qur’an as the “vilest of creatures” (98:6) while Muslims are the “best of peoples” (3:110), but that throughout the Qur’an and the Hadith, one finds these same judgments endlessly repeated, dilated upon, amplified. Shouldn’t the best of peoples be allowed to take the property of the vilest of creatures?

Second, in an Islamic society, Muslims will spare the lives of non-Muslims (if they are People of the Book, Christians and Jews) and allow them to practice their religion in return for payment of the Jizyah, or capitation tax. But in Europe today, which is not yet ruled by Muslims, taking property from non-Muslims can also be understood, and justified, by Muslims, as a proleptic helping themselves to the Jizyah even before Muslim rule is established, and the Jizyah formally exacted.

Third, because Allah can and does interfere at will with human destinies, distributing or withholding bounty as he wishes, there is not much point in striving to succeed; instead, Muslims exhibit what is known as inshallah-fatalism.

Fourth, another aspect of Islam that acts as a brake on economic achievement is the distrust of bida, or innovation, which in its narrowest interpretation means “innovation in religious matters,” but is applied more generally to new ways of doing things, and new ways are Islamically doubtful. Just think of how often the word “innovative” is used as a positive epithet in the West, while in the lands of Islam, whatever is “innovative” is regarded with deep suspicion. The economic performance of Muslim migrants is not impressive, when compared both with that of the indigenous peoples and with that of non-Muslim immigrants in Europe. The unemployment rate for Muslims is much higher than for non-Muslims. Inshallah-fatalism and hatred of bida have their effect. Why work hard when Allah decides who gets what? Why work at all when the property of the Infidels is there for the taking? Higher rates of Muslim unemployment have two consequences: first, more money from the Dutch government goes to welfare benefits for Muslims; second, more unemployed Muslims leads to more property crimes committed by Muslims.

Finally, it is not just crimes of property, but sexual crimes by Muslims that worry those who answered Geert Wilders with the chant “fewer, fewer” (Moroccans). Muhammad himself took sex slaves from three different tribes, and Muhammad was the Perfect Man and Model of Conduct for all time. Muslim sexual assaults on non-Musliim women – a steady and growing feature of life in Europe today, especially in Germany and the Scandinavian countries – can be Islamically justified by the belief that these women, by dress and demeanor, are “asking for it.” And since Muhammad took Infidel women for his sexual pleasure, why shouldn’t Muslims today follow his example? Hence we have in many parts of Europe what has been called, and not by Geert Wilders, the “Muslim rape epidemic.”

To appreciate the magnitude of this problem, think of Sweden, where Muslims now make up 2 percent of the population, but 77 percent of those convicted of rape.

The trial of Wilders has begun, but right now it’s Hamlet without the Prince. Geert Wilders has decided to boycott the proceedings. He doesn’t want to dignify what he regards as a farce. Farce it certainly is, but there’s reason to think he’s chosen the wrong strategy and is missing an opportunity to educate the Dutch public. I think he should now announce that he will show up, will defend himself, will bring to the attention of the court and to the larger Dutch public what prompted him to openly worry about the numbers of “Moroccans” in the Netherlands. He should take the occasion to hold up for inspection and discussion every one of the prosecution’s points. He should insist that “Moroccans” are neither a race nor an ethnicity. He should explain that yes, of course Islam has something to do with his wanting to limit the number of “Moroccans” in the Netherlands, for it is Islam, he should insist, that explains their hostile attitudes and behavior toward the Dutch Infidels, their inability to integrate into Dutch society, their high rates of both unemployment and, especially, criminality. He should, in the courtroom, read out, from the Qur’an, both the “best of peoples” (98:6) and the “vilest of creatures” (3:110) passages, and repeat them, and others that reinforce the same message, all the while dispassionately explaining that given that kind of inculcation, what else can one expect of the “Moroccans” who want to be “good Muslims.” He should explain that Muslims may see their property crimes as akin to the sanctioned Jizyah, which he should define as “a capitation tax which non-Muslims in an Islamic state are required to pay to stay alive.” He might even take the occasion to define the word “dhimmi” and to describe the host of disabilities, aside from the Jizyah, that non-Muslims must endure. The aim will be to ensure that these words, “Jizyah” and “Dhimmi,” and what they mean, are forced into the Dutch public consciousness.

Geert Wilders should take the tack not so much of being angry with these Muslim Moroccans, but rather, of someone offering an understanding analysis of what makes Muslims – who are mainly “Moroccans” in the Netherlands – behave as they do in the countries of Western Europe. Wilders should remind the court that whether it is mainly Pakistanis in the U.K. (with their girl-grooming gangs), North African Arabs in France, Turks in Germany, Afghans and Arabs in Sweden, the problems with these different populations of Muslims turn out to be the same everywhere, including the inculcated hostility toward their Infidel hosts which prevents integration by Muslims, no matter from where they may have come, nor where in Europe they may end up.

And Wilders can present another narrative in the courtroom. The attitude to assume toward the “Moroccans” should be one of “they can’t help it because they are merely taking the Qur’an and Hadith to heart” and “it’s unrealistic to expect that they will change, the hold of Islam is too strong over the minds of its adherents.” This unexpected air of sweet reasonableness, of explaining “Moroccan” behavior as something they cannot control, will unnerve his critics, not least because what Wilders says is true. Can those critics ignore or deny the Qur’anic passages or Hadith stories he quotes? Can they deny the statistics he adduces on Muslim criminality, and the comparison he can make with that of non-Muslim immigrants and indigenes, all over Europe?

At the same time, Wilders should keep the attention both of the court and of the journalists covering his trial, on the long-suffering Dutch people who have for too many years endured both the spectacular rise in crime by Muslims and the burden placed on them for the government benefits lavished upon an ever-increasing Muslim population. Wilders ought to turn on his accusers and put them on trial instead; he ought to hold up for critical inspection those who have tried to silence him by continuing to label him, without the slightest evidence, as “racist” and “right-wing,” he should wonder aloud at the willful ignorance, confusion, and hypertrophied fear-of-being-perceived as “right-wing” or “racist” of the political and media elites who claim to be able to protect and instruct the Dutch people, but have avoided coming to grips with the essence of Islam. Instead,they have tried to silence those who, like Geert Wilders, have been willing to take on the ideology of Islam. The baleful consequences of this are to be seen everywhere in Europe, where people who are rightly anxious about Islam feel abandoned by their own governments.

No matter how many times the press affixes the epithet “far-right” both to Wilders and to his party, the PVV – just try to find any story about him that does not include the “far-right” or “racist” label –there is nothing particularly “far-right” about wanting to lessen the number of likely criminals in the Netherlands. The high rate of Muslim criminality is not a figment of a “right-wing” imagination, but a fact confirmed by the police statistics everywhere in Europe.

Wilders should paint a full picture of Muslims in the Netherlands, not to denounce, but to help his fellow citizens, including those determined to punish him, to understand why Muslims behave as they do. He should explain how their inshallah-fatalism and suspicion of bida contributes to their economic underperformance and high unemployment. He should explain what it is in the Qur’an and Hadith that makes Muslims think that they are entitled to help themselves to the property (and, in some cases, the women) of the Infidels, as a kind of informal Jizyah, and what explains the Muslim indifference to the man-made laws of the Infidels, for the only laws that count are those that come from the Qur’an and Hadith. The trial of Wilders should be turned into a public lesson in the ideology of Islam, and its practitioners depicted, truthfully, as unable to behave otherwise than they do.

Above all, Geert Wilders should present, with outward sober mien, a “more-in-sorrow” case against the “Moroccans.” Perhaps he should begin his peroration thus: “It is not their fault that their faith inculcates the attitudes it does, or makes it so difficult and dangerous for anyone born into the faith to question aspects of it, much less try to leave the faith altogether. It’s not their fault” – Wilders should continue – “if the Qur’an and Hadith instill certain attitudes in Muslims, the same attitudes that those texts have instilled over 1400 years and that explain Muslim conquests over such wide areas, and the subjugation of so many different non-Muslims, to Muslim rule. It is madness,” Geert Wilders should quietly tell the court, “to believe that somehow all of that history, and those immutable texts, can be ignored.” And Wilders could even say “I feel sorry for those born into, and trapped in, this faith that will not let them out and that teaches them to be the enemies of all non-Muslims, that is most of mankind. I feel sorry that the habit of mental submission that is instilled in them keeps them slaves to Islam. But I feel even sorrier for my own countrymen, who are made to suffer the depredations of Muslim migrants – mostly, at this point, Moroccans – who have come to live among us, but are not here to make things better for our country, but only better for themselves, by any and all means allowed by their beliefs. Yes, I do not apologize for the fact that I am more sorry for those Dutch who now have to worry about burglaries and muggings and sexual assaults and No-Go Areas in their own country.”

And then, with this new and improved version of Geert Wilders, this “More In Sorrow” courtroom version, Geert Wilders will signal his readiness for that electoral closeup next March. A closeup which, for the Dutch who can still think straight, can’t come soon enough.

First published in Jihad Watch.