Trial of Geert Wilders Nears Verdict
NEW AMERICAN: As the spectacle of a man being tried for speaking the truth about Islam comes to its end in the Netherlands, the accused continues to assert that the accusations of “hate speech” that have been made against him are baseless — the problem is that Islam is an ideology of hatred.

Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), has been on trial in Amsterdam on the accusation that he was “inciting hatred and discrimination” against Muslims. It appears, however, that not even prosecutors believe Wilders to be guilty of the charges against him. As CNSNews explained in an article on the Wilders case earlier this week:

The Dutch legal establishment has proceeded with the landmark trial even though public prosecutors have requested that it be abandoned, leading to the peculiar spectacle of the officials whose job is to secure a conviction instead urging the Amsterdam district court to acquit the accused man.

The lengthy trial also saw the judges replaced last fall on the instructions of a review panel, because of an appearance of bias against Wilders. Prosecution and defense alike have argued that Wilders’ statements about Islam constituted protected speech, and that Wilders was not speaking out against Muslims per se, but against what he saw as a growing threat to Dutch society posed by Islamism.

As reported previously for The New American, the trial of Wilders is a test of the willingness of the West to resist the latest onslaught of an Islamic Jihad, which has been waged for over 1,300 years. As Wilders and other courageous individuals have pointed out, the threat to the civilized world is not limited to al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood; the threat of Islam is based in Islam being a religion of hate. Rev. Elijah Abraham of Living Oasis Ministries spoke with The New American in an interview last year, and among the topics he addressed was his childhood growing up as a Muslim in Iraq: » | James Heisner | Thursday, June 02, 2011