Geert Wilders: a radical view of Islam

The controversial, right wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders, was invited by the Australian Q society, an anti-Islamist group, for a tour of speaking engagements recently. Wilders, a law graduate, is the leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV), one of 10 parties in the Dutch Parliament.

In the 2010 election the PVV received 24 out of the 150 seats but in the 2012 election they dropped back to 15, still 10% of the total. Wilders does most of the talking for the party, publicly and in Parliament. Some see it as a one-man party.

When comparing the multicultural situation in the Netherlands with Australia some very major differences should be stated first.

The Netherlands is not an immigration country quite unlike Australia that now takes in some 200,000 + migrants annually, including refugees (up to 10%). In contrast, the Netherlands was very much an emigration country especially in the 1950s and 1960s.

It is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. It has experienced the post WWII influx from citizens from former colonies, such as the Ambonese (Indonesia), Suriname and the Dutch West Indies. When the growing post-war economy created labour shortages, guest workers were invited by several European countries for limited periods, mostly from Turkey and Morocco. Many stayed. Refugees followed, first the Tamils.

With the growing prosperity of the EU the old state borders became quite porous and refugees from many other countries arrived, although especially from Africa, and settled in the Dutch welfare state. However, clusters of culturally quite different groups began to irritate some of the Dutch; in particular those who adhered to fundamentalist Muslim beliefs. About 6% of the population are Muslims.

At first the late Professor Pim Fortuyn emerged as a prominent public critic. He portrayed the Islam religion as "backward". Sadly he was assassinated in May 2002 just before his party was to take several seats in Parliament (not by an Islam opponent but by an animal rights activist). More tragedy was to follow. Dutch filmmaker, writer and actor Theo van Gogh had produced a highly critical film about the Islam religion, which generated further anger.

Van Gogh worked with the Somali-born feminist writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali to produce the film Submission, which heavily criticized the treatment of women in Islam. This also aroused controversy among local Muslims. He was assassinated by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim, in November 2004. In this heated climate of anti-Muslim feeling Geert Wilders took on the role of public critic and his party campaigned against Muslim refugees. In June 2011 the then conservative Dutch coalition government said that it would abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that, in their view, had encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a "parallel society" within the Netherlands.

Speaking to the new integration bill the then Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner said "The government shares the social dissatisfaction over the multicultural society model and plans to shift priority to the values of the Dutch people".

The new integration policy would place more demands on immigrants. For example, immigrants would be required to learn the Dutch language, and the government would take a tougher approach to immigrants to ignore Dutch values or disobey Dutch law.

The government would also stop offering special subsidies for Muslim immigrants because, according to Donner, "it is not the government's job to integrate immigrants." The government will introduce new legislation that outlaws forced marriages and will also impose tougher measures against Muslim immigrants who lower their chances of employment by the way they dress. More specifically, the government will impose a ban on face-covering Islamic burqas as of January 1, 2013.

There are many interpretations of Islam but Wilders concentrates on the dominance of Sharia Law and violent aspects of the religion, in reality aspects that only a small minority of Muslims relate to. Even fundamentalist Muslims are rarely given to support violence. As a radial critic of Islam he apparently was an attractive guest speaker for the Australian Q society.

However he can hardly be seen as an advertisement for the Netherlands or as representative of the current Dutch Government. The conservative Coalition lost power in September 2012 and Wilders PVV party is no longer even an informal (gedoog) partner. Besides Minister Hein Donner's party (Christian Alliance) lost heavily.

Wilders had to wait for two months before his application for entry into Australia was approved by the then Immigration Minister Chris Bowen. After it was approved the Q Society not so surprisingly found it particularly difficult to find venues in several cities. Managers of a large number of possible venues, including churches, refused. Advertisers were not willing to assist the organisers either. The expectation was that Wilders could ignite major local protests against the organisers and people who wanted to hear what he had to say.

Given the simmering disenchantment in Australia with Islam fundamentalism, occasionally proclaimed by the odd cleric but generally kept well in check by the overwhelming majority of Islam followers, the values of Free Speech were tested seriously.

Wilders himself was at pains to state, wherever he went, that he "did not hate Muslims, but he did reject the Muslim ideology" which he compares with the Nazi-ideology. For him extreme Islam is not just a religion but also a political dogma. He favours an end to the settlement of refugees in the Netherlands. Many of these refugees actually have fled from aspects of the Islam religion. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is actually a prime example of this. Amazingly, this young woman became an MP in the Netherlands. "Sending them back" is no option however. The integration of Muslims in Dutch society is in fact happening.

Many of them do speak Dutch very well. Wilders' crusade, against Islam, which has taken him to the UK, the US and European countries in recent years, turned out to be a storm in a tea cup in Australia.

Comparisons with Australia in this regard are almost nonsensical as multiculturalism here was officially adopted by both major parties in the early 1970s as a superior way to integrate immigrants from non-English-speaking migrant countries. That has been a highly successful policy ever since.

The visit may have been beneficial for Wilders.