Last month, the Dutch government commenced legal proceedings against a sitting member of parliament, Geert Wilders, for engaging in “hate speech.” Wilders’ primary offense was producing the short film Fitna, which juxtaposed sanguinary passages from the Koran with grisly scenes of Islamist violence. A three-judge panel in Amsterdam ruled that the film—and some of Wilders more intemperate public statements, like his comparison of the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf—warranted criminal prosecution, for he was making “one-sided generalizations” about Islam and was, therefore, “insulting Muslim worshippers” in Holland.
