Geert Wilders: The Saga Continues

Just in case anyone thought I was exaggerating with this older post on Wilders, here's a few excerpts from a recent interview with Britain's Guardian newspaper.

A TV addict with bleached hair who adores Maggie Thatcher and prefers kebabs to hamburgers, Geert Wilders has got nothing against Muslims. He just hates Islam. Or so he says. 'Islam is not a religion, it's an ideology,' says Wilders, a lanky Roman Catholic right-winger, 'the ideology of a retarded culture.'

The Dutch politician, who sees himself as heir to a recent string of assassinated or hounded mavericks who have turned Holland upside down, has been doing a crash course in Koranic study. Likening the Islamic sacred text to Hitler's Mein Kampf, he wants the 'fascist Koran' outlawed in Holland, the constitution rewritten to make that possible, all immigration from Muslim countries halted, Muslim immigrants paid to leave and all Muslim 'criminals' stripped of Dutch citizenship and deported 'back where they came from'. But he has nothing against Muslims. 'I have a problem with Islamic tradition, culture, ideology. Not with Muslim people.'

[...]

He shrugs off anxieties that his film will trigger a fresh bout of violence of the kind that left Van Gogh stabbed to death on an Amsterdam street and his estranged colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali in hiding, or the murderous furore over the Danish cartoons in 2005.

The Dutch government is planning emergency evacuation of its nationals and diplomats from the Middle East should the Wilders film be shown. It is alarmed about the impact on Dutch business. 'Our Prime Minister is a big coward. The government is weak,' says Wilders. 'They hate my guts and I don't like them either.'

And if people are murdered as a result of his film? 'They say that if there's bloodshed it would be the responsibility of this strange politician. It's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. They're creating an atmosphere. I'm not responsible for using democratic means and acting within the law. I don't want Dutch people or Dutch interests to be hurt.'

But he does want to create a stir. 'Islam is something we can't afford any more in the Netherlands. I want the fascist Koran banned. We need to stop the Islamisation of the Netherlands. That means no more mosques, no more Islamic schools, no more imams... Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims.'

Free speech or hate speech? 'I don't create hate. I want to be honest. I don't hate people. I don't hate Muslims. I hate their book and their ideology.'

First of all, I don't think it's quite fair to put him on the same plane as Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Hirsi Ali is an intellectual, an incredibly astute and thoughtful person, who would never say something as deliberately insulting and provoking as calling Islam a "retarded culture". Hirsi Ali was fighting against the subjugation of women in the name of Islam; Wilders is fighting to ban the religion from his country. That's quite a difference.

Wilders' film hasn't been shown yet, but he says it will be eventually.

I think it's hard for a North American to quite grasp the racial tensions present in Europe until you visit (more evidence). The influx of large numbers of illegal and/or very poor immigrants from Middle Eastern and African counties is a huge problem. Notice Wilders' emphasis on banning the building of more mosques: there are plenty of people here who sense that Islam is gaining demographic ground very quickly and worry about what this means for their secular traditions.

It is of course unfair to assume that all Muslims view their religion as a political philsophy, but there are plenty who do and they come particularly from poor, third world countries--the exact same countries which are sending scores of refugees into Europe.

People in Canada get worked up over Little Mosque On The Prairie, talking as if we have a clash of cultures going on in our country that's in danger of getting out of control. Trust me, until you've been to Europe, you ain't seen nothing. It sounds isolationist of me to say this, but we should feel incredibly lucky to have huge oceans between us and most of the developing world--it gives us a control over our country's borders that the Netherlands can only dream about.

Jan 31: Brussels By Daylight

Two weekends ago I set off for my trip to London, which I had been greatly looking forward to all year. If I could have only picked one city to see while I was in Europe it would have been London, with Paris as a close second. (Third? Hmm...Amsterdam or Berlin, I suppose.)

Lindsay and I were going to be taking the train from Brussels to London early on Friday morning, which meant I had to be in Brussels the night before in order to make the trip. This was also the case for my trip to Istanbul, during which a series of unfortunate events caused me not to get to Brussels until dusk.

So I made sure this time to make it to Brussels while there was still time to see the city properly.


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I came armed with a list of museums and attractions that I wanted to see. Most of them were a fair ways apart but within walking distance. Brussels is also the home of the headquarters of both the EU and NATO. While NATO HQ is pretty far off and probably not that interesting for a tourist, the EU parliament was walkable.

Interesting sidenote: Ayaan Hirsi Ali is currently at the EU parliament requesting they fund her security. She's gotten a lot of support from the French on this; not so much from the Netherlands.

However, I got to Brussels and emerged from the Gare Centrale into gale force winds with dashes of rain. So much for all the walking I had planned to do.

I mostly just stuck near the train station, which still has plenty of things to see.

Nearby are the Royal Galleries of Saint-Hubert, a covered shopping arcade built 150 years ago and full of fancy shops and such. On the other side you enter a labyrinth of little alleyways full of restaurants.






Eventually you spot a tall tower looming ahead, and that's when you know you're approaching the Grand Place.



The Grand Place is a 600-year-old town square and is in the dead center of the city. It's dominated by the huge town hall. This is a sort of panoramic view of the Grand Place as you enter it, going from right to left.






That last building above contains the museum for the city of Brussels, which I almost went into but decided to keep exploring instead.

The town hall is really the most striking building in Brussels, and you can almost always orient yourself within the city by spotting the tower. (Here's a fun game you can play at home: how many pictures in this post have the town hall tower in them?)




You may recall from my last trip to Brussels, which took place during the winter festival, that the town hall was lit up with coloured lighting which changed in rhythm with booming classical music that was broadcast into the square. It was really cool.



I also notice in that old post that I called this building the Grand Palace, obviously misreading the word 'Grand Place' and then applying it to the wrong object. So for anyone out there who was under the impression that I'm infallible, now you know.

After you leave the Grand Place you come to a big building that was originally built as the stock market.




Here's how it looked the last time I was in Brussels.



As I was gathering the pictures for this post, I found it interesting how these neighbouring buildings resembled the town hall and parliament buildings in Vienna; one a big Gothic building, the other a big Greek building.




If I knew anything about architecture I'd expound more on how interesting this is, but I don't so I won't.

I kept walking.




The next significant structure is St. Catherine's Church. It's a very strange looking church; I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something about the way this church looks that stays with you. The building itself is only 150 years old. An old church used to stand on the site, and the clock tower to the side is the other structure that remains from it. (Odd, because on appearances the clock tower seems to be much newer.)






And, again, here's how the building looked when it was lit up for winter festival.




I'm now standing in a big long open square, which I guess is known as the Fish Market. It was marginally less enchanting this time than it was the last time I stood here.





There was a big statue at the far end of an empty fountain, and it was surrounded by little statues of beasts that will haunt my nightmares.






There was also a monument that was erected in memory of WW1. It's a statue of a topless lady holding a pigeon, which I guess makes sense if you're Belgian.





The whole downtown area is a mixture of old and new, perfectly encapsulated by this photo of an old tower surrounded by a modern office building. Damn I'm good.



I kept trekking, up a hill towards the ritzy Upper Quarter of the city center. This picture looks back down towards the Grand Place.



Eventually I came to the biggest church in Brussels, the St. Michael and Gudula Cathedral. It was built in the 13th Century. I spent some time wandering around inside, but didn't take any pictures. I got yelled at one time by an old guy for taking a picture inside a church in Utrecht even though the lady at the tourist desk told me I could, so I usually don't bother.






A few blocks away is the Belgian parliament where politicians gather, fight over language and cultural issues, refuse to work together, and threaten to split the country in half.



The parliament building faces a gigantic park which at this time of year could be mistaken for a cemetary.



After what felt like a lifetime walking through the "park", I ended up at a big palace for the Belgian royal family. Fun fact: one time the Belgian King abdicated his throne for an hour so the country could pass an abortion bill that he couldn't bring himself to sign on account of his religion.

Doesn't it seem insane that these small countries have their own royalty? Honestly, if a guy came up to me and introduced himself as the King of Belgium, I'd probably start laughing.


There was a rooftop cafe nearby that offered a nice view of the city. In the very far distance, just beside the orange flag, you can see a large building on the horizon; it's a huge Basilica that was started by King Leopold in 1905 and didn't get finished until 1960. It must be gigantic to see up close.



I did some more walking around in the Upper Quarter and took pictures of random things, but I was starting to get mighty cold by this time.







As I was walking back to the train station I was behind a group of foreign tourists. The wind suddenly picked up again and knocked over this fence just as they were about to walk beside it. They all started screaming. It was pretty funny.



Well, that was Brussels. I took the train up to Brussels North station to stay the night at the same film students' place that I stayed at last time. We went out that night to see a screening of a few short films and then hit a pub afterwards. I ordered a beer in French and engaged six Belgians in a debate over the Iraq war.

Brussels was okay, but nothing too special. There are parts of the city that are really nice, but it also has a bleak or even shabby feeling to many streets. Part of this was definitely the weather, and part of it was also the amount of construction going on. (Actually, the amount of construction going in any European city at one time is pretty incredible. Case in point: the central train stations in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Brussels are all under major renovations right now.)

I'll likely be back in Brussels before the end of my trip here, so maybe it will leave a better impression when the sun is out and the streets are full of shoppers.