Geert Wilders
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Geert Wilders | |
 | |
| | |
| In office 2006 – Incumbent | |
| | |
| Born | September 6, 1963 Venlo, Netherlands |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Political party | People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (former), Party for Freedom |
| Profession | Politician, cineaste, writer |
| Website | www.geertwilders.nl |
Geert Wilders (IPA: ['xe:rt 'ʋildərs], ['ɣe:ʁt 'ʋildəʁs]; born 6 September 1963) is a Dutch politician. He has been a member of the Dutch Parliament since 1998, first for the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy and from 2006 on the Party for Freedom, a party which he founded and of which he is the political leader.
Early life and career
Wilders was born in Venlo, Netherlands in the province of Limburg, where he was raised a Roman Catholic. He received his secondary education at the Mavo and Havo of the "R.K. St. Thomas College" in Venlo. He followed a health insurance course at the "Stichting Opleiding Sociale Verzekeringen" in Amsterdam and gained several Law certificates at the Dutch Open University. His father was a manager for the printing and copying manufacturing company Océ.[1]
After working in the health insurance industry, Wilders became a parliamentary assistant to Frits Bolkestein in 1990, in that time keeping up a heavy travel schedule, including a visit to Tehran, Iran.[citation needed]
Wilders' wife is Hungarian.[2][dubious ]
In 1997, Wilders was elected for the VVD to the municipal council of Utrecht, the fourth largest city of the Netherlands. A year later, he was elected to the national parliament.[citation needed]
Political career
In September 2004, Wilders left the liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD in Dutch), having been a member since 1989, to form his own political party, Groep Wilders, later renamed Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV or Party for Freedom).[3] He left the liberal party, over a dispute within the VVD in late August 2004 about, among other things, his refusal to endorse the party's position that EU-accession negotiations must be started with Turkey. Geert Wilders has been in the Tweede Kamer since 1998.
His party program states that Wilders' party is committed to "freedom of the individual"; Wilders believes that the Netherlands has been held hostage by elitist (mostly social democrat and left-wing liberal) politicians for decades. He claims to want to give it "back to the people", and in this respect he has been labeled a populist by the establishment.
His political views (and so the ones of the PVV as well) often overlap those of the murdered Rotterdam politician Pim Fortuyn and his List Pim Fortuyn. There are strong resemblances, certainly on socio-economic issues, to libertarianism. Wilders wants to lower taxes, cut most welfare programs, raise highway speed limits and minimize state regulations by making it mandatory to scrap two legal rules for every new one to be instated. He also wants to reintroduce the mandatory army service. On the crime issue, he has supported a U.S.-style three strikes law with mandatory life sentences after three separate acts of violent crime.[4]
In polls released following the assassination of Theo van Gogh, it was estimated that Wilders' party could win as many as 29 (out of 150) seats in the Dutch parliament. With the uproar over the killing of Van Gogh subsiding, this number declined to a low of one in October 2005. In February 2006, after the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, it rose again to three seats.
A few weeks after the assassination, Geert Wilders stayed away from regular meetings in parliament for several weeks. Even though a member's presence is not mandatory, it is uncommon not to show up for weeks on end. Wilders claims that he did this out of concern for his personal security. Having been assigned a new seating position in the parliamentary meeting hall (one further away from the public observation area), he has once again started to attend meetings.
Wilders is under constant security protection because of frequent threats to his life.[5] On 10 November 2004, two suspected terrorists were captured after an hour-long siege of a building in The Hague. They had three grenades and have been accused of planning to murder Geert Wilders as well as then fellow MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali.[6] The men in question were presumed members of what the Dutch intelligence agency, the AIVD, has termed the Hofstadgroep. In September 2007, a Dutch woman was sentenced a 1-year prison term for sending out more than 100 threatening emails to Wilders.[7]
In recent interviews, Geert Wilders more than once indicated that the Dutch constitution and European Convention on Human Rights should be amended or temporarily suspended to protect citizens from "Islamic extremism". He is in favor of stripping criminals with dual nationality of their Dutch citizenship and deporting them to their country of origin.[4]
In response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy Wilders posted the cartoons on his website (1 February 2006), purportedly in support of the Danish cartoonists and freedom of speech. Following his publication, Wilders stated he had received more than 40 death threats in just two days.
In November 2006, PVV won, in its first parliamentary election, 9 of the 150 open seats.
The Dutch newspaper Telegraaf reported in May 2007 that Geert Wilders had been shadowed by the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service for years, when he was foreign affairs spokesman for the VVD. During that time, Wilders had been regularly meeting officials at the Israeli Embassy in The Hague.[8] Sources in the security service said that the agency was surveilling conversations between Wilders and Israeli personnel.[9] The security services denied the allegations, insisting it had never shadowed or eavesdropped on Wilders.[10]
On 15 December 2007, Wilders was declared politician of the year by NOS-radio, a mainstream Dutch radio station. The parliamentary press praised his ability to dominate political discussion and to attract the debate and to get into publicity with his well-timed one-liners.[11] The editors eventually gave the title to Wilders because he was the only one who scored high both among the press as well as the general public.[12][13]
In response to Wilders' outspoken statements, a countermovement was organized in December 2007 with the stated aim to "stop evil".[14]
Political views
Geert Wilders favors the restriction of immigration to the Netherlands, particularly from non-Western countries.
He recently made a movie Fitna which offers his view on Islam and the Qur'an. As self-proclaimed defender of free speech and critic of Islam, he has sought to ban the Qur'an in the Netherlands[15] because he believes it to be in conflict with Dutch law.[16]
Israel
In the past twenty five years Geert Wilders has visited Israel about forty times[17], where he has, according to his own sayings, met Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert personally. [17]He claims to have tight connections with the Mossad.[18][17]
Originally, Wilders wanted to move to the Jewish state because he thought one could, as opposed to the Netherlands, 'work for your own money'.[17] Wilders worked in bread factories and a moshav.[19] With the money he earned, he traveled through Israel and some near countries. He started to love Israel, or as he states it in his own words in 2003: "The past years I have visited many interesting countries, from Tunisia to Turkey and from Cyprus to Iran, but nowhere I have that special feeling of solidarity that I always get if I set foot on the Israeli Ben Gurion Airport." [17]
Wilders has, in the eight years he has served in the Dutch Parliament, always supported Israel and attacked countries he perceives as enemies of Israel.[17]
Furthermore, Wilders has made some proposals in the Dutch Parliament inspired by Israel. For example, in 2005 Wilders proposed implementing Israel's administrative detention in the Netherlands, a practice heavily criticized by human rights group Amnesty International. Also, at the time Wilders was member of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, he had an employee who directly came from the Israeli Embassy. [17]
Islam
Referring to the increased population of Muslims in the Netherlands, Wilders has said:
"Take a walk down the street and see where this is going. You no longer feel like you are living in your own country. There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches!"[20]
Later, Wilders suggested that Muslims should “tear out half of the Koran if they wished to stay in the Netherlands” because it contained 'terrible things' and that Muhammad would “in these days be hunted down as a terrorist”. These statements caused strong reactions in Muslim countries such as Tunisia, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia.[21][22]
On 8 August 2007, Wilders opined in a letter[23] to the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that the Koran, which he called a "fascist book", should be outlawed in the Netherlands, like Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.[24] He stated that: "The book incites hatred and killing and therefore has no place in our legal order."[25]
On 15 August 2007, a representative of the Prosecutors' Office in Amsterdam declared that "dozens of reports" against Wilders had been filed, and that they were all being considered.[26] Due to this position on Islam, the Dutch-Morrocan rapper Appa, when interviewed about Wilders for a newspaper, said “if someone were to put a bullet in his head, I wouldn't mind”.[27] Wilders charged him with threatening with death. Appa denied this, saying that he wouldn't care (if it happened), accusing Wilders of harboring the same attitude towards Muslims.[citation needed]
Fitna
Fitna is a 2008 short film by Geert Wilders that explores Qur'anic motivations for terrorism, Islamic universalism, and Islam in the Netherlands. The film's title comes from the Arabic word fitna which is used to describe "disagreement and division among people", or a "test of faith in times of trial".[28] It is the subject of an international controversy and debate on the limits of free speech.
# another info's from our country :
Ditulis oleh infokito™ di/pada 5 September 2007
Pemimpin Partai Kebebasan Belanda (Freedom Party) Geert Wilders secara provokatif mengatakan, jika seorang Muslim ingin tinggal di Belanda maka mereka harus melempar jauh-jauh setengah Al-Qur’an dan jangan mendengarkan apapun yang dikatakan imam masjid. Ia menyamakan Al-Quran dengan buku karangan Hitler “Mein Kampf” atau Perjuangan Saya. Selain itu pemakaian di masjid dan rumah-rumah dianggap melanggar hukum.
Ia menuduh, kaum ”Muslim radikal”, demikian istilahnya, memanfaatkan Al-Quran untuk melegitimasi aksi kekerasan. Wilders juga mengacu pada pengeroyokan terhadap Ehsan Jami, ketua komite para mantan Muslim. Menurut Wilders para pengeroyok mengutip Al-Quran sebagai dalih aksi mereka. Dalam eseinya Wilders menyatakan kitab itu memicu kebencian dan pembunuhan. Sebab itu bertentangan dengan hukum Belanda.
Ia mengusulkan dalam opini yang diterbitkan harian lokal Belanda de Volkskrant. Ini menunjukkan bertapa kosongnya pemahaman mereka terhadap al-Quran dan juga rendahnya kualitas seorang poiltisi, yang mengeluarkan pendapat tanpa dasar yang kuat. Sungguh, orang-orang seperti ini akan terus melakukan perlawanan dan pelecehan terhapa Islam.
Berkaitan dengan itu, Dewan Muslim Belanda meminta parlemen Mesir untuk tidak terburu-buru memenuhi tuntutan memboikot produk-produk Belanda. Dewan Muslim Belanda mengatakan bahwa pemboikotan itu bisa berakibat kontraproduktif untuk Minoritas Muslim di Belanda. Seruan ini disampaikan Dewan Muslim Belanda kepada Ketua Majelis Rendah Mesir dan Ketua Komisi urusan Agama di parlemen, juga kepada sejumlah ulama dan mufti Mesir.[infokito]
from: http://musakazhim.wordpress.com
Seorang anggota parlemen Belanda, Geert Wilders, kembali menyatakan bahwa al-Quran adalah “buku fasis”, sejenis buku “Mein Kampf” Hitler. Pernyataan ini sebenarnya adalah penegasan ulang atas apa yang sudah pernah dia nyatakan beberapa bulan lalu di Koran De Volkskrant. Menurut Wilders, seperti halnya “Mein Kampf”, Al-Qur’an juga sepatutnya dilarang beredar di tengah masyarakat. Alasannya? Karena ia menyuruh pengikutnya untuk membunuh “membunuh, menindas, menyiksa dan mengucilkan orang kafir, memukul dan memperkosa perempuan serta mendirikan negara Islam dengan kekerasan”.
Ini memang bukan pertama kalinya kita mendengar sarkasme seperti ini, meskipun semoga saja ini adalah yang terakhir kalinya. Tapi, hal menarik yang patut kita perhatikan adalah hakikat orang-orang Eropa, yang selama ini kita kira toleran dan pluralis, ternyata tidak kalah dibanding orang-orang AS yang selama ini sudah kita kenal arogan, agresif, dan ofensif.
Ada apa dengan peradaban Barat? Apakah kiranya mereka sudah berfirasat bahwa masa hidup peradaban mereka sudah terancam, menjelang detik-detik akhirnya, sehingga mission statement yang mereka utarakan semakin menampakkan kekalapan dan kegelisahan yang tidak menentu?
Sepertinya memang begitu, bukan?
sumber: www.aljazeera.net
another source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/17/netherlands.islam
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.'
Wilders has been immersing himself in the suras and verse of seventh-century Arabia. The outcome of his scholarship, a short film, has Holland in a panic. He is just putting the finishing touches to the 10-minute film, he says, and talking to four TV channels about screening it.
'It's like a walk through the Koran,' he explains in a sterile conference room in the Dutch parliament in The Hague, security chaps hovering outside. 'My intention is to show the real face of Islam. I see it as a threat. I'm trying to use images to show that what's written in the Koran is giving incentives to people all over the world. On a daily basis Moroccan youths are beating up homosexuals on the streets of Amsterdam.'
Wilders is lucid and shrewd and the provactive soundbites trip easily off his tongue. He was recently voted Holland's most effective politician. If 18 months ago he sat alone in the second chamber or lower house in The Hague, his People's Party now has nine of 150 seats and is running at about 15 per cent in the polls. His Islam-bashing seems to be paying off. And not only in Holland. All across Europe, the new breed of right-wing populists are trying to revive their political fortunes by appealing to anti-Muslim prejudice.
A few months ago the Swiss People's Party of the pugnacious billionaire Christoph Blocher won a general election while simultaneously running a campaign to change the Swiss constitution to ban the building of minarets on mosques. Last month in Antwerp, far-right leaders from 15 European cities and from political parties in Belgium, Germany and Austria got together to launch a charter 'against the Islamisation of western European cities', reiterating the call for a mosque-building moratorium.
'We already have more than 6,000 mosques in Europe, which are not only a place to worship but also a symbol of radicalisation, some financed by extreme groups in Saudi Arabia or Iran,' argued Filip Dewinter, leader of Belgium's Flemish separatist party, the Vlaams Belang, who organised the Antwerp get-together. 'Its minarets are six floors high, higher than the floodlights of the Feyenoord soccer stadium,' he said of a new mosque being built in Rotterdam. 'These kinds of symbols have to stop.'
Where a few years ago the far right in Europe concentrated its fire on immigration, these days Islam is fast becoming the most popular target. It is a campaign that is having mixed results. In Switzerland, the Blocher party has been highly successful. In Holland, Wilders is thriving by constantly poking sticks in the eyes of the politically correct Dutch establishment. But when Susanne Winter ran for a seat on the local council in the Austrian city of Graz last month by branding the Prophet Muhammad a child molester, she lost her far-right Freedom Party votes.
For the mainstream centre-right in Europe, foreigner-bashing is also backfiring. Roland Koch, the German Christian Democrat once tipped as a future Chancellor, wrecked his chances a fortnight ago by forfeiting a 12-point lead in a state election after a campaign that denounced Muslim ritual slaughter practices and called for the deportation of young immigrant criminals.
Wilders echoes some of the arguments against multiculturalism that have convulsed Germany in recent years. Like many on the traditional German right, he wants the European Judaeo-Christian tradition to be formally recognised as the dominating culture, or Leitkultur. 'There is no equality between our culture and the retarded Islamic culture. Look at their views on homosexuality or women,' he says.
But if Wilders shares positions and aims with others on the far right in Europe, he is also a very specific Dutch phenomenon, viewing himself as a libertarian provocateur like the late Pim Fortuyn or Theo van Gogh, railing against 'Islamisation' as a threat to what used to be the easy-going Dutch model of tolerance.
'My allies are not Le Pen or Haider,' he emphasises. 'We'll never join up with the fascists and Mussolinis of Italy. I'm very afraid of being linked with the wrong rightist fascist groups.' Dutch iconoclasm, Scandinavian insistence on free expression, the right to provoke are what drive him, he says.
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.'
For more than three years, Wilders has been paying for his 'honesty' by living under permanent police guard as the internet bristles with threats on his life. He has lived in army barracks, in prisons, under guard at home. 'There's no freedom, no privacy. If I said I was not afraid, I would be lying.'
There is little doubt that if Wilders's film exists - and it's shrouded in secrecy - and is broadcast, it will be construed as blasphemy in large parts of the world and may spark a new bloody crisis in relations between the West and the Muslim world.
He does not seem to care. 'People ask why don't you moderate your voice and not make this movie. If I do that and not say what I think, then the extremists who threaten me would win.'
