Geert Wilders, the controversial Dutch politician who has been very vocal in expressing his negative opinions about Islam, is to be prosecuted for alleged hate speech and discrimination, the appeals court in Amsterdam decided on Wednesday.

Calls to try Wilders for his statements that violence is inextricably linked to Islam and that the Quran and Hiltler’s Mein Kampf are similarly fascists books, had previously fallen on deaf ears. But the court’s ruling reverses a decision made last year by the public prosecutor’s office, which said Wilders’ comments had been made as a contribution to the debate on Islam in Dutch society. His remarks may have been painful for Muslims, but they could not be deemed criminal, the prosecutor decided in response to dozens of cases filed against Wilders after he launched his anti-Islam film Fitna.

The judges, however, said they had weighed Wilders’ anti-Islam rhetoric against his right to free speech, and ruled he had gone beyond the normal leeway granted to politicians. Prosecution of Wilders is in the public interest, the court decided, because in a democratic legal system a clear line about hate speech in the realm of public debate needs to be drawn.

The Netherlands long had a reputation for tolerance towards its – largely Moroccan and Turkish – immigrant population, but the tone of the debate has changed radically in the past decade. After right-wing populist politician Pim Fortuyn, filmmaker Theo van Gogh and Somali refugee and former member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Geert Wilders is the strongest voice against what he calls, “the islamisation of the Netherlands.”

What do you think: should Wilders be prosecuted for discrimination and hate speech, or does he have every democratic right to voice his opinion – even if that opinion is offensive to some people?

Dutch ministers are creating confusion with recent conflicting statements about participation in new military missions to Afghanistan. When, in 2007, the decision to extend the Netherlands’ troop deployment in the southern province Uruzgan until 2010 was made, foreign affairs minister Maxime Verhagen told parliament: “I am not saying here that the Netherlands is not willing to take part in Nato missions after August 2010.” Prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende, in a recent television interview, said a possible request from the incoming US president Barack Obama would mark a “new choicepoint at which to reconsider” the Dutch presence in Afghanistan.

Yet their colleague minister of defence, Eimert van Middelkoop, has repeatedly said that the end of the Uruzgan mission is a final one. “The new president Obama can call me 10 times, but our mission in Uruzgan ends in August of 2010. We will not go to another region either. That is not an option,” he was quoted as saying in De Telegraaf newspaper in December. His seems to be the more popular opinion in the Netherlands. In an opinion poll reported in 2007, less than a quarter of those polled were in favour of extending the mission.

With an estimated 1,300 Dutch troops on the ground, the Netherlands is the ‘lead nation’ in Nato’s  ISAF reconstruction mission in Uruzgan. They have been praised for their ‘Dutch approach‘ in dealing with the Afghan people in a less violent and more respectful way than some of their international partner nations. Their presence is not limited to Uruzgan: there are Dutch F16 fighters stationed in Kandahar and active-duty officers at the command centre in Kabul, for a total of about 350 troops.

What do you think? Is it important for the Dutch to stay involved by offering to support Obama’s plan to send more troops to Afghanistan? Or has the country done enough to support Nato’s initiatives? Is it time for other Nato partners to step up?

On December 15, 2008, I gave the 2008 Den Uyl Lecture. For those of you for whom the Netherlands is not the invariant centre of your universe, Dr. Johannes Marten (Joop) den Uyl (1919 – 1987) was a Dutch politician, prime minister of the Netherlands from 1973 until 1977, as a member of the social-democratic Partij van de Arbeid – the Dutch Labour party.

The title of my presentation was: “Lessons from the global crisis for social democrats”.  Are there any special lessons for social democrats from the current global financial and economic crisis, or is the learning process just about the same no matter where you reside on the political and ideological spectrum?

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