Federal Minister for Immigration, blah blah - the Hon. Christopher
Bowen has said some unkind things about Geert Wilders and Minister Bowen took
his sweet time to grant the Dutch politician and Leader of the Freedom Party
(PVV) a visa to enter this democratic country we call Australia. However, Minister Bowen did not take his
time granting a visa to jihad apologist Taji Mustafa to
spread the word about the Religion of Peace last
September.
Perhaps Wilders should have changed his surname to Mustafa!
Look at the trouble Debbie Robinson is having trying to
secure a venue for Mr. Wilders, not only in Sydney but in Perth too,
apparently?
NSW has the highest population of the followers of the
Religion of Peace. You know, that
religion that doesn’t cause any trouble, that religion that doesn’t riot and doesn’t
use 6-year-olds to hold signs saying ‘Behead All Those Who Insult The Profit’
whilst mothers watch on lovingly. That
religion that doesn’t want establishment of Sharia law in this country. That religion that prefers enclaves to that
of a normal assimilation process into the land they have adopted as home. Those who put country first, life second
and religion third. What a farce!
What are these clowns frightened of? Why are venues suddenly not available? Are the venue owners scared their establishments
may be rioted upon and destroyed or even worse levelled via incendiary device
or similar? Well, that’s a serious
possibility when dealing with members of the Religion of Peace, as we have
already witnessed. Wilders, who, no
doubt is the subject of a Religion of Peace fatwa, has every right to address
Australian audiences and he should be able to do so without fear nor
favour. Is this the sort of influence
Islam now holds in Australia? We are
too shit-scared to provide a venue to a European politician of the likes of Mr.
Wilders? So many of us predicted this
very thing many years ago when Muslims began flooding the Department of
Immigration in one form or another. Those
of us making the dire predictions were capable of evaluating and distilling the
European experience of mass Muslim migration.
Too bad this ridiculously incompetent Federal Government did not possess
such foresight!
Freespeech dogged by politics of difference
Paul Sheehan, www.smh.com.au 21 JAN, 2013
The obvious question is, what are they afraid of? Is it fear
of violence, or vandalism, or simply
fear of association?
Debbie Robinson, a small business operator who describes
herself as an ordinary citizen, wants
to bring to Australia a Dutch political leader who is a supporter of democracy, freedom of religion,
feminism and gay rights. But when she
started making arrangements all she encountered was fear.
''In Sydney, venues that were initially available were
cancelled or would not take the booking
when they realised who the speaker was,'' she told me. She provided a list of rejections: the Hilton
Hotel, North Sydney Leagues Club, Sydney
Masonic Centre, Wesley Convention Centre, Luna Park Function Centre, the Concourse at Chatswood and the Sir John Clancy Auditorium at the University of NSW.
''I offered a church-based venue in Sydney a donation and
their reply was, 'You could offer $4
million and we would not accept your booking'.''
Finding venues was
not her only problem. ''Earlier in the year I approached APN Outdoor to arrange a four-week run of
bus ads in Sydney. The artwork was
forwarded to them and I was quoted a price for the job … Then I was advised they would not be able to run the ad as it was too political and
would result in the buses being damaged
and defaced. They would not say who would do the damage.''
The same happened in Perth, where Robinson lives, when venues
declined to take her booking, including
the Burswood Casino. When she tried to organise a payments system for the tour, she was rejected by Westpac. The
bank, which has been courting the
Chinese Communist government for years, wanted nothing to do with this Dutch democrat.
''I was organising an e-way payment system with Westpac to
link to the website of the Q Society
[the sponsor of the tour]. I received a call from a manager who said the Westpac Risk Management Team had decided the
material for sale was offensive and
inappropriate and therefore they would not proceed with the e-way system. I asked to speak to the
manager responsible and was told he was
on leave.''
The Dutch MP causing so much concern is Geert Wilders, the
leader of the Party of Freedom (PVV),
the king-maker in Dutch politics over the past two years. When Wilders withdrew his support for the government last
year, it collapsed and a national election
was called.
A month after that election, in which the PVV polled a
million votes and won 16 seats, Wilders
was scheduled to be in Australia. The trip was cancelled after it was sabotaged by the Minister for
Immigration, Chris Bowen.
The minister then had the gall to write an opinion piece,
published in The Australian on October 2 last year, in which he claimed, ''I
have decided not to intervene to deny
[Wilders] a visa because I believe that our
democracy is strong enough, our multiculturalism robust enough and
our commitment to freedom of speech
entrenched enough that our society can withstand the visit of a fringe commentator.''
Reality check: Bowen's department sat on Wilders' visa
application for almost two months, then
acted only after the minister received public criticism and Wilders was cancelling his trip.
No such long delay hindered the visit of Taji Mustafa, a
spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir, an apologist for jihad, when he made a speaking
tour in Australia last September while Wilders was being frozen out. When
questioned in Parliament, Bowen replied: ''Hizb ut-Tahrir has not been
proscribed in Australia … This entry permit was issued in accordance with the
normal procedures for British nationals.''
Apparently, the anti-Western Hizb ut-Tahrir is not
''fringe'', nor worthy of an
excoriating opinion piece, but the leader of a party that won 24 seats,
1.4 million votes, and 15 per cent of
the vote in the Dutch 2010 election represents
an extremist fringe.
People are entitled to loathe Wilders, or shun him. They are
also entitled to support him, or hear
him. The problems encountered with his visit illustrate the double-speak, double-standards and fear that
exists when it comes to the subject for
which Wilders is notorious - confronting Muslim extremism.
Neither Wilders nor the PVV have ever been involved in violent
conduct, yet he has lived under 24-hour
police protection for the past nine years, since two Muslim fundamentalists were arrested after a siege in 2004 and
charged with planning to assassinate
him.
When Wilders comes to Australia next month for speaking
engagements in Sydney, Melbourne and
Perth, he will be accompanied by five Dutch security officers. The venues will not be revealed until 48 hours before
each speech.
Wilders believes Islam is a political ideology, not just a
religion, and should be compared with
totalitarian belief systems. He has compared the Koran to Fascism and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. He
advocates ending immigration by Muslims
because the Netherlands was losing its demographic and social stability. For this he was taken to
court for hate speech. He won, but the
case occupied three years.
Wilders is opposed to what he calls the Islamification of
Europe by a combination of demography,
immigration and accommodations by multiculturalism that are not reciprocated by Muslims. Two other Dutch political
activists who were similarly critical
of Islam were subject to numerous assassination attempts. One was murdered, the other fled to America.
Debbie Robinson believes the fear she has encountered in
Australia merely confirms her reasons
for arranging Wilders' visit: ''With every refusal I asked why, and was almost always informed that
management had concerns about the
repercussions. The audience was never the issue. The issue was
offending Muslims. Looking at the
number of cancellations and refusals it is apparent the Islamic community are not getting their
message across about being the religion
of peace.''
