Robert Sibley on the Geert Wilders case

Sibley writes:

In 2007, he wrote in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant: “I’ve had enough of Islam in the Netherlands — not one more Muslim immigrant. I’ve had enough of Allah and Mohammed in the Netherlands — not one more mosque.”

Wilders himself did not use inflammatory statements in the film. The film consisted only of footage of actual Islamist attacks (including the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center) and a child saying he Koran taught her that Jews were “apes and pigs.” There was also clips of Muslim marchers carrying signs saying “God Bless Hitler” and “Freedom Go To Hell.”

Some might find this offense [sic?], but as Christopher Caldwell points out, Wilders is not the first to describe the Koran as a Islam’s manual of war against the West. Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus, one of the icons of the European Enlightenment, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, the French historian Ernest Renan, and former British prime minister, Winston Churchill, one of the few to recognize Hitler as a danger before the Second World War; they all regarded the Koran that way.