Many in America have felt considerable sympathy for the anti-immigration Dutch politician Geert Wilders. I understand this.
However, with his new proposals to close mosques in the Netherlands and altogether to ban the Qur’an, he makes the name of his “Freedom Party” a bad joke.
The Freedom Party is leading in the polls for next year’s elections.
Some of the world’s most distinguished scholars of Islam — e.g., Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, Hans Jansen, M. J. de Goeje, J. H. Kramers — have been Dutch. Seeger Bonebakker, my own beloved professor in graduate school, was also Dutch. He earned his doctorate at the University of Leiden, the illustrious center of Arab/Islamic studies where the monumental and on-going Encyclopaedia of Islam was launched in 1913.
In the future, will such scholars need to buy their copies of the Qur’an on the black market? Could they be criminally prosecuted for possessing the book? Will students of comparative religion be obliged to travel abroad in order to read it?
I routinely teach classes on the Qur’an. If I were in the Netherlands, would I go to jail for such an act? Or, if I promise to teach the course without actually using the Qur’an, would that be permitted?
And, while I’m at it, a mosque need only be a flat area for prayer, preferably with a marker of the qibla or direction to Mecca. Will undercover agents monitor Dutch houses and apartments to ensure that no prayers are being said in them? Will SWAT units need to break down doors in order to prevent Muslim devotions from occurring?
If Mr. Wilders is elected and is able to put his program into effect, the Netherlands will be a place that lovers of liberty should avoid. How ironic, that the land of open legalized prostitution, government-sanctioned euthanasia, and free trafficking in drugs now seems inclined to ban prayers and to proscribe a religious text.
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