Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam Freedom Party has suspended a parliamentary aide for describing a number of women dressed in burqas as “scum” in a clip he posted on the internet.
Sam van Rooy taped the women in a shopping centre in Scheveningen, near The Hague, and posted the video on YouTube. The footage has since been removed.
“This clip goes much too far”, a PVV spokeswoman said. “It is regrettable that these women wear a burqa and we would like to see a ban on burqas, but these women are not scum. We deeply regret this incident.”
Islam in Europe links to another Dutch news report which quotes Van Rooy as writing on Facebook: “What nonsense that you can’t call people scum. People who reject western values for a racist, fascist and inhuman system like Sharia are simply scum, just like Nazis and other fascists.”
Van Rooy’s comments demonstrate the absurdity and dishonesty of Wilders’ formal public position that the PVV is against Islam but not Muslims. If the Qur’an is the Islamic equivalent of Mein Kampf, as Wilders claims, then in all consistency those who follow it must indeed be regarded as fascist scum.