Geert Wilders trial for insulting Muslims and inciting hatred and discrimination in Holland has raised questions of freedom of speech, religious freedom and whether Islam demands privileges that the Netherlands doesn’t grant to other religions. Recently, the entire panel of judges hearing the case was dismissed for bias and replaced with another panel. Why? “because an expert witness, a retired professor of Arabic and Islamic thought named J. J. G. Jansen, was affronted by a load of post-structuralist cant. Professor Jansen’s indignation may be just as important as the weighty issues touched on in the prosecution of Wilders. It raises the question of whether our best and brightest are still intellectually equipped even to think about, much less decide intelligently, the great questions of law, freedom, and human rights. What is really troubling, and fascinating, about the Wilders prosecution is how much it depends on the intellectual weapons of “postmodernism,” deployed by a highly educated Dutch elite. In Amsterdam’s battlefield of ideas, the guns of Adorno, Foucault, Kristeva, Derrida, Edward Said, and their countless academic popularizers have been turned against civil rights and human freedom. Learned pretentiousness has consequences.”

If you wish, read the whole essay here: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/pretentiousness-kills_516687.html?nopager=1

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