I’m not the one taking sides here. Our justice system is.

Some time back, all the Western world rallied to the support of a Danish cartoonist, who had had the gall (or balls, depending on your POV) to draw a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed with explosive headgear. The death threats to himself and his newspaper were direct threats to the freedoms we hold dear. However offensive the cartoon was to the (sizeable) Muslim part of the world, the cartoonist had every right to express his opinion in a drawing that, let’s be honest here, wasn’t even that funny in the first place. Freedom of speech was at stake here; the Muslims should just take a deep breath, swallow their religious pride, and accept that this kind of thing is allowed in a civilized society.

Obviously, I agreed.

But now it seems that tolerance goes one way only. In response to the cartoon, the Arabic European League published a cartoon online that was deeply offensive to the Jewish community (as well as highly funny to others, presumably). And instead of giving that community the same reaction the Muslims got, this week the Court of Justice in Arnhem ruled that the AEL cartoon was “unnecessarily offensive”, fined the AEL, and banned the cartoon from publication.

With court rulings like this one, we don’t even need the PVV to polarize society. From now on, if any Muslim ever wants to make the point that he and his fellow believers are treated unequally and unfairly in this country, he can support his contention with bloody jurisprudence.

And don’t even think about countering that denying the Holocaust is illegal! If portraying illegal matters in cartoons were actionable in court, Hein de Kort, Gummbah, and Peter de Wit would be doing twenty to life for the drug use, sex, violence, and sheer nastiness they’ve drawn over the years. And I’m not even getting into the madness that in a country where freedom of speech is the Holy Grail (sic!), some speeches are exempt from that freedom (such as saying nasty things about the Queen, calling our long-toed policemen names, or indeed denying the Holocaust).