Truth, Interrupted in Brussels

The European model of utopia can only be met if one applies a whole new meaning to the word. No where is this more evident than in Brussels, that city that serves as host to the European Union's governing body.

As I've noted before on two separate occasions, the mayor of Brussels has banned a demonstration that was scheduled to take place on September 11. The demonstration was to be organized as a protest against the Islamization of Europe and planned to honor the dead of the 9/11 attacks with a moment of silence.

The reason for the banning?

Said the mayor, Freddy Thielemans:

“First and foremost the organizers have chosen the symbolic date of 9/11. The intention is obviously to confound the terrorist activities of Muslim extremists on the one hand and Islam as a religion and all Muslims on the other hand. […] Such incitement to discrimination and hatred, which we usually call racism and xenophobia, is forbidden by a considerable number of international treaties and is punished by our penal laws and by the European legislation. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly pronounced judgments condemning this type of acts.”

Yep, we wouldn't want anyone to realize that there might be a link to the attacks of 9/11 and Muslim extremists. Who knows what might happen if that cat is ever let out of that bag.

From the Paul Belien at the Brussels Journal:

According to the mayor the demonstrators are “racists,” “xenophobes,” hence criminals under Belgian and European law. “With regard to the planned demonstration of September 11 […] my mind is made up. And my decision is final: it will not take place,” he said. In The Wall Street Journal of 27 August Mr Thielemans added: “I won't have Brussels regarded as the capital of racism.”

The organizers appealed against the mayor’s ban before the CoS. They were confident that it would overrule the mayor’s decision. After all, the CoS had overruled the mayor of Antwerp’s ban of the AEL demonstration five years earlier.

Yesterday, however, the CoS upheld the mayor of Brussels’ ban. In its verdict the CoS stated that the organizers cannot prove that their interests are harmed by the mayor’s decision not to allow them to demonstrate on 9/11. The impropriety of the date of the planned demo was the crucial element in the argument made before the court by the mayor’s lawyer. Anyone who dares to suggest that the 9/11 terror attacks have anything to do with Islamism is a racist, a xenophobe, a criminal. That is what the mayor of Brussels says, and what the verdict of the CoS implicitly but undeniably reaffirms.

Yet, the confounding element to this whole bizarre affair is that Brussels will serve host to a demonstration on September 9 that claims the 9/11 attacks were

the work of the American government, acting on behalf of the Jews. In Brussels, stating that the attacks on the WTC towers and on the Pentagon were committed by Muslims is a crime, although it is a fact. Stating that America and Israel were behind the attacks is not a crime, although it is a lie.

Truth has become incidental to law in Brussels.