A protest demonstration against Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders passed without incident in the city of Arnhem on Monday evening. Some 200 protesters carrying torches marched through the city where Mr Wilders' Freedom Party was meeting behind closed doors.

Arnhem's mayor Pauline Krikke had given permission for the protest on condition that the march would not be held near the hotel where the Freedom Party meeting was taking place.

Racist
Earlier on Monday in The Hague, Housing Minister Eberhard van der Laan (Labour) described Mr Wilders as a danger to the rule of law, should he get the 1.5 million votes that polls are predicting. "A single man saying crazy things won't undermine the constitutional state, but if countless people agree with him, you can't ignore it." Opposition leftwing liberal leader Alexander Pechtold called Mr Wilders a racist, in response to government-sponsored research by three academics into radicalisation. The researchers said in their report that the Freedom Party is "islamophobic" and "is mobilising systematic hatred against the authorities".

Idiocy
Geert Wilders, an opposition MP, responded to the accusations by a text message to the Volkskrant daily. Borrowing words often used by assassinated politician Pim Fortuyn, he wrote "These researchers are barking mad. This is idiocy. It's the umpteenth pathetic attempt by the elite to demonise us and to try and silence the Freedom Party and all of our voters."

Indecent
Mr Wilders described his attackers, minister Van der Laan and liberal leader Pechtold, as "political associates of Mohammed B.", the radical Dutch Muslim who murdered filmmaker and Islam critic Theo van Gogh in November 2004. Mr Van der Laan, a former lawyer, told Dutch public broadcaster NOS that he had been a personal friend of Mr Van Gogh. "Mr Wilders' attempt to associate myself and Mr Pechtold with that terrible event, on the very day that it happened five years ago, is indecent. Mr Wilders is entitled to his views, but we are entitled to respond to them."

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Photo: Protest march against Geert Wilders' Freedom Party in Arnhem, 2 November 2009 (NOS screenshot)