MESSAGE
| DATE | 2008-01-20 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Democracy in Europe
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Jason Burke, Europe editor Sunday January 20, 2008 The Observer
The Dutch government is bracing itself for violent protests following
the scheduled broadcast this week of a provocative anti-Muslim film by
a radical right-wing politician who has threatened to broadcast images
of the Koran being torn up and otherwise desecrated.
Cabinet ministers and officials, fearing a repetition of the crisis
sparked by the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper
two years ago, have held a series of crisis meetings and ordered
counter-terrorist services to draw up security plans. Dutch nationals
overseas have been asked to register with their embassies and local
mayors in the Netherlands have been put on standby.
Article continues Geert Wilders, one of nine members of the extremist
VVD (Freedom) party in the 150-seat Dutch lower house, has promised
that his film will be broadcast - on television or on the internet -
whatever the pressure may be. It will, he claims, reveal the Koran as
'source of inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror'.
Dutch diplomats are already trying to pre-empt international reaction. 'It
is difficult to anticipate the content of the film, but freedom of
expression doesn't mean the right to offend,' said Maxime Verhagen,
the Foreign Minister, who was in Madrid to attend the Alliance of
Civilisations, an international forum aimed at reducing tensions between
the Islamic world and the West. In Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other towns
with large Muslim populations, imams say they have needed to 'calm down'
growing anger in their communities.
Government officials hope that no mainstream media organisation will
agree to show the film, although one publicly funded channel, Nova,
initially agreed before pulling out. 'A broadcast on a public channel
could imply that the government supported the project,' said an Interior
Ministry spokesman.
Demonstrations are also expected from those opposed to Wilders beyond
Holland's Muslim community - a number of left-wing activists have already
been arrested - and from his supporters. Members of a group calling itself
Stop Islamisation of Europe are planning to travel to Amsterdam. 'Geert
Wilders is an elected politician who has made a film, and that he is
under armed guard as a result is absolutely outrageous,' said Stephen
Gash, a UK-based member, yesterday. 'It is all about free speech.'
In November 2004, anger and violence followed the stabbing and shooting
by a Dutch teenager of Moroccan parentage of the controversial film-maker
Theo Van Gogh, a distant relative of the artist.
The attacker said the killing was in response to a film about Islam and
domestic violence that Van Gogh had made with the Somalian-born activist
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, then an MP, which showed images of naked veiled women
with lines from the Koran projected over them.
From her self-imposed exile in Washington, Hirsi Ali last week criticised
the new film as 'provocation' and called on the major Dutch political
parties to restart a debate on immigration that has split Dutch society
in recent years, rather than leave the field to extremists.
Wilders announced his plans last November, saying he was making a film
to show the violent and fascist elements of the Muslim faith. The
maverick politician's remarks about Islam have become increasingly
radical. In February last year he said that if Muslims wanted to stay
in the Netherlands, they should tear out half of the Koran and throw
it away. In parliament he then called for the Koran and Hitler's Mein
Kampf to be banned, a proposal that was rejected.
Job Cohen, the left-wing mayor of Amsterdam, echoed Hirsi Ali's words
and called for a debate 'so that the moderates can make themselves heard'.
During a visit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg last week, Ahmad
Badr al-Din Hassoun, the Grand Mufti of Syria, said that, were Wilders
was seen to tear up or burn a Koran in his film, 'this will simply mean
he is inciting wars and bloodshed ... It is the responsibility of the
Dutch people to stop him.'
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