Muslim nations condemn Dutch Koran film 28 Mar 2008 23:48:24 GMT Source: Reuters (Adds reaction by Belgium, Islamists)
By Niclas Mika
AMSTERDAM, March 28 (Reuters) - Muslim nations on Friday condemned a film by a Dutch lawmaker that accuses the Koran of inciting violence, and Dutch Muslim leaders urged restraint.
Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party, launched his short video on the Internet on Thursday evening, prompting an al Qaeda-linked website to call for his death and increased attacks on Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan.
"The correct Sharia (Islamic law) response is to cut (off) his head and let him follow his predecessor, van Gogh, to hell," a member of Al-Ekhlaas wrote on the al-Qaeda affiliated forum, according to the SITE Institute, a U.S.-based terrorism monitoring service.
Dutch director Theo van Gogh, who made a film accusing Islam of condoning violence against women, was murdered by a militant Islamist in 2004.
Wilders' film "Fitna" -- an Arabic term sometimes translated as "strife" -- intersperses images of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and Islamist bombings with quotations from the Koran, Islam's holy book.
The film urges Muslims to tear out "hate-filled" verses from the Koran and starts and ends with a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb under his turban, accompanied by the sound of ticking.
The cartoon, first published in Danish newspapers, ignited violent protests around the world and a boycott of Danish products in 2006. Many Muslims regard any depiction of the Prophet as offensive.
"The film is solely intended to incite and provoke unrest and intolerance among people of different religious beliefs and to jeopardise world peace and stability," the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the film as "offensively anti-Islamic" and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said it was "hateful".
Iran called the film heinous, blasphemous and anti-Islamic, and Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation and a former Dutch colony, said it was an "insult to Islam, hidden under the cover of freedom of expression".
The Saudi Arabian embassy in The Hague said the film was provocative and full of errors and incorrect allegations that could lead to hate towards Muslims, news agency ANP reported.
HEAVY GUARD
Dutch Muslim leaders appealed for calm and called on Muslims worldwide not to target Dutch interests. The Netherlands is home to about 1 million Muslims out of a population of 16 million.
"Our call to Muslims abroad is follow our strategy and don't frustrate it with any violent incidents," Mohammed Rabbae, a Dutch Moroccan community leader, told journalists in an Amsterdam mosque.
The Dutch Islamic Federation went to court on Friday to try to stop Wilders from comparing Islam to fascism.
Pollster Maurice de Hond found that only 12 percent of those questioned thought the film represented Islam accurately, but 43 percent agreed Islam was a serious threat to the Netherlands over the long term.
Wilders has been under guard because of death threats since the murder of van Gogh and Freedom Party support rose in anticipation of the film to about 10 percent of the vote.
The Dutch government has distanced itself from Wilders and tried to prevent the kind of backlash Denmark suffered over the Prophet cartoons.
Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said he was proud of how Dutch Muslim organisations responded to the film but that it was too early to draw conclusions about the international consequences: "There are reasons for continued alertness."
NATO has expressed concern the film could worsen security for foreign forces in Afghanistan, including 1,650 Dutch troops. A Belgian government spokesman said security had been stepped up at Dutch diplomatic missions in the country.
Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard objected to the use of his drawing of the Prophet Mohammad, saying it was shown out of context and that he had taken legal action to have it removed.
SITE said responses to the Wilders film on al Ekhlaas and another al-Qaeda affiliated website, al Hesbah, were significantly lower in volume compared to the cartoons uproar.
(Additional reporting by Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Jakarta, Tehran, Islamabad, Aarhus and Brussels bureaux; Writing by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Jon Boyle)
Geert Wilders has made a truthful movie showing the real face of Islam. Let us hope that this film "Fitna" will begin to open the eyes of Europeans before it is too late. The Moslems must be banished from Western countries forever and all of their heathen mosques burnt to the ground. If it ever comes to total war between the West and Islam may we have the courage to nuke Mecca first and wipe it from the face of the earth forever. The West will not submit to a religion founded by a child molesting, madman, and terrorist. May Muhammad rot in hell with the satanic devil who claimed to be Allah. DEATH TO ISLAM!
You're right Martel the video here is cleaner and I downloaded the video into my computer, something that can't be done at YouTube, but now I want to figure out how to imbed it into our site with some kind of player.
Fitna: The Carrot and the Stick By Robert Spencer FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Geert Wilderss film on the Quran, Fitna, which had the whole world holding its breath before its release, has been out for over a week now, and the much-anticipated explosion of worldwide Muslim rage has so far failed to materialize. That rage, however, is heating up: 25,000 people rallied against the film in Karachi on Sunday, and demonstrators in Pakistan and Indonesia have already called for Wilders to be killed. While many continue to hope that that will be the crest of Muslim rage regarding the film, there are indications that these demonstrations are actually only part of a larger strategy.
The 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has condemned the film in the strongest terms, saying that it was a deliberate act of discrimination against Muslims designed to provoke unrest and intolerance. This statement closely follows the OICs March meeting in Senegal, where they developed what AP called a battle plan to defend Islam from political cartoonists and bigots. Wilderss film is obviously just the sort of thing they had in mind.
At the Senegal conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OICs secretary general, declared: Muslims are being targeted by a campaign of defamation, denigration, stereotyping, intolerance and discrimination. The Associated Press reported that OIC delegates were given a voluminous report by the OIC that recorded anti-Islamic speech and actions from around the world. The report concludes that Islam is under attack and that a defense must be mounted. Ihsanoglu stated that Islamophobia cannot be dealt with only through cultural activities but (through) a robust political engagement.
What kind of robust political engagement? Nothing less than restrictions on freedom of speech, of course. Abdoulaye Wade, the President of Senegal and chairman of the OIC, said: I dont think freedom of expression should mean freedom from blasphemy. There can be no freedom without limits.
These words, and the OICs legal instrument in general, demonstrate why the foundations of a free society cannot take root where Islamic Sharia law prevails.
Once you declare one group off-limits for critical examination or declare that these people must at all costs not be offended, or that if they are theyre perfectly within their rights to stone, or lash, or imprison, or kill the offender, then you have destroyed free speech. In a free society, people with differing opinions live together in harmony, agreeing not to kill one another if their neighbors opinions offend them. Whenever offensive speech is prohibited, the tyrants power is solidified. No less in this case, although the tyrant in question is of a different kind.
Thats why all free people should oppose the OICs legal initiative. Not only does it threaten the foundations of Western society, but as it would render us unable to analyze it, it is an attempt to leave us defenseless against the jihad threat.
Yet at the United Nations, officials seemed eager to use Fitna as an excuse to enact laws restricting free speech. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon dubbed the film offensively anti-Islamic and declared: There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence. The right of free expression is not at stake here. Or maybe it is: the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, urged those angered by the film to work to limit free speech rights. There is a protective legal framework, she noted, and the resolution of the controversy that this film will generate should take place within it. She said that legislators should offer strong protective measures to all forms of freedom of expression, while at the same time enacting appropriate restrictions, as necessary, to protect the rights of others. And last week, the UN Human Rights Council passed unanimously a resolution proposed by Egypt and Pakistan that calls for the policing of individuals and media reports for negative statements about Islam.
Will it soon be illegal to speak about the use that Islamic jihadists make of Islamic texts and teachings to justify violence and supremacism? If it is, the only ones who will benefit will be the jihadists themselves advancing the jihadist agenda far more effectively than riots ever could alone. The demonstrations on the one hand and the calls to limit free speech on the other neatly coalesce into a carrot-and-stick strategy. The message to the West is that speech about Islam that the Islamic world dislikes could lead to violent reprisals but if the West heeds the voice of reason and clamps down on free speech and free inquiry, this violence will melt away. It is a message that all too many Leftist, appeasement-minded European and American leaders will find quite enticing. And that could be the most serious threat of all to our survival as a free people.