Dutch MP says anti-Islamic film set for broadcast in March

Dutch far-right deputy Geert Wilders said in an interview published Saturday that his controversial anti-Islam film will be called “Fitna” , arabic for ordeal, and will be aired in March.

The leader of the Freedom party (PVV), which has nine of 150 seats in parliament, said in November that he planned to make a short film showing that Islam’s holy book, the Koran, is “a fascist book” that “incites people to murder”.

According to the interview with Dutch GPD news agency, Wilders’ 15-minute film is almost done, and he hopes it will be shown on Dutch television in March. He had initially said it would air at the end of January.

Wilders said he has called the film Fitna, an arabic word that in Islam is used to describe all things that can test the faith and is sometimes synonymous to evil.

“I use the term in an inverse sense because for me Islam … is fitna,” he said.

Wilders also gave some more details about what would be shown in the film, which for months has been causing concern in the Netherlands.

It would lead viewers through the Koran, Islam’s holy book, he said, and show texts illustrated by documentary video images to show the Koran is not a symbolic text “but that Islam can take away our freedom unless we act against it”.

In the end the film returns to the situation in the Netherlands and finishes with a picture of the prophet Mohammed, he explained. Muslims consider images of their religion’s founder to be blasphemous.

“Something will happen to that picture but I won’t say what,” Wilders said.

There has been media speculation in the Netherlands that Wilders will tear up or burn the Koran in his film.

The Hague fears a repeat of the 2005 riots when thousands took to the streets in Muslim countries to protest cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that appeared in Danish newspapers.

Wilders has been under heavy police protection since the 2004 murder of Dutch director and columnist Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh was killed by a radical Muslim after he directed a film criticising women’s position in Islam.

Technorati Tags: Geert Wilders, Fitna, anti-Islam, Koran, Quran, movie, film, islam, islamism, islamic, muslim, muslims, islamic extremism

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