http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/28/europe/EU-GEN-Netherlands-Anti-Quran-Film.php

THE HAGUE, Netherlands: A Dutch conservative lawmaker said Wednesday he is making a film to highlight what he describes as "fascist" passages in the Quran, his latest high profile criticism of Islam.

The interior and justice ministers said they were concerned, but believed they had no authority to prevent the lawmaker, Geert Wilders, from screening his film.

Wilders plans to depict parts of the Quran he says are used as inspiration "by bad people to do bad things."

Less than 10 minutes long, the film is expected to air in late January. It will show "the intolerant and fascist character of the Quran," said Wilders, whose anti-Islam campaign helped his Freedom Party win nine seats in parliament in last year's election.

In the past, Wilders has said that half the Quran should be torn up and compared it with Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf." He has claimed the Netherlands is being swamped by a "tsunami" of Islamic immigrants.

Immigrants from Muslim countries number about 1 million of the country's 16 million people.

Wilders' planned broadcast is reminiscent of the film "Submission" — a fictional study of abused Muslim women with scenes of near-naked women with Quranic texts engraved on their flesh.

"Submission" director Theo van Gogh was shot and had his throat slit by a Muslim extremist on an Amsterdam street in 2004. Prominent Muslim critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote the screenplay, was threatened in a note left on Van Gogh's body. She now lives under round-the-clock protection in the United States.

Justice Ministry spokesman Wim van der Weegen said the government is "taking measures" before the broadcast of Wilders' film. He declined to elaborate.

"Based on the discussion, the ministers have expressed concern," Van der Weegen said. "But at the same time (they) have said that Mr. Wilders has freedom of expression."

Wilders said he is not afraid of reprisals if his film angers Muslims. "I have lived with 24-hour protection for three years," he said.

"I will make the film and see what reaction it creates."

Dutch Muslim leaders did not immediately return calls seeking comment.


Why would you do this to yourself? This man is all but dead.

"I will make the film and see what reaction it creates."

I somehow doubt the reaction will be pleasant, considering the past reactions to what Islamics considered insulting or inappropriate and what happened to his director.

Why would you do this to yourself? This man is all but dead.

Unfortunately, he probably is. I don't see why people need to kill others because they are insulted. Someone disagrees with you? Argue, don't murder...

Aside of being an idiot this Dutchman is wasting his time and risking his life. In vain.

I heard Salman Rushdie was looking for a new room mate...

Once more I find myself in agreement with Ragusa. :cool: Further more if half the Quran should be torn up so should half the Torah (Old Testament). My Mother wouldn't even let me read the original OT until I was teen ager.

Check this out: One translation of the Quran (http://www.islam101.com/quran/yusufAli/)

The guy's got guts, that's for sure.

And we're likely to see anti-western messages spelled out with them when the kooks get done with him...

Hatred only breeds more hatred. Exposing one group's alleged hatred only feeds hatred for that group...

A: stupid
B: Stupid
C: Stupid
D: Stupid

I guess you could call him brave, but I'll stick with dumb. The Koran as fascist indeed. You can do the exact same thing he's planning to do with the OT/NT; see The Skeptic's Annotated Bible.

Once more I find myself in agreement with Ragusa.
So do I, except this time I'm fully in agreement. What I find most concerning is not that the movie will inflame extremists (they're already a hopeless bunch anyway), but that it will probably cause a large number of open-minded muslims to radicalise their views because they will feel they're being needlessly insulted; and that, in turn, will probably cause previously open-minded Europeans to think "maybe he was right, they are all radical", and so on... At this point the last thing we need is to radicalise even more people - it's bad enough as it is.

I agree that it is a stupid act, that will probably cause more harm than good. However, this is what really surprised me:

Immigrants from Muslim countries number about 1 million of the country's 16 million people.

So 1 out of every 16 people identify themselves as an immigrant from a Muslim country? Assuming that the Neatherlands also has some level of immigration from non-Muslim countries, the number of non-native born people living in that country is staggering.

I'm from the US, and we're certainly not strangers to immigration, but if the percentage of immigrants in the US equalled just the Muslim immigrants in the Neatherlands, we'd need 48 million of them. That's why I find that number 1 in 16 so hard to believe. Now I'd believe that there are 1 million Muslims living in the Neatherlands, but I'd expect some of them to be native born.

http://www.nosheadlines.nl/download.php/download_document/7197/08bc52fb859bc7a08ea58f65d4d6da4c/article_large

This is the politician in question BTW. I couldn't resist showing you this photo:D

Anyway this guy is already on 24 hours surveillance in account of deaththreats and the like. He won't make it february if he airs it. This man takes his opinions to the extreme unfortunately but in essence beneath the unveiled attacks on the Quran he has a point.

Seriously bad dye job, or is that nicotine?

I can believe the number, certainly - I know sight is not the best criteria to determine ethnic identity, much less immigration, but I noticed quite a few people with North African or Near Eastern features when I was in the Netherlands. Plus, I was in Maastricht, which is a relatively small city near the Belgian/German border. Amsterdam is practically a world of its own. According to the CIA Factbook, 9% of the population is of non-Western origin, and over 5% are Muslims - and these were estimates from over 5 years ago. Give some natural growth, some illegals and 1 million seems a plausible - if high - estimate. As for how many of them are immigrants, I presume the source considers second-generation immigrants immigrants too - I think the Netherlands have somewhat more restrictive policy regarding citizenship than the US does.

I think what this man says he'll do is harmful and, quite frankly, stupid on several levels. Getting people of different ethnicities and religions to live together is hard enough even without idiots deciding to **** around with those who aren't like them. Especially since some parts of the Bible aren't much different from the parts of the Quran he's so inflamed by. Of course, if he does such a film, theological differences won't matter much: chances are, Muslims will be insulted, there will be enough hotheads among them to make a mess - possibly killing this guy - and radicalize the rest, which in turn will generate even more unrest and antagonism, thus perpetuating the entire thing.

By the way, I'm no expert in Dutch law, but wouldn't such an film be classfied as hatemongering or some such? I know that by and large there is considerable freedom of expression there, but I think they can be rather touchy on topics regarding hate speech.

Wow! One wonders what he hopes to accomplish. What is his motivation?

Martyrdom.

The 1 0ut of 16 is true. I am dutch. Besides the muslim we have more immigrants from all over the globe. We also had colonies and those people are regarded as dutch. About 6 years ago we had around 14 mil people. Now over 16. Research has pointed out that native couples have 1,5 children.... You do the maths.

To make things more spicey, we were in Iraq. And now we will stay in afganistan until december 2010.

I work in a wharehouse whit 25 other people. 3 muslims. 2 are nice guys, one is just a tad to religious.

Wow! One wonders what he hopes to accomplish. What is his motivation?

He essentially wants to rally all the "good, christian europeans" against Islam and persuade all muslims to either become atheist or to leave Europe. I'm not joking.

That man is no conservative anymore, he's a right wing extremist, only of a new kind.

That man is no conservative anymore, he's a right wing extremist, only of a new kind.

Not an average conservative, I'll grant you that. Still, I think most European conservatives are happy neither with the growing immigrant population of their countries (and in most it has been growing) nor with the relatively large and visible number of Muslims.

I wish him the very best of luck, and don't think what he's doing is stupid. Well, it would be stupid if he didn't realise how dangerous, inflamatory, etc. it is, but he's walking into this with eyes open. I think that changes it from 'stupidity' to something somewhat more admirable :P

To be totally frank; he's pretty much right. The Qu'ran has some extraordinarily ****ed up things in it. Fascist? Probably not. Authoritarian theocratic genocide-ordering rights-suppressing bull**** that's supported by a powerful and large group of people ... absolutely. Bringing its many flaws into the spotlight is the least that should be done. This guy should be commended for not being intimidated by them and having the guts to say what he believes, given that particular group's history of murdering anyone who might say even the tiniest thing against Islam.

If there wasn't any truth to what this guy is saying, I don't think we'd consistently be making threads about what ****ed up thing Islamic fundamentalists have done *this* time, the ****ed up things that they do all the time not withstanding...

Of course, if he's doing it to further a Christian agenda he's a hypocrite. The only reason that Christianity doesn't act the same way these days is that people have changed the belief system beyond recognition. That's an entirely different topic, mind you...

He is not cristian based. The cristains are in the goverment right now and are silent as soon as someone only utters the words immigratian, or quran. For years they come whit the cliches and tried to put in under the carpet. They made slogans instead of policies.

Geert Wilders was a member of a more traditional right wing party that made a jump to the left scaring away many voters. But before that jump he was already gone and had formed its own party, picking up all those votes. And that cost them the formation forcing the cristians to the left. Ohter high profiel leaders, one a woman whit the most votes of the whole party, also left, but after the election. Rita Verdonk was told to shup ut, but she did not. Now she made her own party.

The exit polls now show a steep rise in the potental voters for Wliders and Verdonk. Thousends of voters flock to the extreem left, or right, making governing hard. But still, foming a goverment whitout the central block is almost impossible. This party is cristian based, but not by the book cristian, just based. Election time here is fireworks.

The lagerst cristian party was against immigration in the previous term but made an 180 turn as soon as the electionresults came in. As said they were forced to make a coalition whit a loosing left wing party that always has been for almost unlimited imigration(personal:disregarding the cost) and a stronger cristain party that has all kinds of moral trouble now. They are really scary, they want to do it by the BOOK.

We have a strong seperation between church and state. And I want to thank any god that is aware that I am very extremely grateful for that.