From Holland, a Storm is Coming

Geert Wilders - Out to score political right wing points by inciting Muslim-bashing and Islamophobia.

In 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published the infamous Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) cartoons. This started a storm of reciprocal anti-Muslim and anti-Western anger. Was self-censorship expected of the Western media like Jyllands-Posten? Some of the Western media didn't think so and they imposed their cultural world view on an "anything goes" onto us Muslims. They hold nothing sacred except the idea of freedom of expression. When the protests against the cartoons intensified, some other European newspapers further reprinted the cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims to stir up unrest.

Muslims were right to be angry but whether we were right to resort to violence is something that is hard to defend. The Western media had the right to publish what they want but did they have the right to provocatively offend for the sake of controversy and publicity?

Now, it is now not the Danes, but right wing Dutch politicians who are out to incite and raise controversy. Hopefully, the controversy would not blind people to rage and calm would prevail abroad and in Singapore.




Politician to launch film denouncing Quran; Dutch govt fears violent protests

Monday January 21, 2008

AMSTERDAM The Dutch government is bracing itself for violent protests following the scheduled broadcast, later this week, of a provocative anti-Muslim film by a radical right-wing politician, who has threatened to denounce the Quran and broadcast images of the holy book being torn up and desecrated.

Cabinet ministers and officials, fearing a repetition of the crisis sparked by the publication of cartoons of Prophet Mohammed 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 also been asked to register with their embassies and local mayors in the Netherlands have been put on standby.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende told Dutch public television: "We have seen other crises but this is a substantial one."

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 Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen, who was in Madrid to attend the Alliance of Civilisations, an international forum aimed at reducing tensions between the Islamic world and the West.

Government officials are urging mainstream media not to show the film. An Interior Ministry spokesman said: "A broadcast on a public channel could imply that the government supported the project."

The politician at the centre of the storm is Mr Geert Wilders, from the extremist VVD (Freedom) party in the 150-seat Dutch lower house, whose anti-Islam comments have led to death threats. He has promised that his 10-minute film will be aired on television or the Internet regardless of any pressure.

In Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other towns with large Muslim populations, imams have been trying to "calm" growing anger. The Grand Mufti of Syria Ahmad Badr Al Din Hassoun warned last week that Mr Wilders was "inciting bloodshed" and it was the "responsibility of the Dutch people to stop him".