Muslim nations condemned today a film by a Dutch politician that accuses the Koran of inciting violence, as Dutch Muslim leaders urged restraint. Islam critic Geert Wilders launched his short video on the Internet yesterday evening.
Titled Fitna, an Arabic term sometimes translated as strife, it intersperses images of the September 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.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the film as "offensively anti-Islamic" and said there was "no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence". 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. 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 leader, told journalists in an Amsterdam mosque.
The Dutch Islamic Federation went to court today to try to stop Wilders from comparing Islam to fascism, saying he incited hatred of Muslims.
Dutch authorities reported no incidents in contrast to the unrest that swept the country after the murder by a militant Islamist in 2004 of Dutch director Theo van Gogh, who made a film accusing Islam of condoning violence against women. In a survey conducted today, pollster Maurice de Hond found that only 12 per cent of those questioned thought the film represented Islam accurately, but 43 per cent agreed Islam was a serious threat to the Netherlands over the long term.