Holland Braces For Possible Backlash From Movie

UPDATE: England's "Guardian Unlimited" reports the following (1/27/08):

Koran film delayed

A far-right Dutch politician's anti-Koran film will likely not be broadcast until March, he said in an interview published yesterday.

Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party, told De Telegraaf the film would be ready two months later than planned. The paper said Wilders had sent it the 10-minute film's opening scene to prove he is making it. Delays in airing the film had led to media speculation that it may have been a hoax.

Wilders's plan to make the film has already prompted the government to alert Dutch cities to prepare for possible violent reactions and warn embassies in Islamic countries.

Dutch politician, Geert Wilders (leader of the right-wing Freedom Party) plans to release a film 10-minute film on Friday (1/25/08) that shows, according to him, how the Koran is used by Islamic radicals to teach homophobia, the abuse of women, and the endorsement of violence. In light of the brutal 2004 murder of another Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, politicians and Muslim leaders fear a repeat of violence and further strain in relationships between the Dutch and the nation's large Muslim immigrant population. In a proactive response to the movie's release, government officials are first distancing themselves from the filmmaker's movie and are also stepping up security both within the country and abroad at its embassies.

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has called for Wilders to exercise restraint. "The Netherlands has a tradition of freedom of speech, religion and beliefs," said Balkenende according to the Associated Press. "The Netherlands also has a tradition of respect, tolerance and responsibility. Unnecessarily offending certain groups does not belong here."

Wilders' movie is scheduled to air on January 25th, but so far no Dutch broadcaster willing to air the movie could be found. If a broadcaster could not be found by Friday, Wilders said he would post the movie on the Internet.

In the past, Wilders attempted to have the Koran banned, calling it "that horrible, fascist book that incites violence," and equating it with Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf." The 42 year-old lawmaker has built a public image on stemming the tide of what he calls a "tsunami of Islamization" in the Netherlands, where a population of 16.3 million now includes 850,000 Muslims.

Go here to read the rest of the article: "Van Gogh Redux?: Another Anti-Koran Film Stirs Up Holland"

Source: SpiegelOnline

submitted via: kmacginn at hummers & cigarettes

Update: Moroccans want Wilders prosecuted

THE HAGUE – Moroccan organisations in the Netherlands want the public prosecution department to prosecute Freedom party PVV leader Geert Wilders for discrimination against Muslims. If the justice department refuses, then the organisations will approach the court to force the prosecution department to take action. Read more ...

Three Little Pigs 'too offensive'

A story based on the Three Little Pigs fairy tale has been turned by a government agency's awards panel as the subject matter could offend Muslims.

The digital book, re-telling the classic story, was rejected by judges who warned that "the use of pigs raises cultural issues".

Becta, the government's educational technology agency, is a leading partner in the annual Bett Award for schools.

The judges also attacked Three Little Cowboy Builders for offending builders.

The book's creative director, Anne Curtis, said the idea that including pigs in a story could be interpreted as racism was "like a slap in the face". Read more ...

Source: BBC
H/T: Dhimmi Watch

British imam's daughter under police protection after converting to Christianity

A British imam's daughter is living in fear of her life under police protection after she received death threats from her family for converting to Christianity.

The young woman, aged 32, whose father is a Muslim imam in the north of England, has moved house 45 times to escape detection by her family since she became a Christian 15 years ago.

Hannah, who uses a pseudonym to hide her identity, told The Times how she became a Christian after she ran away from home at 16 to escape an arranged marriage.

The threats against her became more serious a month ago, prompting police to offer her protection in case of an attempt on her life.

She was speaking on the eve of the launch of a new charity in London today to promote greater religious awareness. Muslims in Britain who wish to convert to Christianity are living in fear of their lives because of Islamic apostasy laws, a senior Church of England bishop will warn at the invitaton-only launch in west London.

The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, will claim "freedom to believe" is under threat in Britain because of Islamic hostility to conversion.

Hannah, now employed in multi-faith youth work and who gives talks to churches on Islam, is the daughter of a Lancashire imam whose seven other children are demanding she return to Islam. She has been in hiding,

since her home was attacked by a group of men armed with knives, axes and hammers, in 1994. She will describe today how she is in fear of her life after the death threats against her were recently renewed.

She said: "I left home and I had nowhere to go. My religious education teacher gave me somewhere to live. Even though she tried to make me stay at home on Sundays, I am quite rebellious by nature and I started to go to church with her out of curiosity."

She said she had been in hiding, on and off, ever since, and has now been given a telephone number she can call for an instant response by police should she need help. The latest threat was a text message from one of her brothers, warning he could not be responsible for his actions if she did not return to Islam.

Hannah said she was looking forward to getting married so she could change her name and escape detection by her family. Not all Muslims in Britain are this extreme, she believes.

"It is representative of some Muslims. I know the Koran says that anyone who goes away from Islam should be killed as an apostate so in some ways my family are following the Koran. They are following Islam to the word. But I do not think every Muslim would actually act on that."

Earlier this year, a Policy Exchange study found that 36 per cent of British Muslims aged between 16 and 24 believed those who converted to another religion should be punished by death.

Dr Nazir-Ali will speak out on behalf of Hannah and others suffering persecution for their beliefs in the UK at today's launch of Lapido Media, a new charity which is seeking to promote "religious literacy" in world affairs.

The Bishop is expected to describe how sharia law in many countries, including parts of Britain, punishes apostasy with death and is viewed as treason by theocratic governments. Dr Nazir-Ali will call on society to offer greater protection, by increasing understanding of what makes people vulnerable.

Pakistan-born Dr Nazir-Ali, who has a Christian and Muslim background, is patron of Lapido Media, funded by donations and trusts including the Jerusalem Trust. The word ‘lapido’ means ‘to speak up for’ in the Acholi language of Northern Uganda. The charity has been named in honour of the courage of Acholi church leaders who campaigned for an end to a little-reported 20-year war there, involving the abduction of 25,000 children.

Source: Times Online
H/T: Dhimmi Watch

Iraqi Kurdistan schools will teach religions other than Islam

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq — Judged solely by one of the big, bold words on its cover, the book that Fadel Mahmoud clutched in his hands would be considered blasphemous in many parts of the Muslim world.

Most people in Kurdish northern Iraq believe that the Quran, the holy book of Islam, is the final word on religious life. Mahmoud and other teachers, however, are preaching a message of religious tolerance in hopes of preserving the region's relative stability.

The book in his hands is an introduction to Judaism written by an Arab.

Last month, the Kurdish Regional Government's Ministry of Religious Affairs began requiring its 19 campuses, from grade school to college, to broaden their curricula by including courses on comparative religion that better expose students to other religious thought, including Christianity and in some cases Judaism.

Read more ...

Source: McClatchy Newspapers
H/T: Dhimmi Watch

Muslims Against Sharia praise the decision of Kurdish Regional Government's Ministry of Religious Affairs to broaden religious horizons of Kurdish students.

'Islamophobia' Used to Crush Muslim Dissent, Panel Says

(CNSNews.com) - Muslim extremists are branding opponents "Islamophobes" in an effort to paint themselves as the victim and silence dissent and opposition to their political and religious beliefs, according to a panel convened in Washington, D.C., Tuesday.

"'Islamophobia' has become ... the new battleground in this war" on terrorism, Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, said at the panel discussion.

She said the term "inverts victim and perpetrator" by portraying Islamic fanatics as the victim, thus allowing them to label dissent as a violation of human rights and, in effect, silence dissent.

The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) at the United Nations has been lobbying hard for bans against "Islamaphobia, which are "tantamount to blasphemy strictures that have been used to curtail freedoms of expression, press, and religion by some of the OIC's most repressive member states," noted the Hudson Institute in its preview to the panel discussion.

The term "Islamaphobia" will be a major focus of the 2009 U.N. World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa.

Bayefsky said the goal of conference organizers, including Libya, Cuba and Iran, is to "deflect attention from the human rights abuses" and "to circle the wagons, to invoke mass hysteria, to suggest to people that they are under threat, which is in fact imaginary."

She said that by labeling themselves victims of Islamophobia, leaders of Islamic regimes can justify harsh crackdowns on internal dissent and legitimize calls for similar crackdowns on outside criticism - such as calls for the punishment of cartoonists who depict the Muslim prophet Mohammed.

"If you can claim the other guy is the human rights violator," Bayefsky said, "if you become the victim of racism and Islamophobia, then you justify the so-called struggle against the enemy of human rights."

Some panelists, including Fahad Nazer, a resident fellow at the Institute for Gulf Affairs, said that Islamophobia does exist, pointing to Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), a long-shot Republican presidential hopeful, as an example.

Tancredo came under fire in July for suggesting in a radio interview that Mecca, a Muslim holy site, should be bombed if Muslim terrorists detonate a nuclear weapon in the United States.

"There is certainly something there," Nazer said of claims of Islamophobia being harmful to mainstream Muslims.

Bayefsky acknowledged that "insofar as it means discrimination against Muslims, there's nothing wrong with condemning Islamophobia."

"But the problem is that it has been manipulated as a term to mean something quite different, to suggest that there aren't particular cases of discrimination, but a kind of mass movement on the part of western governments and non-Muslims to denounce all of Islam, which is not the case," she added.

The panelists agreed that the United Nations was not a reliable vessel through which to address issues of human rights or discrimination against certain religions.

Nazer suggested that there is reason to believe the Islamic regimes themselves may be shifting their approach to dissent.

"They will reform, however they'll do it on their own terms and at their own pace," he said, specifically referring to Saudi Arabia. "The good news is that Saudi officials condemn terrorism routinely."

But, he said, "other developments ... are more ominous," such as reformers being asked to stop their political activism or being thrown in prison.

Nonetheless, Nazer said, "more than any [U.N.] declaration or conference, the Saudis are in a position to lead the Muslim nations by example and they can do so by lifting restrictions on speech, assembly and worship."

Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch