On Sunday, Friesland Foods and the Zwanenberg Food Group placed adverts in Jordanian newspapers to announce that they have nothing to do with the film.

They're hoping to prevent their products ending up on a Middle East blacklist. They took this step after 'The Messenger of Allah Unites Us', a broad coalition of Jordanian political parties, professional organisations and media, printed one million posters showing Dutch and Danish products that - they argue - consumers in Jordan and other Middle East countries ought to boycott. In addition to a number of Danish brand names, the list includes such Dutch companies as KLM, Philips and baby food manufacturer Friso.

There's considerable anger in Jordan regarding Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and Dutch politician Geert Wilders. The chairman of the coalition, Zakaria Sheik, says that both men have offended Muslims throughout the world and should not escape punishment.

Distance

Dutch company Friesland Foods took steps to distance itself from Fitna as soon as the list of products to be boycotted was released in March 2008.                                                                                           Although that earlier announcement was recently repeated in an advert by a Jordanian distributor it has, says company representative Bram Franken, had little success.                                                                                                                   Both Friesland Foods and the Zwanenberg Food Group are hoping that their new advert will prevent the names of their products ending up on a new series of posters. 

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