28 March 2008

THE HAGUE – The various political parties have responded to the release of MP Geert Wilders' long-awaited film on the Koran Thursday evening.

GroenLinks
The faction leader of the green party Femke Halsema says Fitna "does not add anything to what has been published about violent extremism over the past years."

"While Wilders has said for months that he would provide evidence that Islam is fascist, he has failed with Fitna," Halsema said Thursday.

Although Wilders does show that violent Islamic movements are a threat to the constitutional state, this has already been done just as convincingly, if not more so, in many journalistic reports.

"The fact that terrorists claim justification in the Koran does not provide any evidence for Wilders' standpoint that Islam as a whole is a violent ideology that strives for world domination."

VVD
Leader of the liberal party Mark Rutte thinks Fitna is a missed opportunity.

"He now has an audience of millions that he could have made use of to present solutions to problems with radical Islam and integration. Instead of doing something constructive he's shown old footage of terrorist and criminal acts."

Rutte says MPs should not bring old archives into the spotlight, but instead undertake efforts to solve the problems. "This is what we're paid for after all."

PvdA
Labour leader and deputy prime minister Wouter Bos said the first reactions from the Muslim world to Wilders' film were "favourable."

"That doesn't surprise me actually. Most Muslims and Muslim organisations have taken an extremely wise attitude in the run-up to the release," Bos said in an initial reaction.

He said that Wilders' film "shows little more than a succession of scoundrels, terrorists, murders and spreaders of hate." It is "as easy for Muslims as for any other decent citizen to condemn and reject those kinds of people and their acts and motives."

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