A right-wing Dutch politician arrived in the U.S. Thursday to show his controversial film attacking Islam.
Geert Wilders says he fears the Islamization of Europe but his short film on the subject has provoked death threats, Muslim protests and led the UK to refuse him entry. In the U.S., Wilders is touring with the film “Fitna” and meeting with lawmakers in Washington. The 16-minute documentary juxtaposes passages of the Quran with the mass murder of 9/11 and other acts by extremist Muslims. He says if liberal lawmakers in Europe can ban Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” then they should also bar Islam’s holy book. But his critics argue he is twisting selected passages from the Quran to suit his argument in the same way that extremists do to promote terrorism. Wilders told CNN: “It would be ridiculous to say all Muslims are terrorists. This is nonsense. But most of the terrorists in the world today are Muslims… “Islam is not just another religion. I believe Islam is more a totalitarian ideology. I have nothing against Muslims. The majority of Muslims in our societies are law-abiding people.” Watch more of Wilders’ interview with CNN » In another CNN nterview he said: “I believe that we should be proud and stand up and say, well we don’t want our children and grandchildren living in a world, in a country dominated by Islamic culture that is only at the end of the day costing us all our freedoms. “…I have nothing against Muslims, but I am very much afraid of the Islamization of our continent.”
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Radwan Masmoudi, from the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy: said “I know he doesn’t have a beard and he looks nice with his blond hair, but his views and his opinions are extremely mirror image, exactly mirror images of what al Qaeda has been trying to teach. He is the al Qaeda of the Netherlands.” Wilders was invited to the U.S. by Republican Senator John Kyl to show “Fitna” to lawmakers in a Senate building near the Capitol.
Kyl said “all too often, people who have the courage to point out the dangers of militant Islamists find themselves vilified and endangered.” When he answered a similar invitation from a British politician, the UK government called Wilders a threat to community harmony and therefore to public security, and refused him entry to the country.
