March 27 Update: The BBC reports that Geert Wilders has now posted fitna on a website. Interestingly, they don’t provide a link.

Elif Kayi, Z Word’s European press reviewer, reports on controversy in Holland over the documentary film, “Fitna.”

Geert Wilders, Dutch parliamentarian and leader of the far-right Freedom Party (PVV), has triggered a furious row in The Netherlands over the issue of Islamophobia with his new documentary film, Fitna - the Arabic title is translated as “civil war.”

Wilders was unable to persuade a television broadcaster to show the fifteen-minute long film. He set up a website - www.fitnathemovie.com – hosted through the internet company Network Solutions. At the end of last week, after receiving a barrage of complaints and citing its “Acceptable User Policy”, Network Solutions pulled the site.

On March 28, a court in The Hague which deliberate calls from Dutch Muslim leaders that the film be banned. In the meantime, the far-right Czech National Party (NS) has offered to broadcast the movie on its web site. Wilders has tried hard to keep stoking controversy. In one article, he declared: “Not for nothing did Jacques de Kadt (one of the key figures in the formation of the left-wing Workers Party) say in 1939 that national socialism was the new Islam.”

Shortly after Wilders announced the film, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende warned of possible attacks on Dutch citizens and embassies abroad. Angry protests took place in Egypt, in Indonesia and in Afghanistan, where a large contingent of Dutch troops is serving with the NATO force there. Wilders responded: “The cabinet might capitulate to Islam, but I don’t have to.”

In Europe, the film raised yet again the question of acceptable criticism of Islam, a particularly sensitive issue in the wake of the Mohammed cartoons controversy in Denmark. Ronnie Naftaniel, Director of the Information and Documentation Center on Israel (CIDI), declared during a debate on anti-discrimination and freedom of expression at the University of Utrecht: “Everyone should have the freedom to express oneself. Someone should be able to say that he finds Judaism awful or reject liberalism or socialism, just as an imam should be allowed to say that unbelief is a crime.”

However, he underlined the difference between criticism of faith and bigotry against groups. Freedom of expression is breached, Naftaniel said, “when you call Arabs and blacks lazy, say that Jews cannot be trusted, say that homosexuals are dirty.”

At the same debate, Coskun Cörüz, a parliamentarian from the conservative Chrisitan Democrat party, CDA who is of Turkish origin, criticized his Muslims counterparts in strong terms: “Muslims cannot expect their religion to be respected if, at the same time, they throw stones at Jews in Amsterdam.”

On March 17, TV producer Harry de Winter published an ad on the front page of the leading Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant highlighting what he regarded as the similarity between antisemitism and Islamophobia: “If Wilders has said about Jews what he has said about Muslims and the Qu’ran, he would have been condemned for antisemitism…this why Jews must speak out.” The ad was published under the imprint of Een Ander Joods Geluid – A Different Jewish Voice – which is highly critical of the State of Israel.

Following the ad, the newspaper Algemen Dagblad published a discussion between Harry de Winter and the writer Leon de Winter. The newspaper asked both if they thought that “Wilders views about Islam could be described as similar to antisemitism, or if they are a legitimate form of free expression.”

According to Leon de Winter, freedom of expression has to prevail: “I think that each of us should be able to speak about any Holy book, no matter which one.” Harry de Winter argued that such arguments were selective: “If Wilders had expressed these views about Jews, he would be in the dock now.” Leon de Winter emphatically rejected these comparisons: “Nazi antisemitism was based on what it regarded as a jewish disease. You can’t compare this with Wilders declarations.”