A Dutch Antagonist of Islam Waits for His Premiere

GEERT WILDERS’S bleached-blond hair goes to the root of his character. For more than two decades, Mr. Wilders, the controversial anti-Islam member of the Dutch Parliament,has dyed his hair a provocative-some say extreme-platinum blond.The color makes him stand out in a crowd, not terribly practical for someone facing periodic death threats from Muslim extremists.But Mr. Wilders has built a career-and a new political party-on a risky and defiant outlandishness that encompasses everything from his hairstyle to his anti-Islamic rhetoric. Days away from releasing a much-anticipated film critical of the Koran, Mr. Wilders recalled in an interview the advice he received years ago from political leaders about how to get ahead.“First, you have to moderate your voice about Islam,” he remembered their telling him. “Second, change your stupid hair.”He has refused to do either.“If people push me, I do exactly the opposite,” he said.Mr. Wilders, 44, is in the news here these days for a 10-to-15-minute film he says he has made depicting the Koran as the inspiration for terrorist attacks and other violence. Having failed to persuade a single Dutch television network to broadcast the film in its entirety, he said he planned to release it on the Internet by the end of this month.He routinely equates the Koran with Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” saying it should be banned in the Netherlands, and he declared in an interview that the Prophet Muhammad could be compared to the German dictator.“In his Medina time, if he would be alive today, Muhammad would be treated as a war criminal, being sent out of the country, being sent to jail,” he said.Moderate Dutch Muslim leaders like Mohamed Rabbae, chairman of the Dutch Moroccan Council, are exasperated by Mr. Wilders’s standpoint on Islam and its prophet. “Wilders is a little bit crazy, if I may say it in this way, because he is fighting against somebody who has been living in the sixth century, not in our time,” Mr. Rabbae said.Virtually no one knows exactly what is in Mr. Wilders’s film; even the Netherlands’ worried prime minister has not been granted a screening. But the simple fact that Mr. Wilders is its muse makes people here and in parts of the Islamic world nervous.Mr. Wilders said he made the film to show that “Islam and the Koran are part of a fascist ideology that wants to kill everything we stand for in a modern Western democracy.”SOME here see Mr. Wilders’s film-titled “Fitna,” Arabic for civil strife-as a potential hate crime and have already filed police complaints in various Dutch cities, concerned that his past statements and the film will polarize religious groups and foster discrimination.His supporters say he protects traditional Dutch values. His critics, and there are many, say he is an out-of-control, right-wing extremist risking his country’s good name for his own political gain. Others are even harsher; one former trade union leader called Mr. Wilders “evil.”“Of course I am not evil,” Mr. Wilders responded, looking a little annoyed. “Do I look evil to you? Maybe I do, but I’m not.”Mr. Wilders, who lives under constant police protection in an undisclosed location, is undeterred by threats from the Taliban to escalate attacks against Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan if the film is released.Nor is he moved by Dutch expatriates abroad who, remembering the fallout from the Danish cartoons featuring the Prophet Muhammad, worry that the film may make their lives harder, or even dangerous...
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/world/europe/22wilders.html?ei=5065&en=fcb9a9b51262da76&ex=1206763200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print
As in the days of Noah.....