http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7317506.stm

Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders has posted a controversial film critical of Islam's holy book, the Koran, on the internet.

The opening scenes show a copy of the Koran, followed by footage of the attacks on the US on 11 September 2001.

The 17-minute film was posted on video-sharing website LiveLeak.

Its planned release had sparked angry protests in Muslim countries. Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende said the film wrongly equated Islam with violence.

"We believe it serves no purpose other than to offend," he said in a statement.

"But feeling offended must never be used as an excuse for aggression and threats."

The film is called "Fitna", a Koranic term sometimes translated as "strife".

Dutch broadcasters have declined to show the production by 44-year-old Freedom Party (PVV) leader Mr Wilders, who lives under police protection because of earlier death threats.

'Spiteful'

Graphic images from the bomb attacks on London in July 2005 and Madrid in March 2004 are shown.

Pictures of a woman being stoned, scenes from a beheading and images of the Dutch director Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by a radical Islamist in 2004, are also included.

And pictures appearing to show Muslim demonstrators holding up placards saying "God bless Hitler" and "Freedom go to hell" also feature.

The film shows a young girl in a headscarf making derogatory comments about Jewish people.

It also displays a graph showing how the number of Muslims in the Netherlands and Europe has grown.

The film ends with someone turning pages of a Koran, followed by a tearing sound.

A text that appears on the screen says: "The sound you heard was from a page (being torn from a) phone book.

"It is not up to me, but up to the Muslims themselves to tear the spiteful verses from the Koran."

The film concludes: "Stop Islamisation. Defend our freedom."

Two years ago the publication in Denmark of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad sparked protests across the Muslim world.

But Brahim Bourzik, a spokesman for a Dutch Moroccan group, told Reuters news agency he did not believe Mr Wilders' film would spark fury from Muslims in Holland.

"It is not a film, it is propaganda," he said. "All the elements have been seen before, there is nothing new in it."

The UK-based website which allowed the film to be posted online defended its decision on Thursday.

"LiveLeak.com has a strict stance on remaining unbiased and allowing freedom of speech so far as the law and our rules allow," it said in a statement posted online.

I opened the link to BBC and read some comments off of links on the page.The comments from British born Muslims kinda sound like our Muslims in the US either you believe the way I do or you are prejudice against Muslims and they start burning flags.

I saw that insane movie on YouTube. 100% complete insanity.

Yeah, that's what annoys me those most of those muslims; they think they can sling around insults at other religions, but as soon as we say anything slughtly against islam, they start going loony.

What annoys me even more, is that people in a CHRISTIAN country have to hide from a muslim minority, because they dare to speak out against the vile muslim beliefs.

Truth hurts huh? People have the right to justify thier feelings by making logical (to them) conclusions concerning events. This is human nature to do so. This film or video is just an expression of how that individual views those events. We do this all the time. Muslims do this as well. Each finds or builds a view of the best way to justify events and little thought is given to what others or outsiders think about it. You do it, I do it, they do it, we all do it. Big friggin deal. We'll soon hear that yet another Jihad will have been declared. What else is new?

When you put it in those terms, it sounds like a political race gunny!

The French Article

Traduction :

Title : Became a Christian, an Egyptian living an ordeal

The young man wanted to formalize his change of religion on their identity papers. Regarded as an apostate, he lives in hiding after receiving death threats from Muslim extremists.


MOHAMED HEGAZI scared. This young man of 25 years old, born a Muslim but said that he had converted to Christianity nine years ago, has transgressed a taboo absolute asking that her identity papers mention his new religion. His initiative unprecedented raised an outcry in Egypt, where the vast majority of Muslim clerics agreed that Islam does not allow to change religion. Regarded as an apostate, Hegazi, who was until recently representative of the civilian opposition movement Kefaya (Enough!) At Port Said, now fears for his life and affirms hiding with his wife, who would it also converted. "I get death threats on my phone. Whenever I change issue fanatics get and call me by threatening to liquidate me, "says the unfortunate. "The danger comes not only extremists, an ordinary citizen could kill me in its own right, convinced that he had served Islam," he said. For the most radical, a statement is tantamount to apostasy, in effect, a death sentence. In the 1990's, dark period of armed Islamism in Egypt, the journalist and writer Farag Foda has paid with his life such an accusation. The Nobel Prize in literature, Naguib Mahfouz, narrowly escaped with a dagger illuminated. The university Nasr Abu Zeid had to take refuge in the Netherlands after being sentenced by the courts to divorce his wife, an automatic punishment for apostates. Since the case Hegazi paying for the chronic, not a day goes almost without press passes Cairo does statements hateful and intolerant. Thus the government daily Al-Messa, who says that according to a "poll" conducted by him, all clerics are unanimous on the need to kill the "apostate: a terse verdict clearly intended to contradict the grand mufti of Egypt , which recently said that men need not be a substitute for God to do justice (see below). In the same vein, the stepfather of Mohamed Hegazi told the Egyptian press that he hoped that justice forced his daughter to divorce and it is "back home (it), even dead." As the father of the young activist, he maintains that his son continues to pray at the mosque with him.


Pressures of the Coptic Orthodox Church


New climbing this week: two members of the Organization of Christians in the Near East (Meca), Adel Fawzi and Peter Ezzat, were detained for an "offence to Islam" and "confessional sedition." According to the independent daily Al-Masri al-Yom, the two men, who are collaborating on an Internet site Coptic denouncing the persecution of Christians claiming to be victims in Egypt, were arrested in possession of pamphlets and video deemed anti-Islamic. But most importantly, understands the newspaper, they would have played a role in the conversion of Mohamed Hegazi. The case has reached such proportions that a nongovernmental organization (NGO) Coptic, the centre for al-Kadima human rights, withdrew last week the complaint she had filed on behalf of Mohamed Hegazi front Administrative Justice, after the services of civil status have refused to include Christianity on its new identity card. In Egypt, the document must state religion. Nakla Mamdouh, the director of al-Kadima, said that his decision had been motivated solely by "the lack of certificate of conversion of the Church." But according to religious sources, the Coptic Orthodox Church has exerted pressure on NGOs, for fear of being accused of proselytizing. "The Church knows that if Hegazi is very sensitive," says an expert in the dossier. "It is possible that she has chosen to lag behind in this matter so as not to attract trouble, but also in the hope of getting back progress on the issue of Christians converted to Islam and who want to return to Christianity, for which it did not hesitate to climb niche in recent years. "Meanwhile, Hegazi to earth, alone with his choice.


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