August 10, 2007
(CNSNews) - A Dutch lawmaker under fire for urging that the Koran be banned in his country says he will press ahead with the proposal, and submit it in the form of a parliamentary resolution next month.
Geert Wilders of the right-wing Freedom Party told Cybercast News Service that since calling for a ban -- in a letter published Wednesday in the newspaper De Volkskrant -- he had received death threats and criticism, "but fortunately also many positive responses from voters."
In his letter, published under the headline "Enough is enough: Ban the Koran," Wilders called the Koran a "fascist" text that has "no place in our constitutional state." He said some verses instruct Muslims "to oppress, persecute or kill Christians, Jews, dissidents and non-believers, to beat and rape women and to establish an Islamic state by force."
The Koran, like Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, should be banned in the Netherlands, he said.
The letter drew a swift response from the Dutch government. Elle Vogelaar, the minister for integration and housing, called it "an insult to the majority of Muslims in the Netherlands and abroad who reject calls to hate and violence."
"It has to be perfectly clear that banning the Holy Koran in the Netherlands is not up for discussion for this government and will not be up for discussion in future," she said.
Two lawyers have filed complaints against Wilders, accusing him of violating Dutch law with his statements.
The Iranian embassy in The Hague issued a statement urging Dutch politicians to take a stand against forces threatening to divide society, and Egypt's foreign ministry said in a statement that Wilders' comments "reflect total ignorance of the substance of Islam and its precepts, applied by an overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world."
Wilders, whose new party holds nine of the 150 seats in the country's Second Chamber, the lower house of parliament, acknowledged that it would be an uphill battle to win majority support.
Even so, he told Cybercast News Service, "it is my duty as a parliamentarian to put forward ideas as I see them, both inside and outside parliament. In fact, we will have a parliamentary debate with the government in the beginning of September and I will put forward my proposal in parliament than as well [in the form of a resolution]."
The Netherlands is believed to have the second-largest per-capita Muslim population in western Europe, after France. About six percent of the population - one million out 16 million total - is Muslim, mostly of Turkish and Moroccan origin.
The country, long renown for its liberalism, has grappled increasingly in recent years with radical Islam, and inter-communal tensions worsened when a Dutch-Moroccan extremist in
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