TEHRAN, 31 March 2008 — Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Dutch ambassador yesterday in protest at an “insulting and anti-Islamic” film by a Dutch lawmaker that accuses the Qur’an of inciting violence, state media said.
A senior diplomat from Slovenia, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, was also called to the ministry in Tehran over the film by Geert Wilders. The Netherlands is a member of the 27-nation bloc.
Wilders’ video has outraged Muslim nations in a similar way to a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) published in a Danish newspaper in 2005. “Following the propagation of the insulting and anti-Islamic film by the radical Dutch parliamentarian, the Dutch ambassador and the Slovenian charge d’affaires were summoned to the Foreign Ministry,” Iranian state radio said.
It said the Dutch envoy, Radinck van Vollenhoven, had expressed regret over the making of the film but this was denied by the Dutch Foreign Ministry. “No regrets were expressed. The ambassador has outlined the opinion of the Dutch government as expressed by the prime minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, distancing itself from the film,” a ministry spokesman said.
“The meeting was held on the initiative of the Dutch government who had asked for the meeting on Friday.” Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party, launched his short video on the Internet on Thursday.
Iran has called the film heinous and blasphemous. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation and a former Dutch colony, said it was an “insult to Islam, hidden under the cover of freedom of expression.”
The film “Fitna” — an Arabic term sometimes translated as “strife” — intersperses images of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and Islamist bombings with quotations from the Holy Qur’an.
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has said the government believed the film “serves no purpose other than to cause offense. But feeling offended should never be used as an excuse for aggression and threats.”
The ministry spokesman said: “It was Wilders’ right to express his opinion. The public prosecutor is now looking into whether his film was within Dutch law.” EU foreign ministers condemned the film on Saturday but said its author had a right to make it under the bloc’s free speech principles.
