Dutch MP plans anti-Islam film

Once again, radical Islam faces off with liberal Holland. This time the controversy surrounds Geert Wilders (pictured), outspoken leader of the Party for Freedom, who is planning to release an anti-Islam documentary called Fitna. Nobody yet has seen it, but sources believe that Fitna contains a scene in which Wilders either rips up or burns the Koran.

A press conference, scheduled for March 28, had to be cancelled when the projected security costs for the event reached $350,000. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende wants the film banned. Wilders calls him a coward. The government has even looked into the possibility of having to cordon off the streets around parliament, fearing a similar reaction from the Islamic world to what took place after Danish newspapers published cartoons of Mohammed.

With peroxide hair swept voluminously back from his chubby face, Wilders is a highly recognisable politician who has served in the Dutch House of Representatives since 1998. Despite campaigning as a champion of free speech, he has petitioned the Netherlands to ban the Koran, calling it a fascist book and comparing it to Mein Kampf. In 2007 he said: "There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it, there will be more mosques than churches." In a recent Spectator interview, he said he was not a cultural relativist – "Our culture is far better than the more retarded Islamic culture.”

Such opinions have inflamed tensions with the Muslim world, and earned Wilders a fatwa from al-Qaeda. In November 2004, two people were arrested in The Hague with grenades thought to be intended for him and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalian-born former Dutch MP who lives in hiding after she criticised Islam. Wilders claims to have received numerous death threats, and has bodyguards working round-the-clock.

Wilders is not the first Dutch politician to confront radical Islam: Pim Fortuyn was assassinated in the run-up to the 2002 election by an animal rights activist who accused him of exploiting anti-Muslim sentiment for political gain. Nor is he the first film-maker: Theo Van Gogh made a short film called Submission with Ayaan Hirsi Ali which detailed the abuses suffered by Muslim women. He was gunned down in 2004. In the aftermath of this assassination, Wilders's Party for Freedom reached unprecedented levels of popularity.