CAIRO -- A far-right Dutch MP who called for the Koran to be banned in the Netherlands is a racist and ignorant about Islam, an Egyptian official said Thursday.
MP Geert Wilders Wednesday branded the Islamic holy book a "fascist" text that exhorts followers to kill and rape, saying that it has "no place in our constitutional state."
Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman Hussam Zaki said that Wilders' call "only demonstrates the racism of certain Western politicians.
"It also reflects total ignorance of the contents of Islam and its precepts, applied by an overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world," he added in a statement.
The Dutch government swiftly condemned Wilders' remarks as damaging for community relations in the Netherlands, and said that the proposal was unworthy of consideration.
"It has to be perfectly clear that banning the Koran in the Netherlands is not up for discussion for this government and will not be up for discussion in future. We have freedom of religion here," integration minister Ella Vogelaar said in a statement.
Vogelaar described Wilders' call as "an insult to the majority of Muslims in the Netherlands and abroad who reject calls to hate and violence."
Wilders, who heads the far-right Freedom Party, which has nine of the 150 seats in parliament, argued for the ban in a letter published in the De Volkskrant newspaper.
Zaki also took issue with Tom Tancredo, a Republican candidate for the US presidency, who last month discussed the possibility of bombing Muslim holy sites if US cities were attacked by Muslim terrorists with nuclear weapons.
The foreign ministry spokesman said "these threats could not come from a sane person," suggesting that they were made in an attempt to get attention and garner votes.
It is not racism, but discrimination.
Posted by Miguel Antunes (Member # 13983) on :
Yes it is. But since the Quran/Islam is also a form of discrimination or at least it has a strong potential for it, where do we stand?
Posted by PEPI_KHEM (Member # 12897) on :
you can't blame him (geert wilders)
Posted by abdulkarem3 (Member # 12885) on :
i agree with ????, Thats not the def. of racism the dutch clogger simply stated that god's final revelation had no place in the constitution of the land of whores and drugs. I might add that he stated a creedanceconcerning the book far as what he knows( which is very little) about the book. he did not mention antyhing about a race or inferiority. Does everybody pull this card nowadays?