By RIA Novosti,
Tehran : Iranian authorities plan to post a film on the Internet on Thursday designed as a riposte to a controversial anti-Koran documentary by a Dutch politician, an Iranian newspaper said.
According to the Tehran Times, the new documentary, entitled “Beyond Fitna”, was directed by a group of Iranian filmmakers and produced by the Islam and Christianity Nongovernmental Organization.
“The film honors all monotheistic religions and gives a response to the anti-Islam propaganda of Western extremists,” the NGO’s spokesman, Mohammad Karimi, told official Iranian news agency IRNA.
He said the documentary was produced under the supervision of a group of religious scholars and Iranian professional documentarians in the English, Persian, and Arabic languages.
The film will be available on the sites: www.ngoic.com, www.youtube.com, and www.videogoogle.com.
The 16-minute film “Fitna” – an Arabic word meaning ‘strife’ or ‘division among people’ – was posted on the U.K.-based video website Liveleak on March 27. It was made by Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who had earlier announced that his film would show that the Koran is “a fascist book” that justifies murder.
The film contains footage of radical Imams calling for the slaughter of Jews and other unbelievers as well as a Muslim holding a “God bless Hitler” placard.
The Dutch government said the film in no way reflects the religious policy of the state.
In November 2004, Dutch film director Theo van Gogh was murdered by Dutch-Moroccan Islamic extremist Mohammed Bouyeri over a 10-minute English-language film entitled Submission, directed by van Gogh, portraying abused Muslim women with Koran verses painted on their bodies.
Although moderate Islamic groups said the new film was “nothing new” and made appeals for Muslims to “react calmly and within the law,” a backlash from the Islamic world is widely anticipated.