Dutch anti-Islam politician to show Muhammad cartoons in TV slot

PanARMENIAN.Net - Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders has said he will show cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a TV slot allocated to his party, BBC News reports.

The cartoons were shown at an event in Texas last month which was attacked by two gunmen. Wilders was a keynote speaker at the event.

Wilders says he will show the cartoons because parliament had refused to exhibit them on its premises. Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are offensive to many Muslims.

"Terrorists have to realize that they will never win and how important freedom of speech is for us in the Netherlands," Wilders said in a statement.

Wilders, who leads the Party for Freedom (PVV), has often expressed his distaste for Islam and mass immigration and has called for the Koran to be banned in the Netherlands.

In December 2014 it was announced he would be prosecuted over allegations that he incited racial hatred against the country's Moroccan community. Both the gunmen who attacked the Muhammad Art Exhibit at a conference centre near Dallas on May 3 were shot dead by police. One policeman was injured.

The conference included a contest that offered a $10,000 prize for a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.

There were widespread protests in 2006 when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad.

In January this year, 12 people were murdered by two Islamist gunmen at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published similar cartoons.

And a gathering of free speech activists in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, was targeted by a gunman in February. A film director was killed.