Fiona Hamilton, London Correspondent
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The far-right Dutch MP who overturned a United Kingdom travel ban, despite being labelled a threat to “community harmony”, is planning to visit the capital this week.
Geert Wilders, who is accused of Islamophobia but won a case against the Home Office yesterday to allow him to enter the country, said that he did not want to come to incite violence, but to have a debate.
He will not be showing his controversial anti-Muslim film Fitna, which fuelled racist violence, although he said that he planned to show it on a later date.
Mr Wilders, the Freedom Party MP, told Radio Five Live: “I believe it was a good day yesterday for the freedom of speech.
“I believe the decision of the UK Government was political, it was not based on law.
“Never — and I have been to many countries and had this debate — has anything violent happened.
“And I’m a democratic politician and I only use democratic means like speeches. This is the way it works in civil society.”
The then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith ordered the ban against Mr Wilders entering the country in February, on the grounds that his presence would inflame community tensions.
The MP was turned back at Heathrow Airport.
He was due to show Fitna, his 17-minute film which criticises the Koran as a “fascist book”, at the House of Lords.It features verses from the Koran with images of terrorist attacks in New York, London and Madrid, and calls on Muslims to remove “hate-preaching” verses from the text.
It sparked violent protests around the Muslim world last year for linking verses in the text with footage of terrorist attacks.
Mr Wilders had been invited to the UK by the UKIP peer Lord Pearson of Rannoch.
Yesterday, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal ruled that there was no evidence a previous visit had caused problems and said it was more important to protect freedom of speech.
The Government is considering whether to appeal.
Mr Wilders’s anti-immigration Party for Freedom, founded in 2006, has nine seats in the Dutch parliament. It came second in the June elections to the European Parliament with 17 per cent of the vote.
Mr Wilders has urged the Dutch Government to ban the Koran and has said that his party “would like to stop immigration from Muslim countries and close Islamic schools”.
In a newspaper interview during the summer, Mr Wilders, who is protected by armed bodyguards, claimed that Islam is “in opposition to freedom”.
He added: “If people are offended, that’s not my aim. I don’t talk about Muslims but about Islam.
“Everything I say is against the fascist Islamic ideology.”
He faces trial at home for inciting hatred against Muslims by comparing their religion to Nazism.
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