More than 100 mosques ask Twitter to ban far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders | #TheCube

More than 100 mosques ask Twitter to ban far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders | #TheCube
Copyright Reuters
By Rachael Kennedy
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The Turkish Islamic Cultural Federation has sent a formal request to Twitter asking that anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders be removed from the platform.

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A Turkish mosque authority in the Netherlands wrote to Twitter on Monday to formally request that anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders be removed from the platform.

The Turkish Islamic Cultural Federation (TICF), which oversees 144 mosques in the Netherlands, said Wilders had violated the social platform's rules of conduct with his postings of "hate-crime expressions."

The letter itself points toward specific examples of far-right Wilders' tweets, including one from March 15 that labels Islam as "terror," "misogyny," "homophobia," "honor killing," "animal suffering," "injustice," "slavery," "deadly," and more, in a two-minute video.

The letter also references a tweet from September 2017, where Wilders referred to the Prophet Mohammed as a "pedophile, mass murderer, terrorist and maniac." The same tweet includes a depiction of Mohammed, a controversial decision as visual representations of the Prophet are forbidden in Islam.

On Facebook, the federation said it would explore legal options should Twitter refuse its request to suspend Wilders.

"He hurts 1.2 million Muslims in the Netherlands with his statements. He abuses the freedom of expression. His statements are now going so far, that it starts to become normal," the federation's accompanying statement said.

In response to Monday's letter, Wilders tweeted a self portrait with tape covering his mouth, indicating he felt he could be silenced by a potential ban. The photograph was tweeted four times with the word "never" superimposed over the photograph in English, Dutch, Arabic and Turkish.

Euronews has reached out to the TICF, Wilders and Twitter for comment.

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