Dutch politician Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party will hold a competition for cartoons depicting Mohammad.
The party, which has a history of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim statements, announced on Tuesday that it intends to hold the competition in the party's secure offices in Dutch Parliament. The party said the plan has been approved by the Dutch Counter-terrorism Agency NCTV.
Cartoons depicting Mohammad have provoked violent responses from Muslims in the past.
In 2015, Islamist gunmen killed 12 people at the Paris offices of the French secularist satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which had printed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. In 2005, the publication in a Danish newspaper of a dozen cartoons depicting Mohammad led to violent protests across the Muslim world.
Wilders' Freedom Party is the leading opposition party in parliament after coming in second place in elections last March. He has called for the Koran to be banned, and says Islam is a totalitarian faith.
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"Freedom of speech is threatened, especially for Islam critics," Wilders said in a statement. "We should never accept that. Freedom of speech is our most important freedom."
American cartoonist Bosch Fawstin, winner of a similar contest in Garland, Texas, in May 2015, has been asked to judge the Dutch contest, which will be held later this year.
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