Wilders draws protests in Germany

The far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, known for his anti-Islam and anti-immigration views, has given a speech in a hotel in Berlin.

"Islam is not a religion," Wilders said on Saturday before some 450 supporters. "It is above all a dangerous political ideology," he said.

One Wilders supporter, an American woman living in Munich since 1972, said the burqa did not belong in Europe.

"I'm offended when I see these women with these black things all over themselves. They look like aliens, they don't look like they belong on this planet. What are they doing in Europe?

"They can wear those clothes and chop off hands and beat their wives and kill their daughters and do whatever they want in their countries and not in my country and not in Europe," Caroline Rausch said.

"I just feel that Islam is evil," she added.

The event was organised by René Stadtkewitz, who until recently was a member of the CDU in Berlin's city parliament, but he was ousted by his party for inviting Wilders to the German capital.

Stadtkewitz hopes to found the German branch of the Freedom Party, called Die Freiheit (freedom).

Outside Wilders' hotel in Berlin, people held banners and waved flags, one with pictures depicting Wilders with an Adolf Hitler-like moustache.
 
Back in his native Netherlands, Christian Democrats are in revolt over their party's plans to involve him in a coalition government.

Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee reports.