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Wilders had been invited to Britain by a member of Parliament’s upper house, the House of Lords, to show his 15-minute film “Fitna,” which criticizes the Quran as a “fascist book.”

Molvi Mohammad Sadiq Akif, the spokesman for the Taliban’s Ministry of Vice and Virtue, said in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press that if women’s faces are visible in public there is a possibility of fitna, or falling into sin.

Even Taliban officials in favor of opening girls’ schools stressed the imperative of eta’at, or obedience, an Islamic virtue essential for preventing fitna, internal strife — a term applied to the disastrous civil wars of the early Muslim states, as well as to the inter-mujehadeen struggles of the 1990s, when Kabul was destroyed in factional fighting.

“It’s more important than what’s allowed as halal. We have to avoid fitna.”

These schisms have been depicted by the Arabic noun fitna, which can mean both “charm, enchantment, captivation” and “rebellion, riot, discord, civil strife”.