My Review of FITNA

I thought I'd post a bit of a longer review of Geert Wilders' movie Fitna. Here it is:

Fitna has some flaws - the main one being that it has obviously been made by a man who doesn't actually know that much about the Qur'an. But at the same time, the film is accurate and contains an important message. What grabs me most is the way criticism directed against Wilders almost seems to suggest that he made up the connection between Islam and violence. But in fact, he did not: that honour belongs to the Muslims he depicts in the film. Wilders is simply reporting on what they say.

One example will suffice. If you've watched the film you'll know that its main structural theme is passages from the Qur'an interlinked with footage of atrocities committed by Muslims. The first of these Qur'an quotes is 8:60: "Make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies." This is followed by footage of 9/11. These are not two unrelated things that Wilders has unfairly linked to each other. Jihadists time and time again invoke such passages to justify their actions. Acts such as 9/11 were designed to strike terror into the hearts of Allah's enemies. And most telling is some footage that follows soon after this first Qur'an quote. An Islamic cleric is shown saying: "Annihilate the infidels and the polytheists, your (Allah’s) enemies and the enemies of the religion. Allah, count them and kill them to the last one…" His language here is clearly borrowed from this very verse of the Qur'an.

This is evident in other places, as well, and if Wilders had been more knowledgeable about Islam he could have demonstrated it better. One instance of this is when we see a three-year-old girl on Palestinian TV saying that the Jews are apes and pigs. If Wilders had had a little more nouse about him, he could have contrasted this with the three places in the Qur'an where Jews are depicted as being transformed - or akin - to apes and pigs (2:62-65; 5:59-60: 7:166). And elsewhere we hear an Islamic preacher declaring that at the end of the world Muslims will kill all the Jews. His speech is an almost word-for-word copy of the infamous genocidal apocalyptic hadith tradition: "The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him." (Muslim b.41, no.6985)

Other examples are abound, of course, but the point here is that it is not Wilders who has created these connections. Muslims do that themselves every day, and Wilders is simply reporting on them. It is telling that there has been widespread Muslim condemnation of the film and Wilders himself (much of it coming before the film was even released), but little to no condemnation of the very men depicted in the film, who are the actual ones linking Islam with violence. This is a widespread problem: Muslims do not vociferously condemn their fellow co-religionists who equate Islam with violence, but they do condemn those non-Muslims who report on the fact that these Muslims exist. Consider when you last saw rioting Muslims burning an effigy of Salman Rushie, for instance, and then compare that with your memory of ever seeing those same Muslims burning an effigy of Osama bin Laden. Case in point. And where, oh where, is the worldwide Muslim condemnation of this film: a Palestinan puppet show for kids in which a child is depicted as killing George Bush with a sword and converting the White House into a mosque. Will the UN intervene on this one? If not, why not? Isn't this just slightly worse than Fitna, which does not call for the death of anyone?

But no Muslim condemnation is coming forth for things like this. Instead, all the blame rests on non-Muslims who exercise their free speech and report on the fact that some Muslims make a very strong connection between Islam and violence. If those preachers stopped doing so, Muslims would find that "Islamophobia" - as far as it even exists at all - would vanish completely.