Fitna

Well, I just watched Fitna today for the first time. For those of you not in the know, Fitna is a short film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, juxtaposing verses in the Koran with Muslim acts of terrorism and quotes from the imams advocating such attacks.

Via Hot Air, I saw a link to an editorial written by a Muslim journalist, Fatma Aykut, who offers a response.

A desire to shock also compelled Wilders to include footage from the beheading of a hostage, uncensored and uncut. The camera fixes on the severed head as the scene fades out. The only problem is that the news value of this footage is absolutely zero. The viewer finds herself wondering: "When is Wilders actually going to shock me?"

I guess video-recorded decapitations have really lost their luster for Aykut. Maybe the terrorists should step it up a notch to actually "shock" Muslim journalists.

Wilders' accompanies these "shocking images" with quotations from the Koran, an effort to expose Islam's holiest text as a well-spring of hate. That makes it difficult for me, a totally average Muslim, to defend Islam as a peaceful religion. These quotations are not made up -- they can actually be found in the Koran. Passages from the holy book that rail hatefully against Jews have, unfortunately, long been misused as propaganda. That is tragic, as it is tragic that similar anti-Semitic passages are just as common in the Bible.

The most notable difference in the anti-Semitism in the Bible as opposed to that in the Koran is that Catholic bishops worldwide aren't using these passages as a rallying cry for another Jewish holocaust. Identifying Islam as "a peaceful religion" might be the most Orwellian phrase in common vernacular today. She goes on...

The film's title, "Fitna," can be translated as "chaos," and that describes the first 10 minutes of the film. An endless stream of fear-mongering images promotes the cliché of Muslims as savages -- a horde of bearded, dark-skinned men in long white robes. The viewer finds herself asking, "What is this film trying to achieve? What does the film maker want?"

I can only assume Wilders wants radical Islam portrayed in the media and by Western governments as a "horde of bearded, dark-skinned men in long white robes" willing to kill infidels at a whim and wanting to institute Sharia law on all nations.

But he chooses to ignore certain realities of Muslim life in Europe: The high rate of unemployment among immigrants, the slim chances of receiving a good education, the daily encounters with racism and the countless immigrant children -- particularly boys -- who are abandoned.

This begs the question then, why immigrate? If Muslim life is so terrible in Europe, why not stay put in the Islamofascist states? To quote my new hero, Mark Steyn:

"As one is always obliged to explain when tiptoeing around this territory, I'm not a racist, only a culturist. I believe Western culture -- rule of law, universal suffrage, etc. -- is preferable to Arab culture: that's why there are millions of Muslims in Scandinavia, and four Scandinavians in Syria. Follow the traffic. I support immigration, but with assimilation."

In the end of her assessment of Fitna, Aykut offers up this gem.

To that end, "Fitna" surprised me. One can argue that it is overhyped -- Wilders shows nothing but facts, even if they are somewhat one-sided.

How dare he poorly portray Islam by making a movie stringing together a bunch of facts.