Fitna

I suppose there are all sorts of reasons to make a film.

Usually when it is a documentary, as this purports to be, there is an expected nominal bit of exploration of the unknown, sometimes educational. I expected this value because I know the Koran to be so vulnerable. Its questionable origin has been taken to pieces in "Religion Ruins Everything," a recent book.

But this film makes another choice. Its made not for the western viewer who really is curious, but the very Islamist it condemns. Its intended to offend, and the viewer is merely tricked into collaborating. I think I would willingly participate in a much rougher film should someone choose to make one.

But this approach — to offend for the sake of making offense in front of us — is something I refuse to participate in.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

I am not even going to give this a vote, as it does not even qualify to be judged by any scale. The film is pure propaganda, and is like the Nazis's are replaced with ignorant caucasions and the Jew's with innocent muslims.

I ask you: -Why do I- as a Muslim, raised and born in the west, fully integrated with the culture of my new homecountry- now have to be afraid going out of my home? Is this not the TRUE meaning of Terror?

-Why every time someone speaks of Islam, automatically the terrorism subject is approached? Are terrorists really muslims, or just fundamentally disturbed people, with an understanding that is all to mixed up- just happen to have grown up in a Muslim state?

This move, documentary or what you want to call it, reaches out to those of us who are weak. Those people who have not yet reached the understanding that is needed to take a stand. I am afraid that that is the majority of the people in the world. I pledge you to do not choose your stand from a propaganda film like this, rather go out to a "normal" Muslim, equal to the "normal" Christian, jew, buddhist, and ask him/her about his/her's belief and religion. You will see that our religion is not much different from yours.

The writings in the Qouran are over 1000 years old!! No one believes them 100%! It's like believing that the world was created in 6 days, and hell was created because of Adam eating an apple.

Wake up people, before it's all to late...

You can call it controversial, you can call it anything you like. Truth is, short Dutch effort 'Fitna' is a film that isn't sure weather it wants to shock, educate or insult; maybe it wants to do all three, maybe it really wants to just inform and none of the above. The truth also is, that the film is a mere series of pieces of footage that we have all seen before pasted together in-between some more found footage of certain somebody's talking in whatever language they're talking in about how much they hate the world.

I was not impressed by Fitna to the level I felt I was supposed to be; nor to the level the film perhaps wanted me to be. 2002 Iranian effort 'The Afghan Alphabet' is a much longer and much more disturbing insight into the mentality behind Afghans and their way of life; the interview the Iranian crew engage in with a young Koran believing boy has the boy thinking along the lines of 'The West are our enemies' and that 'Allah is great, God is great' and all the necessary religion led political mumbo-jumbo that is very sacred to them but seems obligatory to us. In Fitna, that scene is emulated but only for a brief ten seconds when this time Judaism is targeted by Muslims.

The Afghan Alphabet was a feature length documentary shot in Afghanistan very shortly after 9/11, Fitna is a documentary that is just about ten minutes and is really just a string of people either bashing the West or footage of recent terrorist events. The scenes in which Muslim extremists are talking about how much they hate their enemies are given no introduction, and we must believe what is being said through subtitles; things like "even a stone will say 'Oh Allah!'" which sounds like a pretty stupid thing to say. Likewise, the terrorist attack aftermaths merely consist of the most viewed videos on Youtube pasted together: the 7/7 bombings in London; the Spanish tube attacks and various 9/11 clips. We've all seen these videos and thus, if we let them affect us when watching this short film then we are tricking ourselves into hating Muslims even more since they are inter-cut into an actual documentary, rather than being viewed casually.

This tells us two things, firstly that Geert Wilders is pointing out that the Muslims think the 'enemy' is the United States, Spain and the United Kingdom. Wilders does include some found footage of Dutchman Theo van Gough who was killed by a Muslim, but it is only natural to make Holland look victimised since the filmmaker is Dutch. However, Wilders does point out a flaw in the Muslim belief: earlier on in the piece, he includes footage of an unnamed Muslim stating that all of the 'West' are the enemy; indeed the Koran verse itself says that you must 'terrorise Allah's enemy' but Wilders points out that Muslims have held up banners stating 'God Bless Hitler' which completely contradicts the Koran's belief. Hitler was German, he was from the West and German troops have probably fought in Afghanistan and Iraq under the banner of the U.N. – but shouldn't that double them up as the enemy? Muslims seem to think not. If Allah should bless Hitler, should he bless other such dictators like Stalin and Milošević? It doesn't make sense which is a point to the West.

Fitna may not have been all that necessary and really just adds more fuel to the fire but I did not learn anything new watching it, nor did I feel any different in my already set opinions of Islam. I am from Britain, I am from the West and thus; I am an enemy of the Muslims – if they had the choice, I'd be gone in an instant; like it or not. But that's the way it is and a die for a die, they are my 'enemy' even if I have not been brought up to actively hate them, but what they did in London in 2005 and in America in 2001 is barbaric and repulsive. But we already knew this, like we knew it before watching Fitna – I got the feeling that Wilders was trying to say Islam is really just an age old belief, thought up by people with nothing better to do and followed by people who are just as guilty.

Unfortunately, Islam is not something like an 'itch' or the cold weather; you cannot just ignore it and wait for it to go away – it's like a dripping tap and unless you get up and do something, it won't go away. The film tells us that Muslims are extremely antagonistic while adopting Nazi-like characteristics in their world domination and anti-Semitic ideas. Maybe Wilders is an attention seeker, maybe he's just very brave but one thing's for sure; he knows how to spark controversy and how to get people excited by simply pasting together a series of newsreel footage.

For its purpose, Gert Wildeers pulled off a horrifically tragic and impressive piece of short-film. It shows how Islam and the Quran is misinterpreted by radical Muslims and a couple of the consequences of just that. The short-film is designed to bring out fear in the audience by telling the old sad story of terrorism and the bad experiences that has risen throughout Europe and the USA.

No doubt - What is shown is true. What this movie doesn't show us is the good Muslim doing his job, the Muslim making friends with Europeans and Americans and the Muslim adapting to his new environments. To generalize and expect people to be dumb as cattle are not the way to go about these matters. Digging even deeper trenches between the Islamic culture and western culture is a bad idea. Unless You just wanna say "fcuk it" and arm up as we speak. I don't have the solution to these problems that we experience these days. I just don't feel that this short-film is going to help solve anything at all... Especially in this turbulent time of satiric drawings and no-good trade embargoes.

Somebody needs to give that man a hug. There are lots of Muslims acting retarded in this world. But luckily there are significantly more acting like the rest of us.

God bless us all!

//Martin Jakobsen

In Fitna, Geert Wilders succeeds in taking enormous amounts of old footage out of their original context and fitting them together in a pattern that is really only logical to Geert Wilders.

While not being a very tasteful or entertaining film, to the mature viewer it does provide an interesting perspective on one thing - The grotesque nature of ethnocentric and political propaganda. For this reason, and because of scenes of extreme violence, it should be highly dis-recommended to the immature viewer.

Personally, I have never seen the likes of Fitna since America's paranoid propaganda videos from the Red Scare. I was amazed by the paranoia exhibited in the Cold War, but I am equally amazed by the seriousness with which Wilders draws parallels between extreme Islamic fundamentalism and the billion (probably more) innocent and innocuous Muslims living in and outside Europe.