Fitna

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.

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.

Please watch this video response to "Fitna"; Hope it make things more clear please just remove the spaces so as to be able to embed it http:// www.youtube.com/ watch?v= oA97Kx 0hfZ8& watch_ respon se&loc ale=en _US&persis t_locale=1 If you were not able to embed it just open video Fitna at You Tube and watch the response; it is about 9 min; 37 sec

If you want to judge something; c both sides ... else you have to know you were not listening to find the truth but just to be lead by a person who believe "You are just a follower"!!!

It's to clarify some misconceptions, people have towards Islam … open your eyes, your heart and your brains and don't let only one of them drive your judgment. And seek the TRUTH not what SEEMS to be like it. Be fair and logical! It's a matter of Heaven or Hell….. Think … it deserves !!!

well.. i'vent seen the movie or whatever it is ,, from what I've known about it when i read the summary ....all i want to say to the director " go read history so well before doing such a thing called a documentary movie showing Islam far away from its real thing.. " ..well i agree that some Muslim terrorism organizations have done some terrorism attacks and so on , however far away from those kind of people who care about killing innocent people ( those ppl are criminals , and its against Islam order ) ..Islam is not a religion that teaches people how to terrify ppl and slaughter them or blow them up,... Islam is something far far far away from that ,,its not written in the Koran or have been told by Muhammad the prophet to kill ppl who r not Muslims,.,all i want to say that those people who are calling themselves defending the Islam they r doing nothing but making the Islamic people shaped so bad,Islam is the religion of etiquette , and how to treat with people so good...and its not an old belief thing,,Islam is founded on earth once Adam was created by god,,,well i wont talk about historical things and history of Islam here of course , cause u can found it everywhere on the net n in the libraries and many other places ,,,but the makers of this documentary movies don't read at all , and by the way since Muhammad the prophet , Muslims don't consider any ppl enemies until they consider them enemies ..whatever ,,, ... and yea am a Muzlim and am proud because am born a Muzlim ,,, and i respect ppl in other countries , .., respect there cultures and respect them in the good things of course,,,, and respect other ppl who r not Muslims ,cause Islam ordered Muslims to respect others no matter what they believe in or worship.. just telling people to go read before taking a bad view about this thing farewell

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