Mar 28
Fitna - Gert Wilders anti-Islam movie
Okay then - I watched Fitna 10 minutes ago and here’s my initial thoughts. While we should protect our freedom of speech at all costs, what Gert Wilders is doing is clearly manipulative. He’s deliberately taking quotes from the Quran and using these to portray Islam as being a violent religion - completely ignoring the fact that most Muslims don’t follow these extremist ideas.
So basically the film lacks reality and has clearly been made to attempt a fear frenzy. Especially the last part is very questionable, where Mr. Wilders shows how The Netherlands will be in the future, with women getting murdered, gays murdered and children raised as warriors in blood.
No doubt that the clips Mr. Wilders show are completely real - there’s no doubt there is a relatively small group of extremist Muslims believing the things he portrayed - and yes these should by any means necessary be defeated. Not for saying what they believe (as Mr. Wilders has at times suggested by wanting to ban the Quran), but for executing it. Whenever an extremist Muslim does anything which is against our laws, we should hit down on it hard and fast - however that’s in no way the same as saying Islam is a bad, dangerous or extremist religion.. Actually Islam and Christianity are much alike, and some of the extremist sections in The Quran are equally present in The Old Testament as well - yet you don’t see Mr. Wilders fighting to ban the Bible (which is especially hypocritical when looking at the level of Christian extremism in e.g. The United States of America).
So all in all Gert Wilders’ movie just lacks perspective. He apparently believes terrorists are terrorists due to Islam and not due to external factors like manipulation from government individuals and extremist anti-westerns.
We shouldn’t be fighting Islam as a religion - Islam is actually fine.. we should however be fighting terrorists for what they are - criminals! They should be treated like criminals and fought like criminals. Furthermore we should be doing more work into why these people decide to strap a bomb to themselves and try to fight these causes, instead of attacking the terrorist’s excuse for violence! Islam is being misused by terrorists world wide. Islam is not a religion of hate, it is merely being used as an excuse for violence and prejudice. As long as our Muslims don’t fight freedom, democracy and any other corner stone of our civilization, we should respect their right to believe what ever they want to believe - as we do any other religion.
That being said I still want to point out that Gert Wilders has complete freedom of speech and any attack on him is an attack on all of the Western world’s freedom - and it should treated as such! So no matter how little I agree with him, I deny any claims that he should be prosecuted and obviously any and all attempts to threaten his life or the lives of his family. Any attack on Mr. Wilders, successful or unsuccessful, should be viewed as an attack on all of the western world and the perpetrator(s) should therefore be imprisoned for life - with no exception!
