Mick Hartley

Those who are interested in watching Geert Wilders’ film Fitna (Wikipedia link) will no doubt have seen it by now. It’s not difficult to find, despite Livelink removing it from their servers as a result of threats received. It’s pretty much what you’d expect: footage of terrorist outrages, interspersed with clerics preaching jihad and quotes from the Koran: nothing that anyone who’s inclined to give it a view won’t be familiar with already. It’s perhaps less offensive than many feared, though it’s early days yet to judge the overall reaction of the Muslim world. Omar Bakri, interestingly, didn’t find it offensive at all: “If we leave out the first images and the sound of the page being torn, it could be a film by the [Islamist] Mujahideen”.

Anyway, I’m not going to include it here, or link to it. It’s not that I disagree with the substance of it. It seems to me quite obvious, beyond controversy, that Islam is used to justify terrorist outrages, and that there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of Islamic clerics around the world regularly exhorting their congregations to acts of violence against us kuffars, us non-believers. Whether this is intrinsic to Islam, or is, as many like to argue, a perversion of it, is not something I’m particularly well qualified to judge, but my feeling is that, yes, that’s what Islam is like. These clerics aren’t just making it all up, or twisting the words of the Koran or the Hadiths. That there are so many Muslims who live quiet modest lives, with no interest in imposing themselves or their values on others, is more down to the basic decency of the average person than to the teachings of their religion.

Secularism is, clearly and unequivocally, unacceptable to traditional Islam – yet secularism is the bedrock of Western culture. So yes, there’s a problem – but there are Muslims who advocate secularism, and I believe that we’ll see more and more of them. Nor do I think that here in Europe we’re heading for some kind of Eurabia. We – particularly in Britain – were too taken in by the joys of multiculturalism to see what was happening under our noses, but now we’re clearer about the dangers, and we’re seeing ex-jihadis coming out and telling us their stories. We’re by no means out of the woods yet, but I believe we’re at least starting to head in the right direction.

Which brings us back to Geert. He’s a right-wing populist: an incorrigible self-publicist, leader of the Party for Freedom, against immigration from non-Western countries, and generally, in my view, an unpleasant piece of work. It shouldn’t be forgotten that he thinks the Koran should be banned in the Netherlands. As he knows, this isn’t going to happen. His motives are, to say the least, dubious. Geert Wilders is presently, without a doubt, the best known Dutch politician outside Holland: a situation with which he’s no doubt very happy. Which is not necessarily to say he’s only in it for the publicity. He may be, but I imagine he genuinely believes that Islam will never adapt to Western culture – and Allah knows there’s certainly enough evidence to support him in that belief. But there’s something unpleasant about Fitna. Whatever you may think about Islam, to make a film so hostile to the beliefs of an immigrant minority, when there’s a real danger of backlash by the native Dutch, is just plain nasty. He’s stirring up trouble, intentionally. He’s going in the wrong direction.

So that’s the problem as far as I’m concerned. It’s a tricky one, no doubt about it. I think he’s right, in general, about Islam, but I don’t think he’s being fair to Muslims, and particularly to those Muslims in Holland – in Europe generally – who are happy to live in a secular society and just get on quietly with their lives. He’s not helping them at all, the very people we should surely be encouraging. It’ll just confirm their more confrontational co-religionists in their belief that it’s an all-or-nothing, win or lose situation.

It also lends credibility to those who complain that the West just likes to insult Muslims, or those like the UN’s Ban Ki-Moon who want to ban the film:

I condemn, in the strongest terms, the airing of Geert Wilders’ offensively anti-Islamic film. There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence. The right of free expression is not at stake here. I acknowledge the efforts of the Government of the Netherlands to stop the broadcast of this film, and appeal for calm to those understandably offended by it. Freedom must always be accompanied by social responsibility.

Next stop, a general ban on offending religion sensibilities. Thanks Geert.

The film should certainly not be banned, and Muslims should learn to take criticism like everybody else, but it’s hard to deny that Wilders did set out to offend.