Posted on 04/12/2008 9:19:33 AM PDT by barcalounger
The recent film "Fitna" by the controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders was seen by many as an attack on Islam. Now a Saudi blogger has created a film featuring violent texts from the Bible, with the intention of showing that stereotyping can go both ways.
The film "Schism" by Raed Al-Saeed, 33, is a little over six minutes in length and can be viewed on the Internet video portal YouTube. The film takes verses
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
I wish those Christians would stop smashing planes into buildings and strapping bombs on to retarded 13 year old girls --- oh wait... nevermind
The Islamic world has the greatest fascination with Hitler and surveys show that with the exception of Lebanon that many Muslims in the MiddleEast tend to agree with his tactics.
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As someone — I don’t recall who, but he deserves all the credit in the world — wrote last week, Christians do evil in spite of the Bible. Muslims do good in spite of the Koran.
Did you know that there is a Muslim form of Liberation theology? Maybe that’s what the Rev JWright teaches.
Remember the part where the Christians are enslaving other religions in the Sudan because the Bible says they are Infidels? No, wait....
How can a Saudi know what the BIBLE says? BIBLES are banned in Arabia.
If he is outside the Moslem world then he will know he is lying in his teeth.
There you go! Christians and Jews have not been acting out on
the violence in their scriptures like Muslims have recently.
Psalm 2.
I can't wait until the day when the LORD kicks some booty and get rid of the enemies of God!
If you look at every country listed in the Bible that God says He will destroy, today all of those countries are Muslim. Just something to think about.
Geert Wilder’s Fitna
http://cityofbrass.blogspot.com/2008/03/geert-wilders-fitna-part-i.html
(Click For Links)
UPDATE: The YouTube version was pulled offline, but I found another from Google Video via Rusty.
The ridiculousness of the film speaks for itself, I think. However, Ali Eteraz performed the thankless task of reviewing it anyway. Also, do not miss Thabet’s link roundup about the subdued response to the film’s release by muslims in Europe and elsewhere.
Warning, very graphic images. Absolutely NOT work- or children-safe.
The cartoon portraying the Prophet Mohammed SAW as a hook-nosed terrorist with a bomb in his turban, over which a lawsuit has been filed, appears in the first 15 seconds.
The tone and style of the film is lifted straight out of the most fevered swamps of the blogsphere and talk radio. I don’t really see how this makes any coherent argument other than “terrorists are evil” which is hardly a point of contention. The link of Islam to terror is ham-handed and clumsy and at many times outright laughable. However, for someone with confirmation bias predisposing them to believe the link exists already, this will no doubt be seen as a devastatingly rigorous argument. To someone with no a-priori image of Islam, its actual persuasive value is practically zero. It is solely a guilt-by-association polemic, and a rude, ugly, obscene fear-mongering polemic at that.
Part II tomorrow.
UPDATE: I have received some emails from people asking why I would want to publicize this. (No, no death threats yet. Don’t hold your breath.) As I discussed at a thread at Dean Esmay’s blog, The film is it’s own best counter-argument. It is so over the top that it undermines itself. If censorship against the film succeeded, then people would only know it exists and it would have some credibility accorded to it by virtue of the mystery and controversy. Like Janet Jackson’s nipple, though, once (ahem) laid bare it’s not that big a deal, and just kind of pathetic.Labels: fitna, jafi
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Geert Wilders Fitna Farce
http://eteraz.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/geert-wilders-fitna-farce/
I just watched Dutch right-winger, Geert Wilders’ film, Fitna, The Movie. He had promised it to be too shocking, too frightening, too disturbing and much of the world was holding its breath in morbid, anxious, wait for its release. The media feared rabid violence by those Muslims.
My initial reaction is a yawn. I blame production. The soundtrack is Tchaikovsky’s mellow classical piece called “Arab Dance.” Quick tip to future demagogues: when trying to incite riots, try not to use musical pieces that are based on Georgian lullabies. Quick tip to future Islamophobes: when trying to demonize Islam, try not to use elements of Western culture that are inspired by Arabs and Muslims as that reveals that Muslims have contributed positively to the world.
Anyone who has seen terrorist propaganda films is familiar with most of the scenes and most of the disgusting conflations of the Quran with acts of violence, murder, kidnapping and anti-semitism. Such behavior has been condemned resoundingly among Muslims. Those that use the Quran for illegitimate and criminal ends should be punished by the fullest extent of the law.
What I’m really wondering: is Wilders’ protesting against Islam or the monopoly extremists already have over grainy, low-budget, youtube videos? The only difference I see is that Wilders plays the best of Western classical music — an insult to the legacy of Grieg and Tchaikovsky — than death chants. I guess the thing he can be credited with is upping the sound quality. Also the transubstantiation of “Fitna” into “Fin” at the end was pretty cool.
The rest of the film is a mixture of conflating the most painful and heart-wrenching images from terror-strikes with extremist imams, in an effort to turn the entirety of Islam into a demonic edifice. This is neither new, nor interesting. It is a facile trick for facile minds. Cartoons show more a more subtle grasp of the human condition. Focusing in more specifically, the film appears to be nothing more than a screed by a nativist. Anti-immigrant demagogues exist in every society, from Arab to American. Their sole job is to belittle and antagonize the mostly poor immigrants and stultify and romanticize their country’s own history.
One of the things the film did was to try and link some of the verses of the Quran to acts of violence. Most people familiar with the Quran, including Christian polemicists I’ve debated, accept that you can have the Quran say pretty much whatever you want. For example, there is among Muslims, a pretty hefty industry of “scientists” who are constantly “proving’ that various Quranic verses predicted the marvels of modern science. I once saw a presentation by one of these guys. It was, in a way, very similar to what Wilders has done. First there would be a slide with a Quranic verse. Then there would be a bunch of images of some modern scientific marvel. Apparently, everything from the space-time continuum, modern meteorology and congenital biology are supported by verses from the Quran. Like I said, when put into the hands of fanatics and fools, the Quran — like any book of religious scripture — can say anything. If suicide bombers wanted, they could even go into the Old Testament, cite to Sampson, and justify their heinous acts.
What the film really shows to me is that Wilders doesn’t know the difference between Islam and Islamism — and when it comes to the latter he is completely lost. This is his major attack against Islamism? He reminds me of those socially awkward, marginalized, introverted children in a school-yard whose solution to persecution at the hands of a bully is to write the bully’s name in his notebook and then rip up the page.
If Wilders really wanted to expose Islamism — the entire legacy of 20th century ideological Islam — he would start with how the French Suez Canal Company funded the Muslim Brotherhood’s first mosque. That fact is casually mentioned in Hasan al-Banna’s autobiography (which I am certain Wilders bothered to consult). Or Wilders would have tried to begin some criminal proceeding in the international criminal courts against those men who came up with the genius idea of encouraging disaffected Arab youth into going into Afghanistan and then gave them $1 billion in machine guns, bombs and stinger missiles to play with. Or Wilders could have expressed some outrage over the drafters of the new Iraqi constitution — drafted in consultation with Western lawyers — which makes Sharia the law of the land (a fact bemoaned by Iraqi feminists). Had he bothered to show some serious thinking he would have even found support among the millions of Muslims around the world who oppose Islamists.
But Wilders isn’t actually serious about challenging Islamism. He is concerned only about multiplying the number of times his name is pinged on Google. Couldn’t he have taken solace in the fact that his name is pinged more than mine?
I can’t be sure how the Islamist demagogues will spin this film. Presumably some of them will consider this a kind of frontal assault against their idiocy — idiots recognize one another — and begin agitations which the media will be too happy to cover. However, the fact is, a majority of Muslims are going to react to this film with the same kind of casual shrug of the shoulders that it deserves. If there are Muslims who wish to protest — and I really don’t see why its even necessary — my advice for them is to emulate Hossein Nouri. He is the paraplegic painter who, during the Danish Cartoon Fiasco, painted a portrait of the Virgin Mary in front of the Danish embassy. Here is a picture of his marvelous work.
In terms of sheer originality, though, the best response to this film came from a friend of mine who watched the film — and calling it a film is to abuse both the English language and the legacy of cinema — on my computer with me.
“I could have masturbated in that time.”
“In terms of sheer originality, though, the best response to this film came from a friend of mine who watched the film — and calling it a film is to abuse both the English language and the legacy of cinema — on my computer with me.
“I could have masturbated in that time.””
It sounds precisely as though you did, given the quality of your criticisms.
“Like I said, when put into the hands of fanatics and fools, the Quran — like any book of religious scripture — can say anything. If suicide bombers wanted, they could even go into the Old Testament, cite to Sampson, and justify their heinous acts.”
But the entire point of the film is that they don’t: they use the Qu’ran. The imams are teaching from the Qu’ran. Bin Laden is quoting from it.
Flush a Qu’ran, get a riot. Flush a Bible, get forgiveness. THAT is the difference.
Islamofacists routinely kill and maim in the name of Islam, but you are hard pressed to find a Bible “fanatic” to do likewise.
“The rest of the film is a mixture of conflating the most painful and heart-wrenching images from terror-strikes with extremist imams, in an effort to turn the entirety of Islam into a demonic edifice. This is neither new, nor interesting.”
Yeah, wouldn’t want to “conflate” any terror spewing imams with the terror they preach. Soooo boring. So uninteresting. Best to just let ‘em be.
Your biggest complaint is that Alfred Hitchcock didn’t direct it. Big deal. Was the Rodney King video a cinematic tour de force?
The biggest problem with the Saudi anti Christian version is that it needs to call up images that are contrived or six hundred years out of date. The Islam criticisms are current.
“Islamophobia” is actually Islamoreality.
It’s a silly movie. But at least the creator is fighting speech with more speech (as we do in free societies) instead setting fire to an embassy or something like that.
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