Cynics Unlimited

Title: Fitna
Release: 2008
Genre: Documentary
Run Time: 15 Minutes
Studio/Publisher: Geert Wilders
Rating: 20%

Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), released a bombshell in the form of Fitna – a self-proclaimed documentary and wake up call to Europe in the face of growing Islamicization. Arabic for “disagreement and division among people”, Fitna has caused much division among nations and even within the ranks of those critical to radical Islam. Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist whose bomb-laden depiction of Mohammed resulted in worldwide riots and death threats, publicly condemned Wilders’ use of his drawings due to the film’s sweeping indictment of Islam as a whole. Web host Network Solutions suspended film’s website and video streaming company LiveLeak hosted the movie for only two days. Pakistan briefly banned YouTube while Al Qaeda has issued a fatwa against the blonde instigator. Controversy, thy name is Geert.

Information-wise, Fitna offers little new material to those who have spent much time studying radical Islam. The 15-minute presentation consists of gory footage spliced with inflammatory Muslim speeches and confrontational suras from the Qur’an. Some viewers will recognize footage originally seen in Islamist documentaries like Beneath the Veil and Cult of the Suicide Bomber. Other video includes of people jumping from the Twin Towers during the 9/11 attacks and neatly-edited clips of executions by Iraqi insurgents.

The soundtrack consists of passages from Edvard Greig’s brooding “Aase’s Death” and Tchaikovsky’s “Arabian Dance” looping intermittently between apocalyptic Muslim prayers. Much of the dialog is in Arabic so most viewers will rely on the [thankfully minimal] English/Dutch subtitles. There is no narration in the film per se but the violent speeches by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and various Imams set the pace just as effectively.

The latter portion of the film pushes the immigration buttons familiar to Wilders’ PVV platform. Under the title “The Netherlands of the Future?”, a graphic slideshow displays images of gay/female executions, blood-smeared children and female circumcisions. This macabre presentation is followed by a series of inflammatory news headlines:
“We do not agree with freedom of speech, because we denounce democracy”
“Explosive increase honor killings in Amsterdam”
“School closes on muslim holidays”
“Jihad-lessons in elementary school”
“Foreign imams allowed in more quickly”
“Mosques under the spell of radical muslim group”
“Suicide commandos in the Netherlands”
“Hamas gathers in Rotterdam”
“Mosque: turning the Netherlands into a muslim state”

Fitna closes with a short clip of a hand turning a page of the Koran. The image fades as the sound of a page tearing is heard. The implication is quickly followed by the message “The sound you just heard was a page being removed from the phone book. For it is not up to me, but to Muslims themselves to tear out the hateful verses from the Quran”. The film’s final message states that Muslim Europeans have no interest but to conquer the west and that Islamic ideology must be defeated by freedom-loving Europeans as Nazism and Communism were before it.

It shouldn’t even need to be said that Fitna is a hatchet job, plain and simple. Compressing 15 minutes of footage and inspiration from Islam’s violent minority and passing it off as the summation of a centuries-old religion that contains over a billion followers smacks of a “solution” in search of a problem. A structurally identical film could be made in the Islamic world about the invasion of Christian (re: coalition) warriors, splicing scenes of dead Iraqi citizens with violent passages in the old testament and assorted rants by Jerry Falwell. The facts presented would be “true”, but hardly representative of the entire Christian world.

Nontheless, such a film would stand as firm proof to Islamists about the need for Muslim forces to crush the Christian enemy. Fitna will appeal similarly to modern-day crusaders who have already convinced themselves of the necessity for a second Crusade.

Offense is in the eye of the beholder, so it would be difficult for an outsider to say whether this film warrants the extreme outcry and calls for censorship – perhaps that’s a Westerner mindset. Stronger anti-Islamic sentiment has long existed on the pages of FrontPageMag or Little Green Footballs and to my knowledge neither of these online publications have been threatened.

Fitna preaches a drastic scenario to the converted and would likely fail to penetrate mainstream Western thought even if it were given wide release. Wilders’ political associations, combined with his decision to attack all of Islam rather than its extremist elements, will cost credibility among discerning audiences.