The Observer, April 11, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 24
Violence should not be response to controversial material
On Feb. 24, 2008, the world was not able to access YouTube for two hours. Why? Because Google was complying with the Pakistani internal ban on YouTube due to "blasphemous content, videos, and documents" offensive to Islam. The Pakistani network accidentally caused a worldwide block on the popular video-sharing site when it tried to shut down the blasphemous material.
What were these terrible documents? It was a small clip of the 17-minute short film, Fitna, which was later released in its entirety on LiveLeak.com at the end of March. The film was directed, produced, and written by Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. Concerned with the link between Islamic literalism and violence in the 21st century, the film depicts these correlations with grim certitude, juxtaposing verses of the Koran with newspaper headlines and video footage of violence carried out in the name of Islam. Newspaper clippings read "Death to [Salman] Rushdie" and photos from Muslim rallies portray men and women holding signs saying "Freedom Go To Hell" and "God Bless Hitler." A three-year-old child parrots her Islamic teachings, saying that Jews are pigs and dogs. The message? Radical Islam threatens our basic freedoms and human rights, and the world should take action before the violence starts again.
Geert Wilders is notoriously against immigration, and in my opinion, his views on public policy do not help his case. Nonetheless, his right to produce and distribute this video still stands, whether or not the content of the film is politically (or factually) correct. By far, the saddest part of this debacle is the ridiculousness of the Muslim response to this film. Wilders and LiveLeak.com were met with death threats and many predominantly Muslim nations reacted to Fitna by restricting civil liberties and freedoms of their own people. I am frankly not surprised. LiveLeak.com had to remove the video temporarily from their site because they feared for the lives of their staff. They stated, "This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net, but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else….We stood for what we believe in, the ability to be heard, but in the end the price was too high." A fatwa has been issued against Geert Wilders, and many protesters are calling for his death despite never actually seeing the film, because, hey, if ignorance and gullibility is good enough for Ahmadinejad, then gosh darn it, it's good enough for me! Iran has condemned the film and Pakistan and Indonesia banned it outright, especially for its inclusion of the infamous Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.
If the risks were not so high, this would be almost comical: extremists becoming violent when criticized for being violent! And before the letters come flooding in, let me make myself clear: yes, yes, this can be considered a case of Islamic literalism rather than the Islam practiced by millions of more moderate individuals who interpret scriptures allegorically. But one cannot avoid the fact that this violence and trampling of the freedom of expression only serves to underscore Wilders' depiction of Islam as a fanatically intolerant and hypocritical belief system.
Is this what Muslims want? For Islam to be represented as a petulant child of a faith that whines and complains and lashes out when it does not get its own way? If the response to Fitna is the Islamic world's idea of a public relations proposal, it needs a major attitude adjustment as well as a few well-placed apologies. To be fair, Fitna is not all lies. The fatwas against Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Salman Rushdie are real, honor killings are real, the hatred towards homosexuals is real (as much as Ahmadinejad would have us believe otherwise). While it is reasonable – and commendable – for moderate Muslims to say, "I don't agree with Wilders; these things do not represent me," we all as human beings with moral and ethical obligations to each other should not tolerate the restriction of rights and civil liberties. The time for being mildly dyspeptic over the desecration of the freedom of expression has not only passed – it has never existed! I especially urge the more moderate Muslim community to be more vocal and critical and stand in solidarity against egregious violations of the freedom to simply obtain knowledge and to be exposed to things one may find disagreeable.
Unlike the short film Submission (for which filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was brutally slain), Wilders' self-righteous anti-immigration political agenda shines through in part of the film where he cites statistics on Muslim population numbers, creating the false impression that Muslim adherents all subscribe to some of the more radical verses in the Surahs and Hadiths. Was releasing Fitna a good idea? Was it a good political move? Did it contribute anything of value to this debate? Was it meant to inflame more than to inform? These are all legitimate questions up for debate. What is not debatable is this: we all – regardless of religion or creed – cannot and should not stand for hostility or threats.
Tulsi Roy is a second-year biology/HPS major.
