FITNA

Hmmm, sorry...

I have to first come and say that I apologise for the "average" Dane part. Okay, one dane whose testimony I can find. I personally do not think my wording implied that all danes are calling Muslims "pigs", but I am sorry that it could be read that way.

Also, the source of all these is missing. I got it from here: //atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/03/geert-wilders-f.html

I am also not sure what the issue with mentioning the plight of the Jews is here. As was pointed out by another commentator, I meant something simple: the Holocaust was a human tragedy as well as a specifically Jewish one. So, same as one would bring out historical examples to warn against future historical mistakes, I personally do not see the problem of pointing out the horror of the Holocaust to warn against an emerging Muslim massacre. I hope that is clear.

The more I read, the stranger it gets.

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Saddam Hossein was not a Muslim radical, but a Ba’athist, member of a political party set-up by a communist Christian Arab and at the beginning mostly popular with non-Muslim groups, including Arab Jews.
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And now I wonder what the hell Saddam has to do with the fitnamovie, but I also wionder why you have that bizarre habit of involing jews into all this.

Do you honestly feel that jews are responsable for Saddam Husseins acts (whatever that have to do with Fitna movie)???

My mind is flowing freely now, and it lead me to a funny memory about some crazy mullah that claimed Tom and Jerry is a jewish conspiracy - that could be a topic for your next article :-)

I did the basic reseach for you : //www.youtube.com/watch?v=40VFcJTIduw

Impressive article.

Especially the way you describe the average dane here
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and the average man in Denmark seems to fear it, as you can see here:

“Hej . I am danish .
Mr. Wilders is a hero !!!
Bravo Geert Wilders ! go and get all this muslim pigs .
Its a time to wake up and look around whats happens in the western countrys . I think many of those politiks are sleeping or are afraid of fuckin muslims . Mr . Wilders is a brave man and i wish him all the luck he needs . And now something to you mslims . Go home to your muslim country and stay there forever and kiss your muhammd ass .

Keep the good work mr.Wilders.”
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Being a dane myself, I have to say that I cannot recognize the stuff you write, but I'm confident that you have all your facts straight and most likely you know more danes than me, so....well....I'm sure you're right.

Just curious how many danes youhave met that calls muslims for pigs, but sure it's enough to call it "average man in Denmark" :-)

But all in all I get your point about it's wrong to stereotype and spread hate and lies and put people in a bad light - I only wonder why you doesn't practice what you are preaching.

Comment over - I have to check my dictionary to see what the word "Hypocrisy" means.

Fitna - Clear and

Fitna - Clear and Simple

"When we hear that we must understand that the 'moderate Muslim' is not for the radicalist ways of jihad, then we, as a society collected of individuals, come to the point where all the excuses given for wanton murder and Private War waged across the globe in the name of Islam and jihad must come down to one very clear and basic view.

Part of why that view is necessary is given a first and strongest view in Geert Wilders' short film Fitna. Looking at the Wikipedia entry for Fitna, we see the following:

Fitna is an Arabic word, generally regarded as very difficult to translate but at the same time is considered to be an all-encompassing word referring to schism, secession, upheaval and anarchy at once. It is often used to refer to civil war, disagreement and division within Islam and specifically alludes to a time involving trials of faith, similar to the Tribulation in Christian eschatology. The term originally referred to the refining of metal to remove dross [1], but became common in apocalyptic writings and is often used to refer to the First Islamic civil war, in 656–661 CE, a prolonged struggle for the caliphate after the 656 assassination of the caliph Uthman ibn Affan. The Second Fitna, or Second Islamic civil war, is usually identified as the 683–685 CE conflict among the Umayyads for control of the caliphate. The third one refers to the taifas in the end of the Caliph of Córdoba's rule.
This is a meaning beyond simple trial or test, and hits straight to the heart of the problem in trying to apologize or veer off from confronting a religion that puts violent ideas and ideals into action. Within Islam, then, those that utilize violent ways and means are practicing something beyond jihad: they are practicing Fitna upon their fellow Muslims".

//ajacksonian.blogspot.com/2008/03/fitna-clea...

Nice Piece

Nice piece and well written. I do think, however, that criticism of ALL religions is proper and, in fact, constructive. All of these Abrahamic religions advocate violence in their books. Just read the Old Testament and see how Moses orders his commanders to destroy a tribe, kill all the "old" women and the "non-virgin" ones and take the "young girls" for themselves as trophies. While there is no doubt that Wilder's "film" was a propaganda piece (I watched it… BTW, this was the first time that I saw someone’s head being cut off…how can a human being do that to another human being?!!! I don’t care if you’re a Muslim, Jew, Christian, Zoroastrian, Hindu, Buddhist or a goat worshipper. How can you kill another person like that? This people are more sociopaths that anything else. ), Islam in particular, among the other ones, is suffering from two problems: 1) it has become overly intertwined with politics. Therefore, things are done, and are advocated, in its name, for political purposes, in a way that open it to the type of attack that Wilders has was waged. Christianity went through this phase in the Middle Ages and the crusades, which, as a student of history, you are much more familiar with than me. Perhaps this is because of the way in which Islam was created, in essence as a political and military institution, that is contributing to this phenomenon, but that is something that needs more research and analysis. 2) Lack of a clear reform movement within Islam which essentially disavows the violent aspects of the religion, similar to reform movements within Christianity and Judaism. While I agree with you that there are moderate Muslims, I do have to agree with Islam's critics also that the voice of these moderate Muslims, along with any attempt at modernizing the religion, have been suppressed by powerful governmental and other interests in Muslim countries. Unlike Christianity and Judaism, there is no clear, coherent and identifiable branch of Islam that can come out and say "ignore the violent idiots. This is not what the religion stands for, rather, this is how you should interpret it." In sum, the job of advocacy for Islam has been left to people like Bin Laden, who has so far pretty much has had a free ride in being the most vocal advocate of the teachings of the religion, and that gives ammunition to people like Mr. Wilders. This is my objective take on the issue. Once again, nice article. Always enjoy your writings. BTW, I think you should write more on Persian history. There is a lot of misinformation about our history, and I think that people would benefit from an educated, unbiased evaluation of Persian history.

Khodadad:

When comparing American Muslims to European Muslims, the angry Wilder does reveal an analytic side. He thinks American Muslims integrate more easily because the US has a stingy welfare system, forcing immigrants to integrate as a matter of economics.

I respect your honesty when you say, "I am not offering solutions." But what do you think of Wilder's implied solution?

Fair and detailed article.

This is a nice article and in my opinion totally unbiased. I just wish people did not hate each other for things they don't and can't understand.

Tijl on March 28th, 2008 at

Tijl on March 28th, 2008 at 3:11 am:

"The purpose of this film is to show a Dutch public that Islam is very different from a religion like Christianity, because Islam is much more than a religion. It’s also a political ideology.

Islam has been a political system from the moment Mohammad became leader of Medina. Mohammad wasn’t just a Prophet, he was also a political and military leader. So basically, what Islamists want, is some kind of Muslim renaissance: going back to the “original” Islam and revive the political dimension of Islam, that has been neglected by the majority of Muslims over time. So all those European politicians who say that Islam is at the moment going trough it’s middle ages and that the Muslim renaissance will be there soon, don’t realise that the radicalisation we are witnessing in countries like Egypt, isn’t the middle ages: it is the renaissance

When Wilders tears a page from the phonebook, he says that it is up to Muslims to tear the violent parts out of the Quran. He didn’t say that they had to destroy their Qurans, he said they had to remove the calls for violence. My interpretation of that is that he doesn’t attack the religion as a whole, but only the political ideology. He didn’t ask Muslims to leave Islam, he asked Muslims to reform it.

Will this movie solve anything? On the long term, maybe it will. While most politicians in Europe kept denying that there is a problem, Wilders shows that Islamism isn’t only a problem in some mountain huts in Pakistan. It is also a major problem in The Netherlands and other European cities. Denying that, isn’t going to solve anything. But this film opened a discussion. A discussion that will force our politicians to investigate the problem of Islamic radicalisation and to come up with real solutions. I don’t think Wilders has any good solutions to the problems we face. I don’t think anyone has those solutions at the moment. But I do hope that the discussion Wilders started, might get people to think about the problems we are facing." --from Holland

There is much discussion to be had, but none of it will be useful in a climate of fear and appeasement. the appeasers no more want to make life better for muslims then neville chamerlain wanted to help the czech’s.

Either you frame, explain, and disucss the "Real" religion of Islam to the world, or others with political agenda will define it for you. It is up to you muslims.

Muslims have been the largest contributors in the "dehumanization" of Muslim. They sit on there hands, and stick their heads into the sand. If they want the rest of the world to change our perception, it is up to muslims to do so.

Very nice article

I feel the same as you. This is nicely written with honesty and simplicity. I enjoyed reading it. Unfortunately the west is falling into another trap, and the people might not know that the victim of this kind of mentality is themselves. I think though, that majority of the westerners are more intelligent than the warmonger and Jew hating politicians who are diverting their hate into another religion. Muslims are the new Jews and it's sad to see that some Jews are encouraging this kind of thoughtless mentality.

Thanks again and I will be waiting for your next article.

Wilders did nothing more

Wilders did nothing more than hold up a mirror to Muhammad’s Islam. As there are Muslims of all races, there is nothing racist about it. Islam, like any other ideology, can be discussed freely. If not, then it only proves the totalitarian nature of Islam.

...shifting the blame from Islam to man himself, instead of pointing out that the hideous actions of Muslims are not something for which they find “justifications” in the Quran because they have developed a talent to find phony justifications for their actions, but actions which are in most cases mandated by their religion, and which are logical and natural consequences of them being devout Muslims. By obscuring this fact and shifting the blame away from Islam, we become, in effect becomes an Islam apologist.

"What is the difference between Islam and Islamism??"
//hnn.us/articles/1671.html

Well done!

Very well written piece. I love the way you reason, and I find your writing beautiful and lucid. Nice job!

Nice piece, Khodadad

Very thoughtful and well written. For some reason, few people seem to see the parallel with the Jewish experience in Europe. They seem to think the holocaust was a "Jewish" tragedy, rather than a "human" tragedy. So the lesson would appear to be: don't single out the Jews, but singling out other religions/ethnicities is o.k.? What a grave misinterpretation of history.

Anyway, I haven't check up on Iranologie.com in months, so it was nice to see you on these pages! Hope you are well.

Bahram

btw - politicians are definitely androids -- how else could they hate humans so much?

Ugly minded people want to have it their way

They wish so hard to change the holy Qur'an, but it will not. It is like a thorn in their eyes and will remain there for all time.

So as much as they like to eliminate the truth, it will pop back up like a fresh tooth and bite them in the back.

Just as it has been said before, if you don't agree with them, then they consider you an Islamist or a Hardliner. Too predictable!

Islamic Hardliners are just like shark teeth;

They keep poping back up.

by Ahanin (not verified) on Tue Apr 01, 2008 07:20 PM CDT

"Out of necessity and for love of human beings (enough blood shed), can you all moslems get together and write/publish a new Quran conforming to 21st century laws. In this effort, leave amendment option open for people in next century."

Original comment source:
//iranian.com/main/2008/hate-vs-hate

Moderates, Islamists, terrorists ... How do we define?

The problem with asking this question is that we get different answers depending on whom we ask.

Group 1:

There are some who think that the Holy Qu'ran is just too harsh as it is. So a Moderate Muslim is the one who should tear up pages of Qur'an that refers to punishment for sinners. "It should be more like other mild religions" they say. "Forgive the sinner, let them be. Let the law of the land decide."

To the same group, you will be an Islamist if you don't agree with them. You can even be a Terrorist if you try to take action to stop them.

Group 2:

These individuals accept you as a Moderate Muslim if you do agree with all of Qur'an but simply refuse to do or encourage the 'punishment' part. They would consider you an Islamist if you blindly follow the holy book and do not think or judge for yourself on each individual occasion where a 'punishment' is required. You can be a terrorist if you kill innocent people for any reason at all.

Group 3:

These people don't appreciate the 'moderate' concept and think that the holy book should be followed to the letter without any judgment on behalf of the Muslim individual who follows it. They have a specific mindset of what Islam should be and even look at another Muslim who practices a different version with suspicion.

You can also divide each of these groups in to sub-groups or create interim groups in between. So when Wilders thinks of a moderate Muslim I think he assumes you should be from Group 1.

Also another problem that the likes of Wilders (Muslim haters) have is insecurity. In other words he and the like of him suffer from the following: (Inadequately guarded or protected; Unsafe; Lacking stability; Troubled; Lacking self-confidence and plagued by anxiety). If these people did not suffer from the above, they would not be fearful of Islam and Muslims.

Unfortunately he is not the only one with a weak mind and the likes of him are many. The only way to confront this is first all the concerned people (Muslims and non) to actively demonstrate in the streets, write articles to show to the public that all is not okay. The next step is to select leaders who are less likely to inflame the Muslims (means vote Bush and the likes of him OUT of the office). When the fire in the Muslim world is settled down, then eventually extremists will vanish too and hopefully maybe we will have peace in a decade or so.

Job one

Until and unless moderate, non practicing, level-headed, secular and all other likeminded hyphenated Muslims make it their job one to unequivocally and repeatedly condemn what has been and is being done in the name of their faith others with differing agendas in the manner and form of their choosing will do it for them. Finessing the issue by downplaying the threat and sophistic comparisons more than anything else is part of the problem; it is not enough to condemn the condemners for they base their fright on verifiable corpora delicti strewn about them. The very first step to any reformation is acceptance of the fact that one is needed, making excuses and blaming other factors for ones situation only prolongs the agony and raises the eventual cost.

The Missing Moderate Muslims

“I am already against the next war,” read the bumper sticker on a car ahead of me. I long to tell the driver: the next war is already here; Islamists are waging it in every corner of the globe and the “moderate Muslims” are either actively supporting them, placing the blame on the West, or simply looking the other way. This war aims to wipe out everything that free people cherish, including the right of expressing their sentiments. Banishing war has been the perennial dream of mankind’s best, while its worst have been frustrating its realization. To renounce war unilaterally and unconditionally is surrender and death.

Humanity has suffered horrific wars in the past. Yet, the present multi-form and multi-front war waged by Islamists has the potential of inflicting more suffering and destroying more lives than any before it. Ruthless Islamic forces are advancing rapidly in their conquests while those of freedom are acquiescing and retreating. Before long, Islamism is poised to achieve its Allah-mandated goal of cleansing the earth of all non-Muslims. Any and all means and weapons are to be enlisted in the service of this final holy war that aims to establish the Islamic Ummeh.

But Islam is a religion of peace and the great majority of Muslims are not party to any plans and actions of the radicals, so claim academic pundits, leftist journalists, and hired Islamic apologists. The incantation of these “authorities” is the lullaby that puts the people into a sleep of complacency. For an average free human busy with all manners of demands on his time and resources, would hardly want to worry about the threat of Islamism when those he believes are “in the know” emphatically claim that there is nothing to worry about. Some of these advocates of Islam go further by accusing those who sound the alarm as racist, bigot, hatemonger and much more.

But where are all the peace-loving moderate Muslims that supposedly are in great majority? The Muslims who are neither jihadists themselves, nor do they support them? I and others, time and again, have been calling upon them to stand up and show the world that they oppose the fanatical Islamists. It is small comfort even if the vast majority of Muslims are not fanatic radicals, when they do nothing to demonstrate their position. It is instructive to recall that it is invariably a minority, and more often than not a very small minority, that launches a campaign of death and destruction.

Perhaps it is wishful thinking on the part of the non-Muslims to believe that one can be a Muslim moderate, given that Islam is radical at its very core. To be a moderate Muslim demands that the person explicitly renounce much of the violent, exclusionary, and radical teachings of the Quran. By so doing, the individual issues his own death warrant in Islamic countries, is condemned as apostate if he lives in a non-Islamic land and may even earn a fatwa on his head.

It is deadly, in any confrontation, to assess the adversary through one’s own mental template, because the two templates can be vastly different from each other. People in the West are accustomed in relativistic rather than absolutistic thinking. To Westerners, just about all matters range from black to white with an array of gray shades between the two poles. To Muslims, by contrast, nearly everything is in black and white and with virtually no shades of gray. The former type of thinking is typical of more mature minds, while the latter is that of young children and the less-enlightened.

This absolutist thinking is enshrined in the Quran itself. When the starting point for a Muslim is the explicit fanatical words of Allah in the Quran, then the faithful are left with no choice other than literally obeying its dictates or even taking it to the next level of fanaticism. Good Muslims, for instance, do not shake hands with women, even though the Quran does not explicitly forbid it. Although the Quran stipulates that men are rulers over women, good Muslim men take it upon themselves to rule women not much better than they treat their domesticated animals.

All extreme systems operate outside of the constraints of checks-and-balances and according to the principle of negative feedback loop. That is, once it starts, the extreme becomes more and more extreme until self-destructs and takes the larger system down with it. Cancer is a case in point. It begins with only a few cells. Left unchecked, the few cells continue expanding and stop only with the death of the host.

Fanatical Islam may indeed be a minority. Yet it is a deadly cancer that has metastasized throughout the body of the world. Urgent confrontation of this advancing disease is imperative to stave it off.

Dozens of Islamist shooting wars of lesser and greater bloodletting are presently raging in the world, aided and abetted by the “moderate Muslim” majority. The so called moderate Muslims, even if they exist, are complicit in the crimes of the radicals either by providing them with funds, logistics, and new recruits or by simply failing to actively confront and unequivocally renounce them.

As is the case with cancer cells, it is the malignant minority that is death-bearing.

In Germany of the 1930s, for instance, very few people were Nazis and most Germans dismissed them as a bunch of hot-headed fools. Before long, the hot-headed few cowed in the dismissive masses and as a result millions lost their lives.

The tentacles of the Islamist hydra have deeply penetrated the world. The Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood poses a clear threat in Egypt with its large block of representatives in the parliament, but also wages its deadly campaign through its hundreds of well-established and functioning branches all over the world.

The Wahabis finance thousands of madressehs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical footsoldiers for the Petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.

The end-of-the-world believers of the bomb-aspiring Iran’s Khomeinism are busy establishing the Shia hegemony in an arc extending from the Gulf of Oman to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Al Queda and dozens of its like-minded jihadists relentlessly carry their barbaric campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, the Philippines, the former Soviet Union republics, the Russian federation, Somalia, North Africa and parts of Europe, as well as other lands.

I keep hoping that the purported peace-loving moderate Muslims are indeed the great majority who would prove me right by demonstrating their peacefulness and moderation in action. Thus far, only a faint murmur of equivocation is all that I hear from these people.

Is “moderate Muslims” an illusion? The only viable alternative for peaceful people of Islamic background, therefore, is to leave the bondage of violent Islam altogether and join ranks with humanity’s free.

The selected puppet president Ahamadinejad boasts that Iran’s mullahs’ nuclear train has no reverse gear and lacks brakes. He should harbor no illusions. The non-Islamist masses of Iranians will not docilely submit to the mullahs’ maniacal plans. It is the unmatched force of freedom that has no reverse gear and it is the force fully capable and determined to bring the mullahs’ train to a screeching halt before it is armed with the Armageddon nuclear weapons they so doggedly pursue.

I'm glad this was

I'm glad this was released

I'm glad this was released and have had the chance to watch it. I can't say that it's the best short film I've ever seen, but it does make many good points. I didn't see this film as anti-Islam so much as anti-Islamist. Since Muslim extremists justify their barbarism from the Qur'an I believe the verses used in this film are legitimate points to raise.

This doesn't say much about the religion itself, after all the Bible has some hair-raising verses as well, but it does in how it's practiced by many. All in all though, I really don't care if anyone is offended. I'm offended by many Muslims who use their faith to justify this savagery, excuse it or simply ignore it. Silence by moderate muslim against killing Theo Van Gogh or other vile and barbaric action by the muslims extremist tantamounts to complicity. When was a last time moderate muslims protested the militant and extremist views of Islamic Republic in the U.S.????

Turn your religion into an evil ideology and you can expect a negative reaction. Those who are Muslim and do not believe as the Islamists do have the unfortunate responsibility to turn this around. It may seem unfair but frankly TFB. If Christians were doing likewise you'd better believe I'd be holding their feet to the fire. Yet unlike Islam, Christianity went through the Renaissance, Reformation, Counter-Reformation, Enlightenment, etc. It's time that Islam faces the same.

P.S: You might claim you're not a muslim, but your internalization of the Islamic teachings, you haven't shaken up in your psyche...

100 Afarin

I didn't think I had time to read it all... but once I started I couldn't stop reading your article.

very nicely written, reasonable thoughts expressed clearly, flowing conversational style that makes way too much sense!

thank you so much

IRANdokht