Much hype about nothing as Fitna hits the virtual world

The http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7d9_12066- 24103 link was the gateway to Fitna, the film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, but now it has an official statement explaining the removal of the online film, blaming the British media as one of the factors.

While watching the film before its removal from the website, I kept waiting for the “substance” that will provide judgement for all the media frenzy plus strong reactions from political leaders to a move from one of their own creed.

“Fitna,” meaning “strife” is nothing but a 15- minute assorted montage of a parochial politician bent upon serving a stale dish of stolen works of journalists and photo-journalists sprinkled with verses from the Koran, which is sacred to millions of Muslims.

Being a Christian myself, I can vouch for many verses from the Bible, which can be as vicious as ones quoted in the short “assortment.” I refuse to call it a film. I actually felt cheated as having gotten the promise of a “film,” and all those statements from prime ministers and presidents with a heightened security alert and the finale: just 15 minutes of sick stolen works.

Just to give an example: Imagine stills of Muslim demonstrations showing people with “God bless Hitler” placards. There is a lack of historical factual statement here because it’s a known fact that when Jews were being persecuted in Europe, they were living safely in Muslim countries where they were free to practice their faith.

Add to that the scrolling messages at the end of the film reading; “The government insists that you respect Islam, but Islam has no respect for you ... Nazism was defeated in Europe ... Communism was defeated in Europe. Now the Islamic ideology has to be defeated ... Stop Islamisation. Defend our freedom.”

And on top of it all, the clipping of the little Palestinian girl was nothing but simply straight out of a sick mind as one could see she’s completely indoctrinated with hatred and she spoke at that age without even understanding what hate means as love is the emotion that comes naturally to children that age.

Even the dumbest person in the world knows that every Muslim is not a terrorist, a jihad supporter, as not all Christians can be labeled crusaders. Actually, I can imagine Osama bin Laden laughing his head (or turban) off watching this film because Wilders generated a media hype and failed to live up to it while highlighting al-Qaeda propaganda that to be a good Muslim one needs to be a believer in terror tactics.

Result: in the future, even if you do have a vicious product to generate hatred between communities, there won’t be many buyers at projected value and people won’t flock to the Internet to check it out.

Another by-product came free: Wilders got some more cheap notoriety (not popularity) reinforcing the notion that manipulation and dishonesty prevails in the different strata of politics and among politicians.

Moreover, I am happy that Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who drew the original Prophet Mohammed cartoons, is pushing for legal action as he felt that the cartoons were taken out of context.

Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch Prime Minister aptly rejected it all with a statement on the Dutch Television saying that “the film equates Islam with violence. We reject this interpretation. The vast majority of Muslims reject extremism and violence.”

Final word: Fitna, “the film” can still be seen at Google Video at http://video.google.com- /videoplay?docid=3369102968312745410