Intimidation and censorship are no answer to this inflammatory film

[West Maghreb Dialogue]

Intimidation and censorship are no answer to this inflammatory film

A Dutch politician's alarmist anti-Islam polemic needs to be taken
apart and calmly answered

* Timothy Garton Ash
* The Guardian,
* Thursday April 10 2008

At the time of this writing, the dissemination on the worldwide web of
the deliberately provocative anti-Islam film Fitna, made by the Dutch
populist MP Geert Wilders, has not provoked violent protest on the
scale of the Rushdie affair or the Danish cartoons. If things remain
this way, that is progress of a kind.

In the meantime, three questions need to be asked about the film,
which anyone can find by googling "wilders" and "fitna". The first is
"Should Mr Wilders be murdered for making it?" That's what some
demonstrators outside the Dutch embassy in Indonesia called for,
waving banners saying "Kill Geert Wilders". Theirs is an attitude that
the British writer Douglas Murray has sharply characterised as "say my
religion is peaceful or I will kill you". More seriously, even before
the movie was released, al-Qaida issued a fatwa calling Muslims
everywhere to assassinate Wilders, thus further increasing the threat
to a man who is already under 24-hour protection.

Now, that Wilders should not be murdered for making a film may seem so
obvious that it hardly needs saying. But it does need saying, again
and again; in truth, it's the first thing that needs to be said. For
one of the most deeply corrosive realities of our time is that not
just one but many people across the world are living under death
threats, in hiding or with round-the-clock security, simply because
they have said, drawn or done something that is alleged to "insult
Islam".

Too many Dutch and international leaders have leapt to deplore
Wilders' film without first excoriating those who threaten him with
death. Particularly egregious is a statement by the UN secretary
general, Ban Ki-moon, which, in explicitly condemning the film (but
not the death threats), actually says "the right of free expression is
not at stake here". That's a truly idiotic claim. Mr Ban has no right
to make it on our behalf.

The second question is whether Fitna should be banned by law, as the
ambassadors of 26 Islamic countries have recently urged the Dutch
government to do. Unlike the murder issue, I accept that this is a
matter for legitimate debate in a democracy, but my answer remains an
unequivocal "no". The film is inflammatory but not, I think, across
the line to incitement - and so far, the Dutch justice ministry seems
to agree. Wilders' own position here is ludicrously self-
contradictory. Last year, he called for the Qur'an to be banned "like
Mein Kampf". So he wants the holy book of 1.4 billion people to be
banned, but his own film to be seen by everyone. That's his idea of
free speech. Who does he think he is? The true prophet?

On the vital understanding that no one should be threatened with death
or injury for making or disseminating such a film, and that it should
be available for viewing by all consenting adults - if you don't want
to watch it you don't have to - the question then becomes: what should
we make of it and how should we react to it?

In case you haven't seen it, let me say in telegraphic summary that it
consists of a patchwork of selected bloodthirsty quotations from the
Qur'an, cross-cut with horrifying clips of antisemitic, anti-Christian
and anti-western jihadist extremists and terrorist attacks (the
terrible beheading of a hostage, the haunting telephone conversation
of someone trapped in the twin towers in New York, a banner saying
"Freedom go to Hell"), leading on to an alarmist presentation of
Muslim immigration to the Netherlands and Europe. It concludes with
statements such as "Islam seeks to destroy our Western civilisation"
and "Stop Islamisation", before fading out to the sounds of a ticking
bomb and thunder. So by implication it makes a three part equation:
Islam = terrorism = immigration.

Each of the three elements, the implicit "=" signs between them, and
the intentions behind the whole film all need to be unpicked. The
Dutch prime minister says "we believe it serves no purpose other than
to cause offence". That may do as a politician's formulaic
condemnation, but at least three other purposes are discernible: to
inflame debate on issues about which Wilders is passionate, even
fanatical, and that do deeply exercise a lot of Dutch people; to get
more of them to vote for his political party, which already has nine
of the 150 seats in Holland's lower house; and to garner worldwide
publicity for a thoroughly modern populist.

One possible response to the first element - quotations from the
Qur'an - has been suggested by the Jewish Dutch television producer
Harry de Winter, who says you can find sentences on violently abusive
of homosexuals, women and non-Jewish preachers in the Jewish Torah,
and that if the film had been made about Jews it would be antisemitic.
So we could respond, polemically, with a Wilders-style selection from
the Torah, or from the whole of the Old Testament. More soberly, one
would weigh the question how the peace-loving and the bellicose
passages in the Qur'an are balanced in current mainstream Muslim
interpretations of the Qur'an compared with, say, mainstream Christian
interpretations of the Bible; for with all these polyphonic mystery
books, the interpretation is everything.

The second element of Fitna is the least original, but makes the most
valid point. We cannot be reminded too often that there are takfiri
jihadist men of violence out there bent on killing us - including
their fellow Muslims - and destroying our freedoms in the name of
Islam. To say "this has nothing to do with Islam" is almost as stupid
as it is to say, with Wilders, "Islam is this". I believe Muslim men
and women of peace are called upon to address this question, even when
it is asked by a man like Wilders. "Muslims must think about the fear
generated by their religion," says Dutch deputy minister Ahmed
Aboutaleb, a Muslim.

The third part of the film, against Muslim immigration, is at once the
most poisonous and potentially the most effective. Wilders is a man
making a successful political career by saying what many Europeans
think. Last summer, as well as calling for the Qur'an to be banned, he
wrote "not one more Muslim immigrant should be let in" and "there
should not be even one more mosque". Here it is particularly for non-
Muslim Europeans to emphasise the self-evident fact that the vast
majority of Muslims want to live in peace, raise their kids, save some
money, obey the laws of the land, watch the football - and believe
that nothing in their religion prevents them from doing so.

This is how a mature free society responds to such a film. Not by
appeasement of murderers, not by censorship, and not simply by blanket
condemnation. Let the majority ignore it - as they seem to have done
so far, and heaven knows there are better things to do with your time
- and let a minority of those interested engage with it (for my sins,
I've watched it three times), take it apart, argue with it, reveal its
game, refute the refutable and accept the irrefutable, separating
those specks of truth from the fat turds of falsehood.

timothygartonash.com
Timothy Garton Ash