And nothing gets me in the mood to blog like the Dutch saying or doing inflammatory things about the Muslim world.
On Saturday, the video-hosting site LiveLeak posted, and then took down, and then posted Geert Wilders's new 17min film which portrays Islam as an inherently violent religion bent on taking over the world and destroying the Netherlands. LiveLeak's statement regarding their on-again-off-again-on-again hosting of the film reads:
On the 28th of March LiveLeak.com was left with no other choice but to remove the film "fitna" from our servers following serious threats to our staff and their families. Since that time we have worked constantly on upgrading all security measures thus offering better protection for our staff and families. With these measures in place we have decided to once more make this video live on our site. We will not be pressured into censoring material which is legal and within our rules. We apologise for the removal and the delay in getting it back, but when you run a website you don't consider that some people would be insecure enough to threaten our lives simply because they do not like the content of a video we neither produced nor endorsed but merely hosted.To me, the film is so utterly offensive and its problems so obvious--though less offensive and problematic than expected!--that in the end, it is just boring and unnecessarily gruesome (note the the film does contain numerous gratuitously violent images).
You can judge for yourself:
What I'm much more interested in is the response the film is getting. Al Jazeera English has had surprisingly little commentary on the film, and the only denouncement of the film they report came from Iran. Over at Harvard Law, the Middle East Strategy blog had some interesting predictions about the tumult (or "fitna," heyhey, Arabic puns!) likely to ensue from the release of the film. But there has been little sign of rioting and uproar across the Muslim world.
Perhaps Basra has kept the media busy, but it is also important to remember that the (first) Jyllands-Posten Danish cartoon incident did not flare up until February 2006, four months after the cartoons were first published (see this BBC article which has a helpful time-line midway down), and flared up again several times since.
Maybe things will be different this time around. Maybe state leaders in the Muslim world, rather than using the film as short-term political capital to incite pro-government (or at least anti-West) riots--thus vindicating the film's message--will use this as an opportunity to teach Westerners something real about Islam as a religion and a culture.
As Abdul Sabour Chahin, a professor at Cairo University and a significant religious leader told the Gulf News:
Perhaps Basra has kept the media busy, but it is also important to remember that the (first) Jyllands-Posten Danish cartoon incident did not flare up until February 2006, four months after the cartoons were first published (see this BBC article which has a helpful time-line midway down), and flared up again several times since.
Maybe things will be different this time around. Maybe state leaders in the Muslim world, rather than using the film as short-term political capital to incite pro-government (or at least anti-West) riots--thus vindicating the film's message--will use this as an opportunity to teach Westerners something real about Islam as a religion and a culture.
As Abdul Sabour Chahin, a professor at Cairo University and a significant religious leader told the Gulf News:
The West knows very little about Islam and its principles. So the best way to reverse the so-called Islamophobia is to enter into a dynamic dialogue with the West.My only complaint: no need for the "so-called," it's just plain, old-fashioned hate.
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