R. Bennett Furlow

Fitna, which means “discord” in Arabic, is the title of a short film by Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. Wilders is an outspoken critic of Islam and of Muslim immigration to the Netherlands. This film was inspired by the murder of film maker Theo van Gogh and the Danish cartoons controversy.

The film is an attempt to show how Islam is inherently violent, and that the Qur’an advocates murder, terrorism and the subjugation of women. Fitna is divided into sections, each of which begins with a quote from a sura. The images that follow are meant as evidence of Islam’s radically violent nature. Images in the film include planes hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11, pictures from the London and Madrid bombings and U.S. soldiers being dragged through the streets of Somalia, inter-spliced with speeches from Imams advocating violent acts against the enemies of Islam as well as Jews. The film addresses the Netherlands specifically by showing images of the Muhammad cartoons and newspaper headlines about the death of Theo van Gogh and death threats against Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wilders himself. Finally the film offers a glimpse of the future under Islam or as Wilders puts it “under the spell of Islam.” This includes women in burqas, homosexuals being rounded up and executed, children covered in blood, and female circumcision. Wilders compares Islam to Nazism and claims that “Islam…seeks to destroy our Western civilization.”

Wilders’ film is clearly sensationalistic. Much like the Danish cartoons and Theo van Gogh’s film Submission, Fitna is designed to create controversy. The splicing together of sound bites and brief video clips is far from an intellectually serious way of criticizing a religion or any group for that matter. But clearly engaging in a true discussion about Islam and its role in the world or in the Netherlands specifically is not Wilders goal. Instead he is interested in nothing more than the attention that comes from a film such as this.

Additionally, Wilders makes blanket statements about Islam as a whole. He sees Islam itself as the threat, not any one particular aspect of the religion.

The idea of cherry-picking the most inflammatory statements and showing them without any context is disingenuous to say the least. However, it appears as if he has taken images of the Shi’a festival of Ashura, which commemorates the martyrdom of Husayn, and uses those images to express the threat of Islam with regard to children. This is simply intellectually dishonest. Furthermore this method of cherry-picking clips in order to portray Islam in a negative light could be used to portray any religious, ethnic, or political group negatively.

Engaging Muslims in a serious debate about perceived controversial aspects of their religious doctrine or their role in Danish society is a perfectly acceptable and even laudable enterprise. Fitna is not that. This film has the stench of an egomaniacal agenda all over it. Wilders is appealing to the minority who already share his views, while getting worldwide attention. At my most cynical, I think it is possible that Wilders intended for this film to actually produce violence on behalf of Muslims. If it had, he could easily make the claim that he was right and Muslims are opposed to basic freedoms such as freedom of expression. Thankfully, Muslims did not take the bait and have chosen instead to simply speak out against the film or ignore it all together.

There is a reason that I keep posting news articles about Africa. In short, it has to do with my current studies and focus of my doctoral work. I will provide a longer explanation when I have time but for now just know there is a method to my madness.

Also a big thanks to the Bry-Cat for redesigning my site. Were it not for him this would just be a blank white page.

From the BBC:

Three missiles hit Dhoble town early on Monday, reportedly killing four people and wounding 20.

People are fleeing the town, fearing more strikes. Residents say planes could still be seen flying overhead on Monday morning.

Islamist insurgents seized the town last week and reports said a leader, Hassan Turki, had been in the area.

Mr Turki is on the US list of “financers of terrorism”.

US Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman refused to give the identity of the target, whether the strike had achieved its goal or how the strike had been carried out.

The planes keep flying over us. They are so low that we’re deafened by their engines

Dhoble resident

A US military official, who refused to be named, told the AFP news agency that at least one cruise missile had been fired.

Meanwhile, Islamists have attacked the town of Bur Hakaba, leaving the local police chief and four others dead.

The BBC’s Mohammed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu says the Islamists have adopted a new strategy of launching attacks outside the capital.

‘Hideouts’

Dhoble resident Fatuma Abdullahi told the BBC they were woken up by “a loud and big bang”.

“When we came out we found our neighbour’s house completely obliterated as if no house existed here,” he said.

Another resident said: “Right now - in full daylight - the planes keep flying over us. They are so low that we’re deafened by their engines.”

“We are poor civilians living in a simple town - what have we done to deserve this bombing?”

Local official Ali Hussein told the BBC that many people were fleeing the town.

The border with Kenya has been closed for the past year.

Islamist spokesman Sheikh Mukhtar Robow said the US was trying to hit Islamist hideouts in the area.

“The Americans bombed the town and hit civilian targets, thinking that they were Islamist hideouts. They used an AC-130 plane,” he told the AFP news agency.

Regrouping

The US bombed the area a year ago and residents said the same plane was again involved.

There have been reports that the Islamists have been regrouping in the area around Dhoble in recent weeks.

Somalia is the world’s worst place for children, the UN says

They were ousted from the capital, Mogadishu in December 2006 by government forces, backed up by Ethiopia, with some intelligence from the US.

Dhoble was the last town they held.

The US has an anti-terror task force based in neighbouring Djibouti.

The US accused the Somali Islamists of harbouring those responsible for the 1998 attacks on its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The Islamists denied this, as well as reports they had links to al-Qaeda.

Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991.

Last month, a senior UN official told the BBC that Somalia was the worst place in the world for children.

Ross Douthat has an interesting article in this months The Atlantic entitled Crises of Faith. Primarily the article discusses the slight rise in secularism in the U.S. while comparing it to the increase of religion in the public square in Europe. There is one point he makes that echoes something I have been thinking about for some time. To quote Douthat:

The secularism that has come of age in the Bush era, by contrast, seems to have a greater mass appeal. What’s more, where the earlier secularism tended to cultivate a self-conscious neutrality toward religion, the new secularism is defined by an unabashed hostility toward traditional faith—or at least toward any attempt to mix such faith with politics.

In a paper in the American Sociological Review, Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer announced the startling fact that the percentage of Americans who said they had “no religious preference” had doubled in less than 10 years, rising from 7 percent to 14 percent of the population. This unexpected spike wasn’t the result of growing atheism, Hout and Fischer argued; rather, more Americans were distancing themselves from organized religion as “a symbolic statement” against the religious right.

It appears that religion has become a dirty word and, in large part, this is due to the Bush administration and its policies. So many people are angry with the president and link him to religion that peoples negative feelings toward him are rubbing off on faith in general. I have no problem with secularism. I also have no problem with faith. I actually see most religions as generally positive ( yes I am aware that religion can be used for any number of evil purposes as well, I just happen to feel there is more good to come from religion than bad).

My point is that it is truly unfortunate that Bush is such a polarizing figure and that the religious right in America is so unaccepting of others that they have tainted the idea of faith as a whole.

Jerry Falwell died. To the few of you who regularly read my little blog here, it will come as no surprise that I was not a big fan Mr. Falwell. Rather than list any number of quotes handpicked to illustrate my views and make him look bad, I want to instead mention his contributions to the American religious landscape.

Falwell was at best a mediocre theologian. He rarely discussed issues of poverty and the poor, something that is fundamental to the Christian faith and teachings. He actually disregarded global warming and therefore was opposed to the concept that Christians should play an active role in conservation and act as stewards of the earth. He instead focused on essentially two political issues: abortion and homosexuality.

Falwell’s contribution was to bring evangelicals into the public square. He was more a politician that theologian. He courted politicians who he felt could further his political agenda. I am not opposed to religion playing a place in politics. One role of a religious leader is to inform and shape the moral views of their community. Falwell was, in my opinion, well within his rights to do and say the things that he did, as offensive as they may have been to me personally. My issue with him was he let his personally held political ideology inform his theology rather than vice versa. If a religious leader is going to use religious texts and theory to form a political opinion then that opinion needs to come from solid, good theology. Falwell did not do that. He was a practitioner of pick-and-choose theology, ignoring an abundance of text and Christian thought in order to further his political ideology. That is, at best, disingenuous.

It is a shame that whenever a news organization needs a “Christian opinion” on a given issue people such as Falwell, Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed are called on. These people are political operatives, not great theological thinkers. I hope people realize that Christianity is made up of more than this.

The two biggest news stories of the past week have been the incredibly stupid “controversy” regarding Don Imus and the tragic school shooting at Virginia Tech. I did not intend to write about either of them, mainly because I figured I had nothing to add. The Imus thing was hyped-up, manufactured crap and the shooting was horrible. Somehow I doubted anyone needed me to tell them that so I wasn’t going to.

But listening to the news the past couple of days I realized there is another issue that is underlying both the Imus and Virginia Tech stories. Censorship. Or to be more precise, self-censorship.

In order to drag what should have been a one day story out over an entire week, news organizations were forced to bring on pundits to debate the Imus flap. The thing is the debates really had very little to do with Imus or his stupid comment. They turned into discussions over who gets to say what. One argument raised was why don’t we (meaning society I guess) hold rappers to the same standards that we hold 67 year-old shock jocks? Is it acceptable to hold different people to different standards? If so then what Imus said was not the issue, but the fact that it was Imus who said it that was the problem.

Jump ahead a week. NBC recieves a package from Cho Seung-hui, the shooter responsible for the massacre at Virginia Tech. The package contains a video, some photos and a manifesto of sorts. NBC decides to air the footage and other news outlets do the same. Should they have done so? Again the arguments. By making it public are we giving him the attention and notriety that he seeks while at the same time being insensitive to the family and friends of the victims? On the other hand, is their something to be learned from watching these videos that might help the common man to identify like-minded individuals and possibly prevent this type of event from happening again? Both are sound and reasonable arguments.

Irving Kristol, the godfather of neoconservatism, once said “If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship”. Kristol is, of course, wrong. With censorship you don’t get Richard Pryor or Lenny Bruce. While Don Imus is nowhere near Pryor or Bruce, there is something to be said for trying to push the limits.

I also support responsible journalism. Sensationalism and titallation get nowhere with me. Given proper context the video of Cho Seung-hui can be shown in a manner that could enlighten people as to his state of mind. If done for ratings, for “gotcha journalism” purposes then it is a disgrace. I am not an absolutist. Different situations requrie different responses. There is not one standard for all.