Geert Wilders Arrested At Heathrow Airport

What a tragic day for freedom of speech as the West plunges further into dhimmitude!



Read the story at Dinah Lord's web site.

HERE is Geert Wilders's English language web site.

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The U.N. Fit over Fitna

I'm in too much physical pain to post much right now. Nevertheless, I'm posting today because commenter Vlad left an update about further objections to the film Fitna.
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The United Nations has taken a position against Geert Wilders, despite a recent court ruling in Wilders's favor.

From this source:

Muslim countries call for action on Wilders

Wednesday 16 April 2008

Muslim members of the human rights commission of the United Nations want the Netherlands to take steps against Geert Wilders and his anti-Koran film Fitna, reports Trouw on Wednesday.

The comments came during a two-week meeting of the commission in which countries are being judged on their human rights.

Junior justice minister Nebahat Albayrak, who is part of the Dutch delegation, said the public prosecution department is looking into whether the film broke any laws.

Egypt had harsh words for the Dutch judge who said that as an MP Wilders had the right to criticise radical Islam and the Koran and that he was not inciting racial hatred. The judge's comments showed a lack of feeling for the duties and jurisprudence on human rights, the Egyptian delegate said.

The commission plans to hold three meetings each year until all 192 UN member countries have been judged on their human rights. The Netherlands is in the first batch of 16 countries.

What other countries are in "the first batch"?

Don't Fitna's "insults" pale in comparison to Islamic misogyny, female genital mutilation, the stonings of adulterers (whether or not adultery actually occurred), beheadings, the selling of children into arranged marriages, the apparent necessity of an eight-year-old girl's seeking a divorce in Yemen?

The United Nations Human Rights Commission has a lot more wrongs to address than some 15-minute film released on the Internet and nearly ignored by the mainstream media.

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Freedom Of Speech Upheld For Geert Wilders

From this source, on April 7, 2008:

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - A Dutch lawmaker who sparked protests across the Muslim world with a film criticizing the Quran is entitled to express his anti-Islamic views, a court ruled Monday, rejecting a request to muzzle him.

The court ruled that the views expressed by right-wing legislator Geert Wilders did not exceed the legal boundaries against inciting hatred or violence.

The Netherlands Islamic Federation withdrew its petition to ban Wilders' film "Fitna" after it appeared on the Internet March 27, the day before the case was heard in a heavily guarded courtroom. The movie, linking terror attacks by Muslim extremists with texts from Islam's holy book, triggered angry street protests in Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, and calls in other countries to boycott Dutch goods.

But the federation still asked the Hague District Court to order Wilders to stop making statements "in writing, on film or spoken" that are deemed insulting to Muslims, and to apologize for statements he has made repeatedly in the past. Wilders has called the Quran a fascist book and compared it to Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

In a written judgment published Monday, the court said Wilders' right to free speech and role as a politician allow him to voice his criticisms of radical Islam and the Quran.

As a lawmaker, Wilders "must be able to — sometimes in sharp terms — express his opinions," the judgment said. "In this context, it cannot be said that (Wilders') statements — even though provocative — are an incitement to hate or violence against Muslims."...

Caroline Webb, in this article in the Middle East Times, has posed this list of questions which Fitna: The Movie raised in her mind:

1) Should Geert Wilders be living under a death threat for speaking up about the problem of death threats and actual murders being committed on a large-scale in the name of Islam?

2) Should Web hosting companies (and all other media companies) be threatened to the point that was done with Live Leak, and which caused Network Solutions to deny the film a space on its servers?

3) Should Muslim leaders be doing more to condemn the practice of death threats, suicide bombings everywhere in the world, murders on the streets of Europe such as that of Theo van Gogh?

4) Should Muslims in Europe be doing more to betray those who are betraying Islam and hand over to the police authorities rabid clerics and others who are fomenting hatred and zeal for inflicting more suffering on Western society – and who use the Koran to incite their audience?

In my view, those questions are the important subtext of Fitna: The Movie.

Caroline Webb goes on to say in her reflections on the film:

These are the questions that I want to see more discussion of and more action on. Even the photograph in the online article about "Fitna" in the Middle East Times, showing an effigy of Wilders being burnt, indicates the double standards at work. Who is speaking to the crowd working itself into a frenzy of hatred and violence, and is able to say to them that this behavior is exactly what "Fitna" is critiquing? Where is the leadership leading people away from their worst and weakest and most destructive side towards something better?

"Fitna" may be criticized for appearing to tar all Muslims with the same brush and that certainly does make it weak. I don't agree with that presentation, as it is grossly unfair. But I think its goal is to raise the question of internal self-regulation of extremism. It is holding up a mirror, composed of real footage from recent years, and asking hard questions about theology and morality in today's necessarily pluralistic world.

Instead of asking the hard questions, however, Western leaders and the mainstream media have done their best to ignore Fitna: The Movie, much in the manner of the government and the media in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a futuristic novel about a dystopia in which censorship became the norm because the people simply did not want to face reality, compose analytical thoughts, or find solutions; instead, they wanted to be happy in their ignorance.

It's easier, after all, in the Twenty-first Century not to think too much about the Islamic threat.

[END OF THIS POSTING]

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Attempts To Ban Fitna The Movie

Transcript from this link:

Islamic leaders in the Netherlands will ask a court later today to ban a film which accuses the Koran of inciting violence. Dutch MP Geert Wilders launched his film on the internet after local distributors refused to release it. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende added his criticism of the film, saying it was offensive to Muslims.

"The film shows images of violent acts, and holds Islam and the Koran responsible for them. The government condemns such acts and those who commit them. The film equates Islam with violence, and we reject this interpretation. The vast majority of Muslims reject extremism and violence. In fact the victims are often also Muslims."

The film is called "Fitna", a Koranic term sometimes translated as "strife."

It intersperses shots of the 9/11 attacks in New York City, and other bombings blamed on Islamic radicals, with quotations from the Koran.

There have already been widespread protests against the film, and the governments of Pakistan and Iran have made their displeasure very clear.

NATO fears an explosion of Muslim anger could threaten the security of foreign forces in Afghanistan, which include some 1,600 Dutch troops.

Carl in Jerusalem said the following at his post, where I found the above video:

First of all, as far as I know, LiveLeak is housed on servers in the US or UK. How does anyone think a Dutch court is going to order a server in the US or UK to take it down? They might be able to order a UK server to take it down because of the EU, but I doubt most US-based servers would listen. Then again, given that Network Solutions declined to run the film and took down Wilders' site, I suppose anything is possible.

More important, at this point, I am sure the film has been downloaded to dozens, if not hundreds of computers throughout the world. While I'm not much of techie, there are many other bloggers who are techies, and I am sure they would continue to host the movie. And no Dutch court can stop them.

However, we also have this in yesterday's Washington Post, apparently before the release of Fitna: The Movie:

The top U.N. rights body on Thursday passed a resolution proposed by Islamic countries saying it is deeply concerned about the defamation of religions and urging governments to prohibit it.

[...]

The document, which was put forward by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, "expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations."

[...]

The resolution "urges states to take actions to prohibit the dissemination ... of racist and xenophobic ideas" and material that would incite to religious hatred. It also urges states to adopt laws that would protect against hatred and discrimination stemming from religious defamation.

Also, this appeared at Reuters this morning:

It ["Fitna: The Movie"] starts and finishes with a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb under his turban, originally published in Danish newspapers, accompanied by the sound of ticking.

Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who drew the image, said he planned to take legal action on Friday to have it removed from the film, saying it was taken out of context.

"(The cartoon) is aimed at the fanatical terrorists that use interpretations of Islam and the Koran as their spiritual dynamite," he told Danish news agency Ritzau on Thursday....

But take heart, infidels. Read this posting at Infidel Bloggers Alliance. Another film, "The Life of Mohammed," is supposed to be released on April 20. Of course, the objections have already begun.

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Fitna: The Movie (UPDATED!)

[Hat-tip to Mark Alexander, who notified me of the film's release]



UPDATE: LiveLeak removed the video on Friday, March 28, 2008, due to threats (and now restored it as of March 31, 2008).

If LiveLeak caves again, try THIS LINK or THIS LINK.


Below is Fitna, from Common Sense Against Islam:



Additional information from Sons of Apes and Pigs:

THE HAGUE (AFP)

Dutch MP Geert Wilders has posted his anti-Islamic film, which has sparked wide condemnation and fears of a backlash, on the Internet on Thursday.

The first minutes of the 15-minute movie show a Koran being opened and the text of a sura from Islam's holiest tome, which it translated from Arabic as imploring the faithful to "terrorize the enemies of Allah".

They were then followed by images of airplanes flying into the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, with soundbits from phone calls to the emergency services on that day.

The film continues with grizzly images of bloodstained bodies in the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings in March 2004 in which 191 people were killed.

Despite pressure from The Hague not to release the movie, Wilders pushed ahead.

Dutch officials fear a repeat of violent protests that erupted when European newspapers printed cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH)

In comments to the Netherlands' domestic ANP news agency Thursday, Wilders, 44, said he felt "Fitna" is "a decent film".

He added that he can understand that Muslims could be upset about the film, but stressed: "It remains widely within the framework of the law".

"My film was not made to provoke violence," he said, adding that he hoped there would not be riots now that he had posted the film.

The movie includes images of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh who was killed in 2004 by a Muslim radical for also making a film critical of Islam.

After nearly 10 minutes of selected Quranic verses followed by gruesome images of attacks, beheadings, beatings, and speeches by unidentified Muslim clerics condemning infidels, Wilders turns to the situation in the Netherlands.

The film shows statistics of the growing Muslim population in the Netherlands and shows images of female genital mutilation, a hanging of suspected gay men, beheadings and bloodied children, all following the words: "The Netherlands in future?”

The film ends with someone leafing through the Koran, and a tearing sound is heard.

"The sound you heard was from a page (being torn out) of the phone book. It is not up to me, but up to the Muslims themselves to tear the spiteful verses from the Koran," says a text that appears on the screen.

"Stop Islamisation, Defend our freedom," the film concludes.

Web site for Fitna: The Movie

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The Silencing Of Voices Continues

I didn't play to post anything on this Easter Sunday. But then I saw this posting by Pastorius at Infidel Bloggers Alliance:

Geert Wilders new film is being attacked as a hate crime by anonymous critics who have convinced his webhost, Network Solutions, to take the site down before the film has even been aired.

I guess he is guilty of "Pre-Crime."

Go read the story over at KleinVerzet.

Remember this; religion, business, and government are institutions of power in society. As such, they MUST be criticized.

If we are not allowed to criticize a seminal center of power like religion, then we are left helpless when religion becomes fascistic.

This is about more than Islam, or Wilders movie. This is our Freedom.

If Network Solutions will not play by the rules of Western Civilization, then Network Solutions should be taken down.

If you would like to contact Network Soltutions, click on this link.

Islam mustn't be disrespected, mustn't be criticized, mustn't be interfered with — no matter how much abiding by the rules of censoring Muslims and Islamophiles violates the freedoms which the West claims to hold dear.

Look here, Western Civilization, you're being threatened. Make a stand, or else fade into dhimmitudinal oblivion.

2008: The Year of Silencing Voices

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