Keywords: English, Fitna, Geert Wilders, freedom of expression, hate speech, visual, resources for all, Dutch, ethnicity, religion, social diversity models, human rights
Fitna is a 2008 short film by Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. Approximately 17 minutes in length, the film shows selected excerpts from Suras of the Qur’an, interspersed with media clips and newspaper clippings showing or describing acts of violence and/or hatred by Muslims. The film wishes to demonstrate that the Qur’an motivates its followers to hate all who violate the Islamic teachings. Consequently, the film argues, Islam encourages, among others, acts of terrorism, antisemitism, violence against women and homosexuals, and Islamic universalism. A large part of the film deals with the influence of Islam on the Netherlands. The film’s title “fitna” is used to describe “disagreement and division among people” or a “test of faith in times of trial”.Wilders, a prominent critic of Islam, described the film as “a call to shake off the creeping tyranny of Islamization“. On March 27, 2008, Fitna was released to the Internet on the video sharing website Liveleak in Dutch and English versions. The following day, Liveleak removed the film from their servers, citing serious threats to their staff. On March 30, Fitna was restored on Liveleak following a security upgrade, only to be removed again shortly afterwards by Wilders himself because of copyright violations. A second edition was released later.
www.liveleak.com/view?i=216_1207467783
