southchild

UPDATE 2: Mark Steyn chimes in.

UPDATE: LiveLeak has pulled Fitna from its servers after receiving “very serious” threats. Hot Air and Michelle Malkin have more. LiveLeak.com has also released a statement.

As LiveLeak says, “this is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net.”

Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, Liveleak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers.

This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else.

Stay tuned.

***

Even as Geert Wilder movie, Fitna, is just released, the adherents to the religion of perpetual outrage are already exploding. Diana West has the details in this essay, Pre-emptive rage:

Any day now, a short film connecting the Koran to Islamic violence is expected to be released.

The film is by Geert Wilders, a Dutch member of parliament who wants to reverse the Islamization of Europe and believes the Koran should be banned along with Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” for inciting hatred and violence. The film is called “Fitna,” Arabic for upheaval. And just the thought of “Fitna” has Europe in upheaval, cowering before widely anticipated Islamic outrage expected to range from diplomatic huff, to economic boycott, to rioting, even bloodshed, over this still unseen ten-minute film.

Such mass psychosis has erupted before — Satanic Verses Rage, Koran Rage, Cartoon Rage, Pope Rage, even Teddy Bear Rage. But never has an Islamic “rage” begun to build without actual cause. For the first time, we are seeing rage preparations and precautions before “offense” has been given or taken. …

Thus, as reported by Dutch blogger Klein Verzet, the grand mufti of Syria, Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun, admonishes the European Parliament about potential film-related “riots, bloodshed and violence” for which “Wilders will be responsible.” And thus Dutch Prime Minister Jan Balkenende says exactly the same thing. …

Such thinking reveals a disconnect not just from reality but from morality. Killers, not a movie, kill people, and killers are duly responsible. But there’s more to consider here: the unified effort of Muslims and Europeans to censor a critique of Islam for being a critique of Islam — something not tolerated under Islam.

From EU to NATO officials, from the head of France to (sadly) the head of Denmark, the official European response to “Fitna” is less in line with Western traditions of free speech than with the censorship of Islamic law. Indeed, Dutch officials couldn’t find a Dutch law under which to ban “Fitna,” and they tried. The pressure to silence “Fitna,” however, reveals the extent to which Islamic law has already eroded core conceptions of Western liberty.

Here’s the movie:

Douglas Murray has this review at CentreRight.

It isn’t for the faint-hearted: footage includes some of the most barbaric acts committed by the jihadists. But there’s no burning of the Koran or ripping up of the Koran, or any of the other allegedly ‘shocking’ things which the Dutch government and others revealingly predicted would be in the film. The film simply shows what the Koran says and then shows footage of certain Muslims carrying out those words to the letter. To this extent, anything which people find shocking in the film should be put at the doors of Mohammed and certain of his followers, not Wilders.

Speaking to various media about this today, it’s interesting that the first sense of shock is that the footage which Wilders includes is so bloody. Of course Wilders didn’t create this footage – the jihadis did. But it raises an interesting question about the mainstream media. In the last seven years the MSM has gone out of its way to spare the public from seeing the most barbarous acts of our enemies. As we discovered when the BBC infamously pixellated the cartoons two years ago, even Danish drawings have been deemed too upsetting to broadcast of late. The footage in Wilders’ film of the victims of jihad is therefore especially sobering. It isn’t pleasant viewing, but then jihad isn’t pleasant viewing, and if this is what it takes to alert people to the savagery of the threat we all face, Muslims included, then there it is.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 2:59 pm and is filed under General, islamic fascism, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.