‘Fitna’ farce

I will probably be updating this post with responses from around the blogopshere.

So, Geert Wilders has finally released Fitna.

It’s a fairly standard Dhummi screed about Evil Muslims Taking Over. You’ve seen it all before if you use the internet and show any kind of interest in ‘Muslim news’ stories. Like Willow, I don’t see the point in writing reviews for it, especially when Wilders is one of those people who likes to prattle on about ‘Islamic fascism’.

Reviews you might want to read:
Ali Eteraz
Aziz Poonawalla
Leon in Amsterdam (via JD)
Amir Butler
Yusuf Smith

The Dutch government is distancing itself from the film and praised the response of Dutch Muslims, who are calling on other Muslims to leave Dutch citizens alone. FaithWorld takes a closer look at the Dutch Muslim response, contrasting it with the response of some Danish Muslims. The Economist suggests European Muslims will be the biggest ‘winners’ if things remain calm. The Slovenians, currently holding the EU presidency, also criticised the film. There are some protests in Pakistan (which has strong economic ties with the Netherlands). Iran and Indonesia have released official responses to the film. So too the UAE and OIC. Indonesia ha banned the film and Geert Wilders from entering the country. Malaysian Muslims would like a boycott of Dutch goods. Jordanian media organisations are looking at legal steps and have urged their government to review links with the Netherlands.

The leader of the now disbanded Al-Muhajiroun, Omar Bakri Mohammad, says the film resembles ‘jihadi’ propaganda videos.

Live Leak have pulled the film citing ‘credible threarts’. (It has been suggested bloggers put the movie on their blogs to test this claim.) One of the Danish cartoonists is threatening to sue Wilders over copyright infringement. The Dutch owner of a clip used by Wilders is also considering legal action. A Dutch Moroccan rapper is threatening a legal response if his picture is not removed from the film (good luck — the original film is now all over the internet). Dutch businesses have warned Wilders they may also sue if any Muslim countries go through with their threat to boycott Dutch goods.

Wikipedia criticised for ‘anti-Islamic’ article

An article about the Prophet Muhammad in the English-language Wikipedia has become the subject of an online protest in the last few weeks because of its representations of Muhammad, taken from medieval manuscripts.

In addition to numerous e-mail messages sent to Wikipedia.org, an online petition cites a prohibition in Islam on images of people.

The petition has more than 80,000 “signatures,” though many who submitted them to ThePetitionSite.com, remained anonymous.

“We have been noticing a lot more similar sounding, similar looking e-mails beginning mid-January,” said Jay Walsh, a spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco, which administers the various online encyclopedias in more than 250 languages.

A Frequently Asked Questions page explains the site’s polite but firm refusal to remove the images: “Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group.”

The notes left on the petition site come from all over the world. “It’s totally unacceptable to print the Prophet’s picture,” Saadia Bukhari from Pakistan wrote in a message. “It shows insensitivity towards Muslim feelings and should be removed immediately.”

Source.

Once again our government shows its contempt for democracy and the rule of law

A week is a long time in politics they say. Was it just last week we were discussing what the next target might be for an increasingly authoritarian government, now equipped with the most effective net censorship architecture in the world? It was. And just seven days on from the idea being mooted by Cif posters, the dark deed has come to pass; Brown’s government is now turning on filesharers.

The rhetoric matches Vernon Coaker’s original threats to ISPs with regard to their enforced “voluntary” adoption of Home Office website blacklists, but this time it’s Lord Triesman, minister for intellectual property, flexing his muscles. Like Coaker, Triesman is keen to avoid all that unnecessary democracy lark – debates, laws, committees etc – and would prefer ISPs to just do as they’re told, and block filesharing sites and networks. He didn’t go quite as far as the boy Cameron in comparing (pdf) the BitTorrent brigade to paedophiles, but there’s no question that whichever government we find ourselves under in the next few years, ISP level censorship of the net is set to be an everyday occurrence.

[...]

Now, this being, in theory, a democracy, we might look around for a democratic way of countering this, but what do we see? No laws to repeal; these are gentlemen’s agreements, enforced by people who are surely not gentlemen. No divergence among the parties even; with Cameron in opposition seeking to be tougher than Brown, and the Lib Dems keeping schtum. And even if some legislation was introduced to formalise these server blocks, can we trust parliament to examine it properly?

Source.