I don't understand what the topic of the debate would be:

Resolved, adherents to the tenents of Islam are prone to terrorism due to passages in the Koran?

It would be equally simple to create a film of so-called Christians who feel that assassinating doctors or blowing up health clinics is justified by their holy text and an equally unjust broad-brush.

I have little regard for organised religion, but the fear and paranoia of Muslims being displayed by a significant portion of the European population is disturbing.

There are people on both sides of this who are stirring the pot. I do not think that most muslims are seeking Jihad, however some are. I don't know enough about it. It is an error to put all muslims into one group, there are many different sects with different views, some benign, some not so.

That's a surprise...

Hate all Muslims...

Hate all Jews...

Hate all Slavs...

Hate all non-Christians...

Hate all non-Whites...

Thin end of the wedge, but since Freedom of speech is all a right, let's all promote him and support his right to preach hatred - like there isn't already enough hatred in the world.

It's only the European population that's fearful and paranoid of Muslims? Who, may I ask, started this 'war on terror' and took Europe on a ride with it? Ahhh yes... that other half in our 'special relationship'.

You'll find that many Europeans shrug their shoulders at the film and say "So? It's not like the Christians and Jews are any different?"

Wilders is trying to make sh*t stick where it doesn't... he's a rabble rouser, nothing more.

whom, being kicked out of the Dutch Conservatives for extreme right wing views decided to 'go it alone'. He is a moderately educated, populist politician trying to tap into the fear and paranoia of the uneducated and ignorant.

I am embarrassed and ashamed that he chooses to abuse the right to freedom of speech in order to polarise two groups of society and further his irrational, almost psychotic cause. He wants to demonise and subsequently ban a minority group, using the popular support of largely uninformed, low-income demographics.

Hmmmnn....where have we seen this before?

Wow that's a long title.

First and foremost I'm not a support of Wilders. However, one of the points he attempts to make is the integration of immigrants into host countries and his stand point that they should at least make an effort to uphold the traditions and beliefs of the country they intend to reside in. It is not the intention that people change religion.

If my wife goes to a middle eastern country, she can expect to be spat on, if she lets her shoulders show, or knees, or walks in public openly showing "intimate acts" such as holding hands. If we as foreigners can change our behaviour so as not to offend when we visit other countries, why is it so difficult to then expect the same from visitors to our country?

As a further note, I am not Dutch, I'm English but I live here now. I've taken the time to learn the language, follow the rules and pay tax. I am however constantly baffled by the number of foreigners living here who do NONE of the above, and then preach about freedom of their religious beliefs!

I take it he will debate how all the religions are a breeding ground for ignorance and discrimination on a grand scale.

How the group moral standard as promoted in religions is absolving people from having personal moral standards.

How religion had its hands in every major conflict either directly involved or used as an excuse since the beginning of history.

Well either that or i forgot to take my medication today...

Eeh, that was me.

I withdraw my right to anonymity, I am ready to stand up and be counted on this one.

You obviously haven't watched the interview he gave on television some time back (which btw is on liveleak) where he states that no he doesn't think all muslims are evil he just thinks that some of them are. This movie that everyone is getting so worked up over is merely a collage of footage and text of things already widely available. He has merely put these together so that we have a more complete picture of things. Granted putting all together "under one roof" is like drinking lemon juice from concentrate but it gets the point across. *NEWSFLASH TO ALL LIBERAL FUZZY WUZZIES! NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO BE YOUR FRIEND!*

History lesson: Hitler came to power. Hitler broke Versaills treaty. Europe gave in to his demands. Hitler became a bully. Europe said "oops" and spent the better part of 6 years and a lot of lives to fix their mistake. Does anyone else see a similar situation beginning to play out now?

@Sean Aaron

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "so-called Christians", because you gotta wonder if they aren't just using religion as a coverup. Many people say they belong to a religion out of convinience, not because they actually believe it. I make no bones about the fact that I am a Christian, it doesn't make me perfect, it just means I have a different worldview from most of you.

@ all Anonymous Cowards

If you feel the need to bash someone at least have the courage to put your names to it. And if you haven't watched the interview and the movie shut up and watch them before you comment.

cheers all!

Does Dutch copyright law not have the concept of "fair dealing" ?

What? like "You want fries with the Big Mac?"

We're almost a foreign country anyway.

We don't seem to own any of the old public stuff like energy supply or water.

We've sold most of the companies to venture groups and the like.

ISTR in the past we've hated the Dutch, French, Spanish, Germans, Turks, Indians. Oh and Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Moors,

Hey, you can't say we're not inclusive.

I think Wilders has done a justice (albeit at his own personal risk from suing and threats), to put across a point of view that many of us would be fearful of doing in public, but believe in private.

(Just read the comments on the previous Wilders article).

Im sure the muslim community will NOT be able to make an equivallent video about athiests where they have a large stockpile of bomb footage, beheadings, and calls for deaths, to use to make a point.

And that IS the point here.

On a related note here is another perfect example of why any religion is the cancer that hurts society...

http://www.yahoo.com/s/844281

With his list of copyright violations, I bet he forgot to pay royalties on any background music as well. I'm surprised the R.I.Ass of A. aren't in there suing him as well. Who cares if his violation is outside of the USA, it hasn't stopped them before.

My jackets the one with the "get out of jail free" card in the pocket.

There are ways to make legitimate protests and Wilders has really f'd up even his own pathetic attempt.

We're not prejudiced, we hate everyone...

Mines the one with a picture of Mohammed on the back.

Yeah, thats the point. We keep talking about freedom, freedom of speech, thinking and bla bla. Freedom is not doing what you want if you are able to, because for example you are able to kill other people and you may want to do that for a reason or another, but you don't do that. If i am ugly and you think that i am ugly, you are free to think like that, but you are not free to say that to me, coz then it will be an insult, and if you still argue that you are free to say that to me, then don't blame the cannibals for eating humans and stop calling them savages.

I think the whole thing is about accepting the differences, in color, in language, in religion, way of thinking, traditions and........ i can keep writing till tomorrow.... We should all be able to accept that and stop hating each other

I had a conversation with a Dutchman about this, a few days before it hit the mainstream news in the UK.

It seems that Geert Wilders has been under Police protection for quite some time -long before the release of the film, in fact. He is regularly moved between safe houses and travels with body guards when in public. His visits to the Dutch parliament involve complex security arrangements.

The Dutchman I spoke to, said that from Geert Wilder's point of view, he already has no freedom and is already threatened with death , so he felt he had nothing to loose by releasing the film.

Some people say that by deliberately and knowingly causing offense, he deserves what he gets, while others have sympathy for his belief that Dutchmen should be free to critisise something without being threatened.

Mental images of Matthius, who is about to be stoned to death, come to mind. (Life of Brian comedy film).

Matthias: Look, I don't think it ought to be blasphemy, just saying "Jehovah".

(Crowd gasps)

Official: You're only making it worse for yourself!

Matthias: Making it worse?! How can it be worse?! Jehovah! Jehovah! Jehovah!

M. Thabet is right if he says that people of al denominations should be able to live together. But if some people think that they are better than others because of their believes, than your theory goes out the window. I don't hate people because they are people but because they are trying to change me. This only because they are told and believe this regardless, that people from other religions or no religion at all are bad AND NEED TO BE KILLED. This is a danger to humanity in general as these people also kill their own because of soms little stupidity. Nobody deserves to be killed because they do something that you don't like. Extreme Muslims are telling the world openly that if you are not Muslim you are bad and need to be killed. This is taught by extreme mufties to the religioes flogg and the flogg believes this. Then I start to think that these people are a danger to me. I know muslim people myself and they don't agree with these extremists and like to live a life in peace like anybody else. You can make a joke about them and about Muslim behaviour to them as they make jokes about Christians and that should be OK. But if you openly condemn anybody that is not of your religion and threaten their existence, you can expect comments to say the least. What Wilders has done is just an eye opener for people that still think that it is OK to behave the way these extremists behave.

That nothing is wrong in this world and that the news onTV is not real.

WAKE UP

Freedom to think and say what is on your mind is a beautiful thing.

Don't let this freedom be jeopardised by some extremists, as it has taken a long time to get it.

Oh, so Christian fundamentalists blowing up abortion clinics make it alright for Islamists to fly airliners into the Twin Towers, bomb the Madrid trains, the London Tubes, etc, etc, etc? Anyone stupid enough to murder anyone because their religion says they can is, IMHO, a fruitcake that should be locked up for life, be they Christian, Muslim, eco-warrior ALF veggie or whatever. Anyone stupid enough to excuse one set of religious fanatics by saying "ooh, the followers of religion X are just as bad" is, IMHO, just as stupid and really should engage their brain before their keyboard.

Geert Wilders is a far-right nut, but "Fitna" says nothing new that hasn't been already said in much greater detail, just check the web. Just because Christianity has a nasty history it doesn't mean Islam is immune from criticism. Rather sloppy of him to use copyrighted material, but then his backers seem to have cash to burn so I expect he'll be able to meet the legal bills.

Hmmm.

"It's only the European population that's fearful and paranoid of Muslims? Who, may I ask, started this 'war on terror' and took Europe on a ride with it? Ahhh yes... that other half in our 'special relationship'."

Let's end the "Special Relationship". After all you Europeans are completely useless. NATO is little more than a European cheering section that's willing to fight to the last drop of American blood.

Look at Basra in Iraq. The Brits screwed up so much there that now American and Iraqi forces have to finish a job the Brits were to chicken to do.

Look at Afghanistan. Only a couple countries have actual fighting forces there. Most other countries need American soldiers to *defend their soldiers*.

What a crock. We've spent thousands of lives and trillions of dollars defending you and I'm frankly sick of it. A lot of Americans are re-evaluating this "Special Relationship" and are coming to the same conclusion.

To Hell with you all.

I see that www.liveleak.com has withdrawn the video due to threats against their staff. I guess there was some reaction after all, and that reaction follows the well trodden path of intimidation and threats to eliminate something you don't agree with.

It just goes to show that there is at least some truth in what Wilders is saying.

"It would be equally simple to create a film of so-called Christians who feel that assassinating doctors or blowing up health clinics is justified by their holy text and an equally unjust broad-brush..."

Except that's not really true is it, Sean?... very poor attempt at moral equivalence that failed at the first hurdle - scale.

The fact that every time Moslems encounter criticism or hear something they don't like, death threats/assasinations/rape/violence/murder/beheadings tend to ensue - is really failing to form patterns for some of you lot, isn't it?

Europeans are useless? We werent the ones who screwed up the "iraq adventure" by ignoring the generals and sending in only half the troops the generals recommended they needed. That was your boy rumsfeld. We werent the ones who decided to sack the entire iraqi army thereby meaning a few hundred thousand disillisioned sunnis were left with no money and ergo immediately ran off to join the insurgents.

Oh and another thing, its not our boys out there fighting that are useless, its you darn yanks. Your pilots are so useless they cant even tell the difference between an insurgent position and a british army armoured personel carrier. How many british soldiers have your moronic pilots killed. Get a grip

The film in question can now be found at:

Geert Wilder's Fitna: English Language Version

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=42427935813490087

Alternatively Bitorrent users can download the torrent for the film at;

http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4102738/Fitna_the_movie_-_English_-_AVI_and_FLV_format.4102738.TPB.torrent

or

http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/4102692/%5BAVI%5D_Fitna_by_Geert_Wilders_-_English.4102692.TPB.torrent

This attempt at Internet censorship by Islamist extremists has backfired

Words fail me.

"It would be equally simple to create a film of so-called Christians who feel that assassinating doctors or blowing up health clinics is justified by their holy text and an equally unjust broad-brush."

Wouldn't quite work. You know, very few Muslims are terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims.

I am anxiously awaiting an outrage in the Islamic world over Islamist hate videos that make their rounds on the web again and again.

You might not know this, as the mass media usually do not make such a big deal out of such events, but so called "Pro Lifers" in the U.S. of A regularly threaten people who work at abortion clinics, and sometimes follow up with the occasional drive-by shooting.

For some reason such acts are not recognized for what they are: terrorism, that is.

...Geert Wilders does *exactly* the same thing that he accuses Muslims of: He takes a handful of sentences from the Qur'an out of context, and then uses these to sow hatred.

For the record: In the Netherlands, inciting racial hatred is a crime, punishable with jailtime. In a (not too) distant past, an extreme right MP got 6 weeks for having diffused a pamphlet against Jews. And I guess that if Wilders had been targeting Jews instead of Muslims, he would have been in jail by now. Muslims, it appears, are fair game...