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"Moderate Islam Is a Contradiction"
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Leonardo View Drop Down
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Posts: 778 		  Quote Leonardo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: "Moderate Islam Is a Contradiction"
    Posted: 01-Apr-2008 at 07:47
March 31, 2008
 
 
 SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH DUTCH POPULIST GEERT WILDERS

'Moderate Islam Is a Contradiction'

Right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders wanted to provoke an international scandal with his anti-Islam film "Fitna." He succeeded. He talks to SPIEGEL about his crusade against Islam.

SPIEGEL: Last Thursday, you released a long-awaited film that rails against the Koran. Heads of government across the EU are already discussing it and in Afghanistan Dutch flags are going up in flames. Have you achieved your goal: to provoke?

PHOTO GALLERY: MUSLIMS PROTEST AGAINST WILDERS' FILM

Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (6 Photos)


Wilders: The political elite has demonstrated with astonishing clarity that it learned nothing from the debate over the Muhammad cartoons. It bows to the Islamists. For example, our government has developed evacuation plans for our diplomatic missions abroad. That's just an invitation to militant Muslims.

SPIEGEL: You invoke the right to freedom of opinion but you demand a prohibition of the Koran. Does that not contravene the principle of religious tolerance?

Wilders: For me, Islam is a vision of a society that defines all forms of interpersonal behavior -- from inheritance to criminal law. This ideology endangers our values. I hate it, I don't hate Muslims.

SPIEGEL: Is the comparison between the Koran and Hitler's "Mein Kampf" not totally inappropriate? In making it, you're providing the imams with a perfect image of the enemy.

Wilders: I want to provoke a discussion. Certain Koranic verses have moved their followers to commit the most abhorrent acts. Where is the imam who stands up in the Netherlands and says, for us, homosexuals are entitled to equal rights and everyone has the right to abandon their faith.

SPIEGEL: Your tirades are a challenge to all moderate Muslims and those pushing for Islamic reform.

Wilders: Moderate Islam? That's a contradiction. It's going to be a long time before we see a new Koran, an equivalent to the New Testament. Attacks don't happen in the name of Buddhism or Christianity; nor do homosexuals get beaten up, as happens daily in Amsterdam.

SPIEGEL: But immigrant youth crime has nothing to do with religion.

Wilders: It's true, they don't carry the Koran under their arms. But it's at home. And their fathers go to the mosque. They don't tell their children that beating women or believers of other religions is not allowed. That's why we have to push harder for a kind of Leitkultur, a guiding culture. Not a monoculture but a culture that draws on our Christian, Jewish, humanistic traditions and that poses a challenge to the Islamic problem. This is patriotism, not nationalism, this is pride in our own culture.

SPIEGEL: You have turned down many offers of dialogue from Muslim groups. You're mainly interested in winning votes.

Wilders: I represent half a million people who are concerned about Islam. I'm a party politician and I'm not ashamed of it.

Interview conducted by Gerald Traufetter

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,544347,00.html
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Posts: 846 		  Quote calvo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Apr-2008 at 08:14
This guy is a typical provoker... Let's hope that Dutch people are intelligent enough not to fall for him.
THe typical populist mentality, from Julius Cesar to Jean Marie LePen and Hugo Chavez, is to find a scapegoat to blame all the problems on. They typically provoke hatred among the population without yet resolving any socio-political problems.
Populism is the greates defect of democracy, without a doubt!
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Apr-2008 at 09:40
Democracy has things besides defects? Was'nt aware of them.
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Posts: 1943 		  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Apr-2008 at 13:06
Originally posted by calvo

This guy is a typical provoker... Let's hope that Dutch people are intelligent enough not to fall for him.
THe typical populist mentality, from Julius Cesar to Jean Marie LePen and Hugo Chavez, is to find a scapegoat to blame all the problems on. They typically provoke hatred among the population without yet resolving any socio-political problems.
Populism is the greates defect of democracy, without a doubt!
 
He may be a populist, but the funny thing is I had never even heard of him prior to the inevitable Muslim counterreaction. Many members of the Muslim community are unwittingly playing straight into the hands of their most ardent critics.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Apr-2008 at 14:28
Originally posted by Leonardo


PHOTO GALLERY: MUSLIMS PROTEST AGAINST WILDERS' FILM

[...]


That's not a muslim. The board he was carrying was made by the International Socialists, a wacky Trotskyist group around here.

This guy is a typical provoker... Let's hope that Dutch people are intelligent enough not to fall for him.

He's got 9 seats in Parliament (out of 150) and is currently polled at around double that number. But amongst the rest of the people he's barely taken seriously. He usually shouts something and then switches of his phone, he is not interested in discussion. Some politicians from other parties have offered to show his movie in the parliament building, and even a Muslim organization offered to broadcast it, but he ignored those offers, at the same time crying that nobody is willing to show his movie.

He may be a populist, but the funny thing is I had never even heard of him prior to the inevitable Muslim counterreaction. Many members of the Muslim community are unwittingly playing straight into the hands of their most ardent critics.

The muslim reaction so far much less serious than was expected. It was expected it would be something like what happened with the Danish cartoons.

Interestingly enough the cartoonist who drew Muhammad with the bomb turban said Wilders abused his cartoon and has threatened to sue Wilders for copyright infringement.




Edited by Mixcoatl - 01-Apr-2008 at 14:36
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Seko View Drop Down
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Posts: 8595 		  Quote Seko Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Apr-2008 at 14:53
Good to see more of these threads on AE. This and the following link tend to bring out the best and brightest responses. I look forward to the surprise of yet another thought inducing thread everyday. Well, not really.
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Posts: 2091 		  Quote Akolouthos Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Apr-2008 at 14:56
Originally posted by Seko

Good to see more of these threads on AE.
 
Isn't it?
 
This and the following link tend to bring out the best and brightest responses.
 
Don't they just? LOL
 
I look forward to the surprise of yet another thought inducing thread everyday. Well, not really.
 
Well, I do plan on responding to that in what I hope will be a thought inducing manner -- once I have a bit of time, that is. Wink
 
-Akolouthos
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Posts: 1211 		  Quote Cezar Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Apr-2008 at 16:29
I didn't see the film but I've found this comment on imdb.com. I guess it might be my opinion too:
 
This film may not have deserved the hullabaloo that preceded it, but I fail to see why it evokes such irate response from a lot of people. The film documents actual atrocities committed by certified religious fanatics from the videotaped butchering of innocent captives through executions of homosexuals and women to 9/11, all actual events and it crosscuts this documentary footage with verses from the Quran, inferring that such actions may be sanctioned by the Quran, but I can't see Wilders claiming that reading the Quran necessarily leads to terrorism. I can't see him lashing out at ordinary, decent Muslims. Where Wilders may be wrong or perhaps misconstrued is at the end of the film where he tricks us into thinking that he rips out a page of the Quran, only to inform us that he in fact tore out a page of the telephone directory, and that it is up to the individual Muslim to edit his own scriptures. This may not have to be taken literally, of course, as I'm certain the Quran contains a clause prohibiting editing, as the Bible does (in Revelations, although it's uncertain whether that biblical passage refers to the Bible as such, to the New Testament or only Revelations). The Bible contains reprehensible passages too I have always found it hard to stomach the story of Sikem and Dina in Genesis 34 and several of the rules of the Leviticus are certainly out of date but Wilders' point may of course be that Muslims need to distance themselves from the atrocities that take Islam hostage, and that the Islamic faith is being hi-jacked by murderous fanatics. And this may be what Wilders is trying to provoke (as indeed have many others before him, with only minor results): a substantial protest from Muslims to that they take acception to the horrors committed in the name of their religion. After the secularization of the western world, Christians are hard to scandalize. There may be some protests when an artist submerges a crucifix into urine, but Andres Serrano never became the subject of persecution, his life was never endangered, he has no Fatwa on him western civilization abandoned such with the era of enlightenment, to the regret of only a few pockets of staunch fundamentalists. In between the film's 15 minute montage of holy verse and bloodshed may lie a certain amount of fear, but it can hardly be called phobia irrational fear since several of Wilders' acquaintances have in fact been assassinated, and since the Archbishop of Canterbury recently muttered something along the lines of admonishing the introduction of Sharia law in England (an event which will go down in history as the oddest controversy since Thomas a Becket). Wilders is worried, I'm sure, that western civilization will cave in to relativist thinking and militant Islamism, since the majority of resident Muslims apparently (note!) are more worried about Islam getting a bad press in harmless cartoons and short documentaries than about murderous martyrs, female circumcision, honour killings, terrorism and the like. Therefore he advocates a clear manifestation from European Muslims concerning where they stand.

The film itself is far more conciliatory than the statements Wilders made before releasing it some of his comments seemed truly Islamophobic, granted but as it turns out, the film is in fact a rallying cry for moderate Muslims.
 
The highlights are mine.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Apr-2008 at 18:10
Wilders: Moderate Islam? That's a contradiction. It's going to be a long time before we see a new Koran, an equivalent to the New Testament. Attacks don't happen in the name of Buddhism or Christianity; nor do homosexuals get beaten up, as happens daily in Amsterdam


But they do happen.
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Posts: 5697 		  Quote Omar al Hashim Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Apr-2008 at 00:51
Originally posted by Mix


The muslim reaction so far much less serious than was expected. It was expected it would be something like what happened with the Danish cartoons.

It is because of the reaction of the Dutch government as compared with the Danish. The Dutch government has got worldwide press condemning the film. The headline here was "Dutch government condemns anti-islamic film".

All societies have their radicals & racists, no-one will hold having one against the Netherlands.

For me, this is not an important issue precisiely because of the governments reaction.
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Posts: 1409 		  Quote Parnell Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Apr-2008 at 12:00
All Europeans share Geert Wilders opinion. We all want to hang Arab and Muslim children. Isn't that right Spartan?
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Apr-2008 at 13:32
The muslim reaction so far much less serious than was expected. It was expected it would be something like what happened with the Danish cartoons.

Mix, the Dutch Gov has been bending over backwards to condemn this. My reading after the Hirsi Ali-not-quite-a-Islamic-fundo-victim debacle, they wanted to distance themselves from it.
 
 
As for the above post, (Parnell's); well if you say so. if thats how you get your kicks.
 
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Posts: 1409 		  Quote Parnell Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Apr-2008 at 13:38
I was probably dragging my coat, no need for it.
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Posts: 4489 		  Quote Spartakus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Apr-2008 at 08:22
Where are you Genghis Khan?
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--- Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky, 1991, Russian-American poet, b. St. Petersburg and exiled 1972 (1940-1996)
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Posts: 3959 		  Quote eaglecap Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Apr-2008 at 01:25
Originally posted by es_bih

Wilders: Moderate Islam? That's a contradiction. It's going to be a long time before we see a new Koran, an equivalent to the New Testament. Attacks don't happen in the name of Buddhism or Christianity; nor do homosexuals get beaten up, as happens daily in Amsterdam


But they do happen.


Not on the same scale but yes with so many sects in Christianity your statment is true. I do not know about the Buddist or Hindus, the latter can be very extreme and violent. I think the Tamil Tigers are Buddist. Bottom line it is people who do these things in the name of religion or a political view.

I know while I went to a Protestant Church a few years ago I was taught, about gays, love the sinner and hate the sin. I use to outright hate gays but this gave me more tolerance towards them and realized later you do not need organized religion to love people, deist.
Λοιπόν, αδελφοί και οι συμπολίτες και οι στρατιώτες, να θυμάστε αυτό ώστε μνημόσυνο σας, φήμη και ελευθερία σας θα ε
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