how appropriately named

I don't think anyone could deliver a more damaging critique of Wilder's Fitna than this:

Omar Bakri, the Libyan-based radical Muslim cleric who is barred from Britain, did not think the film was very offensive. "On the contrary, if we leave out the first images and the sound of the page being torn, it could be a film by the [Islamist] Mujahideen," he said.

Ouch. especially since he was serious in his admiration. When you've made a film that makes a terrorist smile, you have to wonder what side you really are on.

(source: Financial Times, registration required)

the wages of fitna

Earlier, I mentioned that Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, of bomb-in-turban Mohammed fame, was suing Geert Wilders for copyright violation. Now it seems that Dutch businesses are following suit (pun intended):

Dutch businesses warned on Saturday that they would consider suing far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders if his anti-Islam film led to a commercial boycott of Dutch goods, while police said cars were set ablaze and graffiti called for Wilders to be killed.

“A boycott would hurt Dutch exports. Businesses such as Shell, Philips, and Unilever are easily identifiable as Dutch companies. I don’t know if Wilders is rich, or well-insured, but in case of a boycott, we would look to see if we could make him bear responsibility,” Bernard Wientjes, the chairman of the Dutch employers’ organisation VNO-NCW, told the Het Financieel Dagblad newspaper.

Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir Muhammad on Saturday suggested a boycott of Dutch goods.

“If Muslims unite, it will be easy to take action. If we boycott Dutch products, they will have to close down their businesses,” he told reporters.

The media in Jordan has also called for such a boycott.

Two days after the Internet release of the long-awaited 17-minute documentary “Fitna”, Muslim nations, including Malaysia and Singapore, and the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned it. Although there were no mass disturbances in the Netherlands, two cars were set ablaze in Utrecht overnight, with a slogan calling for the death of Wilders. Police said they could not say with certainty that it was connected to the release of “Fitna”.

The inclusion of the mention of cars being set afire seems pretty tangential to me, especially since it was isolated incidents and not widespread.

At first glance, a boycott seems rather harsh since the ordinary Dutch people - including obviously all Dutch muslims - were steadfastly opposed to Fitna and yet they would bear the economic brunt of a boycott far more than the jafi minority like Wilders and his cohorts.

However, in a free country a boycott is a legitimate instrument for applying social pressure, a form of speech in its own right. Just because you have the right to do a thing doesn't mean that there aren't reasons, of civility and honor, to refrain. If Fitna results in economic harm by voluntary (and legitimate) boycotts of Dutch goods from muslim countries then that is part of the price that the Dutch have to pay for their freedom. Wilders had every right to make his movie, irrespective of the harm it could have caused others, and muslims have every right to respond peaceably via boycotts.

And Dutch businesses suing Wilders over it seems rather just a comeuppance, doesn't it?

UPDATE: anyone inclined to argue that a boycott is unfair would do well to consider the alternative:

DAMASCUS, Syria, March 29 -- Islamic and Arab leaders denounced a Dutch film Saturday that portrays Islam as a ticking time bomb aimed at the West, calling for international laws to prevent insults to religions.

So not gonna happen!

Obviously Arab governments, being largely autocratic, would advocate criminalizing speech sine that is what they routinely do. Speech truly is dangerous, after all, and autocracy has reason to fear it. But the case of Fitna also shows that free nations also have reason to fear speech, and the corrective is applied not through government intervention but rather the power of the market.

The best answer to bad speech is more speech. But that doesn't mean that bad speech doesn't have consequences of its own, regardless of whether you live in a free ocuntry or not. There is no such thing as cost-free speech - rights come responsibilities, as well.

Geert Wilder's Fitna

(welcome, Instapundit readers!)

UPDATE: The YouTube version was pulled offline, but I found another from Google Video via Rusty.

The ridiculousness of the film speaks for itself, I think. However, Ali Eteraz performed the thankless task of reviewing it anyway. Also, do not miss Thabet's link roundup about the subdued response to the film's release by muslims in Europe and elsewhere.

Warning, very graphic images. Absolutely NOT work- or children-safe.



The cartoon portraying the Prophet Mohammed SAW as a hook-nosed terrorist with a bomb in his turban, over which a lawsuit has been filed, appears in the first 15 seconds.

The tone and style of the film is lifted straight out of the most fevered swamps of the blogsphere and talk radio. I don't really see how this makes any coherent argument other than "terrorists are evil" which is hardly a point of contention. The link of Islam to terror is ham-handed and clumsy and at many times outright laughable. However, for someone with confirmation bias predisposing them to believe the link exists already, this will no doubt be seen as a devastatingly rigorous argument. To someone with no a-priori image of Islam, its actual persuasive value is practically zero. It is solely a guilt-by-association polemic, and a rude, ugly, obscene fear-mongering polemic at that.

Part II tomorrow.

UPDATE: I have received some emails from people asking why I would want to publicize this. (No, no death threats yet. Don't hold your breath.) As I discussed at a thread at Dean Esmay's blog, The film is it's own best counter-argument. It is so over the top that it undermines itself. If censorship against the film succeeded, then people would only know it exists and it would have some credibility accorded to it by virtue of the mystery and controversy. Like Janet Jackson's nipple, though, once (ahem) laid bare it's not that big a deal, and just kind of pathetic.

a disagreement among jafis

I find this rather bizarre - one of the original Danish cartoonists who portrayed the Prophet SAW as a terrorist in his cartoon, is now suing Dutch MP Geert Wilders over copyright violations in the latter's movie Fitna, which portrays Islam as a religion of terror.

Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who depicted the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, says he will sue the maker of an anti-Islam film.

Mr Westergaard says his cartoon, which sparked riots two years ago, was used in the film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders without permission.

Mr Westergaard told Danish TV that his cartoon was a protest against terrorism, not Islam as a whole.

The Danish journalists' union is suing on his behalf for copyright violation.

"Wilders has the right to make his movie but he has not permission to use my drawing," Mr Westergaard told Denmark's TV2.

"This has nothing to do with freedom of speech," he said. "I will not accept my cartoon being taken out of its original context and used in a completely different one."

I find it intriguing that Westergaard chose the movie to make his stand and to argue that his cartoon was only an indictment against terrorism. He was certainly, ahem, silent over widespread adoption of his cartoon (portraying the Prophet with a bomb in his turban) by exactly those vocal European groups which explicitly claim that Islam as a whole is a problem. And I dont see how you can claim you are not indicting the religion as a whole if you coose to portray the founder of the faith himself as a terrorist. Logically doesn't that imply that his teachings are also terror?

I think the more likely explanation for Westergaard's sudden concern for moderate Islam is revealed here:

Mr Westergaard says he is once again in danger because the cartoon has been used in Mr Wilders' film.

In other words, he is really just afraid of the additional publicity. Since his cartoons did actually trigger a genuine StupidStorm of violence, whereas Wilder's Fitna is largely being ignored, I think his fear is understandable given his experience. Still, it's quite interesting that now he has basically endorsed the existence of moderate mainstream Islam, which will be a useful wedge to use against those who try to adopt his insulting cartoon as a weapon against ordinary decent muslims.

ritualizing Science

(Below is a comment I left in response to Elezier Yudkowski's thought experiment that science might be better served by wrapping it in a cloak of ritual.)

Elezier,

The reason I keep coming back to this blog is because you madden me. Long time reader, first time commentor. I appreciate the thought experiment you are conducting in this post but I think some of your own biases are driving the theory.

For example, you equate science with magic. I suspect this is because you have a romanticized bias towards science instead of practical, mundane scientific experience in the trenches. Arthur C. Clarke would be happy, god rest his soul, but the actual practice of science is the opposite of magic. The scientific method simply could not survive in an arcane mysterium context. As a practicing scientist, I not only rely on the knowledge of my fellow initiates to Ars Scientifica to hold my work to its rigour, but also the very public nature of the peer review process itself. There's a reason why PLoS and arXiv are so popular and groundbreaking - these are innovations in the process of peer review that drive us towards greater public transparency, not less. If Ars Scientifica were walled off from the public sphere and wrapped in layers of ritual, it would hamper the very process of inquiry and most importantly self-critique that is essential to the function of Science itself (and magnify the very real flaws and problems in the Method and peer review that persist today).

Secondly, you equate religion with the very small, very specific, and very (disproportionately so) vocal subset that is intelligent design/young earth creationism/etc. This is likely because you are biased in regards to the sample of religious folk you find yourself debating with online and in person. Ordinary deeply religious folk like myself are simply not insecure enough about their faith to care much that you keep referring to religion as a whole as an original sin of rationality (though I do admire your cleverness in inverting the metaphor!). However, that said, you tipped your hand a bit when you wrote above that "if some other cult tried to tell you [The Truth] was actually a bearded man in the sky 6000 years ago, you'd laugh like hell." I think at least part of the underlying drive behind the thought experiment at hand is the wish that science were accorded more respect, so that it least would have parity with pseudoscience. But if science has a PR problem, it is structural. It's simply not worth the effort worrying about it. I think Science succeeds in making an impact on people's lives irrespective of their respect for it.

By focusing only on the bearded sky dude you are avoiding the much deeper intellectual challenge of grappling with the far more mature manifestations of religion, the majority of which transcend minor details like young earths, bearded men, or whatever. The kernel of religion is not the trappings of the stereotype you invoke but rather the simple idea that existence is deeper than what can be accessed by the finite tools we possess.

I am fond of arguing that Godel's Theorem points the way towards the superset of knowledge that contains all that Science can discover and all that Religion seeks to uncover. I don't think ritualizing Science to make it more like religion, or systematizing Religion to make it more like science, is the answer.

fitna against fitna

As previously mentioned, Dutch MP Geert Wilders is planning to release a film entitled "Fitna" which purports to prove that Islam and the Qur'an are an "inspiration to murder" and the faith is fundamentally inmical to Western values. In essence, it is hate speech, which will test the boundaries of free speech in much the same way that (falsely) yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater does.

There are numerous restrictions on free speech - for example, in most of Europe, Holocaust denial is illegal. Still, I find myself repulsed by suggestions that the Qur'an and Islam should be placed beyond limits of critique, parody, or even mockery as a matter of law. However, there is nothing wrong with advocating opposition to hate speech in the marketplace. They say that the best answer to bad free speech is more speech, but what is often more effective as an answer to bad speech is less money. Boycotts, public pressure, and media scrutiny upon those affiliated with hate speech hits the purveyors of hate where it counts - in their pocketbooks.

This is why, though I am absolutely opposed to any restriction by law upon speech against Islam, I applaud this news:

Godhatesfags.com. JewWatch.com. KKK.com. These are all examples of controversial web sites that regularly stir up debates over religion and hate speech online. Generally speaking, if a site avoids making direct threats and is based in the US, it's usually allowed to continue operating in the name of free speech. Once site that has not made the cut is Fitnathemovie.com. It promoted a yet-to-be-released film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders that was critical of the Qur'an, and it has now been suspended by its US-based hosting company, Network Solutions, pending an investigation into the site's contents.
[...]
The company's placeholder page says that Fitnathemovie.com "has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site's content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy. Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation." The Acceptable Use Policy generally prohibits sites that contain "profane, indecent, or otherwise objectionable material of any kind or nature."

And yes, I do believe that Network Solutions should follow suit on the other hate sites mentioned above, assuming that they have received complaints. This strikes me as a reasonable market response to a speech issue. Anyone who cries foul or censorship on Network Solution's takedown of the movie page is misguided in their understanding of what speech is. Wilders has no inherent right to force any company to act as vehicle for his (genuine) right to free speech. A company affiliated with him has every right to assess their own self-interest and determine whether they want to maintain that association, and take into account just how that association will affect its own image in the marketplace.

I think Ars Technica is trying to be fair in invoking other hate sites which remain in operation, but really it is pretty irrelevant that other hate sites remain online. If Ars were to file complaints about each of those, and NetSol refused to then do the same to those as they have done for Fitna, then the comparison would be relevant.

electronic intifada

At Nation-Building, I look at how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has opened a new front - on Facebook.

Meanwhile, Tariq Nelson promises to return, with a jihad on his agenda.