Watch Geert Wilders' Film: Fitna

UPDATE, March 28, 2008: LiveLeak was forced to pull the film due to "threats to [their] staff of a very serious nature," but you can still see a copy of "Fitna" here.

The quality isn't great, but it's clear enough to view.






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*WARNING* GRAPHIC IMAGES




(If player doesn't load, view here.)
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UPDATE, March 28, 2008: Muslims denounce film on Islam

Hundreds of angry Muslims marched Friday in Pakistan and denounced a Dutch legislator's film that portrays Islam as a ticking time bomb aimed at the West. Dutch Muslims were more restrained, saying they had expected worse.

The 15-minute film — titled "Fitna," or "Strife" in Arabic — was made by anti-immigrant lawmaker Geert Wilders and was posted on a Web site Thursday.

...Wilders told reporters he made the film because "Islam and the Quran are dangers to the preservation of freedom in the Netherlands."

He argues in the film that Islam's objective is to rule the world and impose an Islamic order without Western freedoms, where gays would be persecuted and women discriminated against.

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry summoned the Dutch ambassador to deliver an official complaint against what it called a "defamatory film which deeply offended the sentiments of Muslims all over the world."

Small groups of demonstrators, mostly followers of hard-line religious groups, rallied in Pakistan's major cities, demanding Pakistan cut diplomatic relations with the Netherlands. A banner at one demonstration read: "We hate the uncivilized West."

Militant Qari Mohammed Yusuf warned before the film's release that revenge attacks were being planned.

"I am telling you now that after this maybe you won't be able to come to Peshawar like this. Foreigners will not be able to come so easily anywhere in Pakistan," he told The Associated Press last week in an interview in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Condemnations also came from the government of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, Iran and Jordan.

"It is not Islam that should be stopped, it is fear-mongers like Geert Wilders who should be stopped from spreading their hatred," said Zakaria al-Sheik of the Rassoul Allah Yajmana, a Jordanian group formed to protect the image of Islam.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also condemned the movie.

"There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence. The right of free expression is not at stake here," he said in a statement. "The real fault line is not between Muslim and Western societies, as some would have us believe, but between small minorities of extremists, on different sides, with a vested interest in stirring hostility and conflict."

The Council of Europe said the film was a "distasteful manipulation" that exploits fear, and three U.N. rights experts said it showed a distorted vision of Muslims.

The World Council of Churches said the film failed to distinguish extremism from mainstream Islam.

...Dutch Muslims said the film misrepresented Islam, but that Wilders had largely stayed within the bounds of acceptable political discourse. Wilders praised their civil reaction.

Mohamed Rabbae, leader of a group representing the Netherlands' large Moroccan immigrant community, said the film was "less bad" than expected from Wilders' prior comments. Rabbae called on Muslims abroad to be calm and let Dutch Muslims deal with Wilders, adding: "Harming Dutch people harms us."

"I wasn't personally offended," said Imad el Ouarti, a worshipper at El Umma mosque in Amsterdam. He said Wilders had taken Quranic texts out of context and had reused images that have been seen thousands of times since Sept. 11, 2001. "It's just tasteless and non-creative, as if a child had pasted it together."

Kurt Westergaard, the artist who has lived under police protection since the Muhammad cartoon was published two years ago, objected that Wilders had violated his copyright. "I won't accept my cartoon being taken out of its original context and used in a completely different one," he told Denmark's TV2.

A Rotterdam court said it would rule April 7 on a petition by the Dutch Islamic Federation seeking to gag Wilders and order him to publicly apologize.

Wilders' lawyer Serge Vlaar said the federation "wants to ban a point of view," which he said was not possible under Dutch law.

Federation lawyer Ejder Kose countered that "my clients are not attacking freedom of speech. This is about ending the unjustified insulting of Islam."