Threats force liveleak.com to pull Fitna

Terrorist threats have forced liveleak.com to pull the movie Fitna. Since this was in response to a direct threat and wasn't disguised as anything else, I place no blame on them for their decision.

But the terrorists will be hard-pressed to intimidate everyone who has mirrored the film. It can currently be found here, here, and here. The last of these, on YouTube, requires that you register as a user and affirm that you're over 18, because of gruesome images. Update: multiple links here, Wikileaks link.

Human Hour -- March 29, 8 PM

At 8 PM tonight, I'll make sure every light in my house is on, celebrating human productivity and our long rise out of darkness.

Why then? Because some "lovers of the environment" -- which in this case means haters of people -- have proclaimed it as "Earth Hour" and affixed to it the slogan -- I'm not kidding -- "Let there be dark." Their demand is that everyone turn off all lights for an hour in both homes and businesses.

The meaning of Earth Hour is that to save "the environment," we must give up enlightenment, give up our eyes, give up that which makes us human. It's that our needs, our lives are unimportant. It's the ball of dirt under our feet, not the minds which understand and change it, that matters. Will this give criminals a freer hand? Will it result in accidents and injuries? That only matters if you care about humans, rather than Gaea.

But I don't want to do this as a knee-jerk reaction. I'll be doing it as an affirmation. Whatever problems we have, light, not darkness is the solution. Knowledge, not ignorance. Independent thought, not the herd mentality. Investigation, not shutting our eyes.

Turn your lights on tonight! Turn the haters' hour of darkness into an hour of light and hope. Celebrate Human Hour!

Fitna

The anti-Islam film Fitna is online at pvv.nl. I hope that lots of people will link to it as an answer to Network Solutions' cowardice and religious fanatics' attempts at intimidation. But its actual value is something to evaluate separately, now that it's available.

It's available with either English or Dutch soundtracks and subtitles. As a critique of the Quran, it doesn't seem to offer much. It quotes a few verses, but doesn't build any real analysis on them. In some cases, the accompanying scenes give a misleading interpretation to the verses. Mostly the film shows scenes of terrorists attacks, threatening demonstrations, and dead bodies. One of its most chilling moments is an interview with a small Muslim girl who innocently parrots the line that Jews are pigs.

It's an effective presentation on those who worship a bloodthirsty demon of their invention and call him Allah, and it's true that these people can find a lot of support in the Quran for their evil. But it's billed as a "film about the Quran," and it offers little depth there. I don't think it's too boastful to say that the critique which I posted to this blog in 2004-2005 contains a more substantive analysis (part 1, part 2, part 3, conclusion).

That's the first half of the film, and I almost stopped there and and let this post stand on that much watching. But the second half gets nastier, citing Muslim population growth statistics in Europe and implying that this will lead to a theocratic state in the Netherlands. The clear implication is that Europe's Muslims are just as inclined to violence as the ones portrayed in the film. This is a serious error, forgetting that cultural influences can strongly change the way people practice their beliefs. There is a real danger from those who love violence and hate infidels, but the way to fight them is by standing firm against threats and challenging the ideas behind them, not by defining a segment of the population as the enemy.