I didn’t know Wilders claimed to be linked to Mossad - sounds he’s spouting a load of rubbish to me.

I certainly wouldn’t support an referendum to expel all Muslims from the West. I would be vehemnently against it. Nor do I think most people I know would support it: I think that one gets a lopsided portrait through the media. I think that there has to be mutual tolerance, and that both sides can learn from one another.

It is interesting to note that the heyday of the Muslim era was when there was tolerance of Judaism and Christianity in the Middle East. Everyone learned from each other, and Islam was known for its erudition and technology. I think that if Islam wants to go back to a great golden age, Wahhabism and other strict Islamic streams of thought are not the answer. Fundamentalism is certainly not the answer. To my mind, the answer is being open to learning and different cultures.

The same warning applies to the West: if we close our minds and judge people just by the religious faith they follow, rather than their actions, then we are inevitably poorer for that. That is what worries me about this film - it draws a broad brush picture which is inaccurate, and may create reactions against Muslims generally. What is more, like Omar, I tend to regard this as being exactly the kind of film Al Qa’eda would love - the kind that promotes dissent between faiths rather than tolerance.

I don’t see any problem with the verses he quoted, they’re all justified and make sense when read in their revealed context and with the commentary every translation of the Quran provides.

Wilders has visited Israel about 40 times and claims to be connected to Mossad, that’s why he might be labelled a Zionist.

Wilders should have also mentioned that one reason for Muslim immigration to Europe is because European colonial powers had occupied many parts of Africa and the Middle East with large Muslim populations and didn’t leave the place all too well upon their departure.

“What is the best thing to do about Islamist terrorism and intolerance?” I’d assume withdrawing our forces would be a good first step? Ron Paul summarises this really well, if our intervention in their affairs is minimal they won’t be terrorising us. I don’t think there was much “Islamist” terrorism prior to colonising the ME a few decades ago.

I find the West’s stance on Muslims really funny. I’m sure if the ‘West’ were to hold a referendum tomorrow asking for the expulsion of its Muslim population, the answer would be an overwhelming ‘Yes’ vote. Yet when a marxist like group like Hizb Tahrir proposes a model to unite all Muslim countries under one caliphate, our government’s are all up in arms and the group is black listed.

http://austrolabe.com/2008/03/30/fitna/#more-817

They must be either removed from the Koran or declared outdated and invalid, and marked as such.

“SkepticLawyer” said:

We are not going to be able to turn most Muslims into liberals in the ‘perfectionist’ Dutch sense.

IMHO, if people must have a faith, then there is a role for states to promote more rigorous theological thinking, as this destroys the credibility of extremist interpretations.

First, I find the Koran less “nasty” than much of the Old Testament and the Paulean epistles, but I agree that reform is needed in interpretation, arguing here that extremist Islam resembles pre-Lutheran Catholicism, granting indulgences and heaven, although for murder rather than money.

Second, there have been many essays by learned Islamic theologians (I discuss one from the 1880s here) that rail against the Shariat as moving away from a proper interpretation of the Koran, often for political motives, and shows that in the Koran, “jihad” meant the struggle within oneself to be a better, more compassionate and merciful person.

Now, the author of the Hedaya and other writers on the Common Law quote only those few passages from the Koran which are absolute or unconditional, and shut their eyes against those many conditional verses, and general scope and tenor of the Koran… Then only they commit the unpardonable blunder of citing isolated parts of solitary verses of the Koran, which are neither expressive enough nor are in general terms. In doing so, they avoid the many other conditional and more explicit verses on the same subject. - Moulavi Gerágh Ali

In that article, I also quote the work of a modern Judaic theologian (part available here) that reviews such works advocating tolerance, and criticizes those modern-day polemicists who twist theologies for political purposes.

West-Wing fans might remember the “Isaac and Ishmael” episode in response to the Sep 11 bombing, where Toby pointed out that the Christian equivalent of the Islamic fundamentalists is “Klu Klux Klan”: both are lunatic, both should be held up as hypocrites untrue to the tenets of the prophets they claim to follow.

The imperative of law is to cling to use logic and evidence (the opposites of faith) to foster remediation and rehabilitation (the polar opposites of vengeful dogmatists). Legal philosophers and practitioners have their work cut out for them making politicians and the untutored masses understand this.

Part of the solution is inclusion of comparative theology as part of the compulsory curriculum of all registered schools - something seeming at first counter-intuitive from an unbeliever like myself. I count myself lucky to have been at a school where a Christian Prof-Emeritus of a theological college introduced Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam as compulsory subjects in years 9 thru 11.

1. We are not going to be able to turn most Muslims into liberals in the ‘perfectionist’ Dutch sense. That’s very different from Muslims being able to live in liberal countries, which is entirely possible. Expecting Muslims to to ditch great swathes of their values (eg attitudes to homosexuals etc) is just unreasonable. It’s the same as expecting the Catholic Church to come over all Rainbow Coalition. We may as well face up to this.

2. Similarly, Muslims are going to have to face up to the fact that the anti-semitism widespread among their coreligionists is going to see them ignored as people of reason and good will until they drop it. This also means they’re going to have to drop their demands with regard to a Palestinian ‘right of return’ etc. They may as well face up to this.

If Fitna has had the effect of forcing all this stuff into the open, then it’s actually been for more positive than I thought it would be.

Since the majority of liberal and moderate Muslims do not speak out against radical Islam (for fear or otherwise), Wilder has stepped up to the plate. Granted, his approach is slanted but may prove effective in the long run.

Fitna of course puts moderate, liberal and non practicing Muslims in an interesting
situation where they have to defend themselves and makes it very difficult for the
radicals to respond with violence… since it would only further validate Fitna through
their own propaganda used in the making of Fitna. That is a neat catch 22 and I’m hoping
was Wilder’s true intention.

Regarding freedom of speech, sharia has begun rearing its ugly head in the UN. “For the past eleven years the organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), representing the 57 Islamic States, has been tightening its grip on the throat of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On 28 March 2008, they finally killed it.”

“The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression will now be required to report on the “abuse” of this most cherished freedom by anyone who, for example, dares speak out against Sharia laws that require women to be stoned to death for adultery or young men to be hanged for being gay, or against the marriage of girls as young as nine, as in Iran.”

http://www.iheu.org/node/3123

Regarding the Koran, the following verses promote divisiveness and religious hatred, bigotry and discrimination. They must be either removed from the Koran or declared outdated and invalid, and marked as such.

http://www.reformislam.org/verses.php

I think it’s time we woke up.

ONLY A couple of days ago, it seemed hard to imagine that the cause of rationality was going to be greatly advanced by a short film attacking the Koran, … released on the internet on Thursday night, amid lurid predictions of riots and violence. And, so far, at time of posting this… nothing much has happened.

… A leading German-Turkish politician has said the film is trying to cause trouble, but should still not be censored, and various prominent Dutch imams have said, well, not very much.

For the moment, it all seems unexpectedly encouraging…. It had the potential to be a thoroughly depressing affair: one of those occasions where defending free speech was going to involve standing by a man determined to cause offence. But this has not really happened, which is a good thing. The film clearly sets out to shock and provoke and generate media coverage. And so far, European residents of all stripes and creeds have chosen not to be provoked.