Fitna

The islamic community is livid (again... or perhaps still) over a 16-minute movie made by the Dutch politician (pictured) Geert Wilders. The movie is aimed at the radical Islamic movements and shows footage of different terrorist attacks, sermons, newspaper headlines etc. Apparently the international community has been more than worried for months about this movie, both the Dutch and various other governments having approached the guy asking him not to publish it.

Yesterday though it was posted on the Internet and by now hundreds of thousands of people have seen it. The Dutch security institutions have been on "Red Alert" since 7 AM yesterday morning. Not that I could notice anything on the streets yesterday... except of course the belowmentioned traffic mishap. There have been serious threats of terrorist attacks and people fear it might be an even bigger uproar than the Danish cartoon fiasko.

Mr. Wilders' intention is to draw attention to the islamification of Holland as well as the rest of Europe. Supposedly there are now close to a million muslims living in Holland.


I must say that the muslim women (at least - you usually can't tell by looking at the men) are indeed visible. However, most of them seem to have conformed to the Western world instead of the other way around. In fact, when I first arrived in the Netherlands I used to try very hard not to stare. The thing is, Estonia is 99% white. I was 13 when I first saw a black-skinned person and that was in Paris and I was awed... I mean I'd seen them on TV but never for real and there they were all walking around casually. Amazing! Anyway, when I got to Amsterdam, I could look at all the foreign-looking people for hours. I was especially fascinated with the way most of the muslim girls dressed - not at all as you can see on TV: all in black, covered from head to toe in flowing burkas. Although there are some of those around as well. But mostly what I could see was a mixture of following the restrictions of religion (covered head, only hands and face and feet exposed) but still following the current fashions. Jeans with short skirts/long jumpers on top, all kinds of colours and jewellery, biking to work with the fashionable trenchcoat's belt flippering in the wind. If anything, I feel more resentment in the society against "the Polish plumber" than against muslims. But then, I am a bit biased with that so...

So maybe Blondie there shouldn't be fearing for Holland's islamification but should concentrate instead on accepting Islam as it is in the mainstream. The mainstream of it is most definitely not harmful to anyone, it's the extremes that always cause trouble. Duh! He does imply that also in the movie and has said so in several interviews but the Islamic world is feeling hurt and insulted and stereotyped.

All in all, it's one big vicious circle: being hateful towards people causes them to be hateful towards you and all that.

I do understand the politician's fears as well. It is excruciatingly hard to see that kind of change sometimes and I'm sure that if the trend was the other way around - Western people "taking over" the Islamic culture... hmmm... isn't that what's beein going on for the last decades in ever increasing speed?