Fitna The Movie and beyond fitna

Radical Dutch imam Fawaz Jneid is suing Geert Wilders for 55,000 euro in damages for being unjustly connected in Wilder’s movie, Fitna, with extremism and terrorism.

This according to a letter that Wilders received this week from Jneid’s lawyer. The imam is claiming that Wilders injured his ‘good name and honor’. Also, his photo was used without permission in the anti-Koran movie.

Wilders says he is not worried and that he does not plan to pay even 55 cents. The politician is surprised that the imam had just now come out with his demand, as the movie had been out for three months.

Fawaz’s lawyer was unreachable for comment.

THE NETHERLANDS - The radical Muslim cleric Sheikh Imam Fawaz Jneid is claiming EUR 55,000 in damages from Freedom Party MP Geert Wilders, claiming he has damaged his reputation.

The cleric was featured in Wilders anti-Qur’an film Fitna.

Wilders says the claim “is the world upside down”. He says the imam “has cursed Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Theo van Gogh and Afshin Ellian and said the most terrible things.”

A picture of Imam Fawaz Jneid:

In a brazen attempt to stifle free speech in the West, a Jordanian court recently summoned twelve European citizens to answer criminal charges of blasphemy and inciting hatred.

Among those sought by the court is Geert Wilders, the Dutch liberal politician who made the anti-Islamist film, Fitna. Released last March, the Dutch MP’s production caused an uproar in Islamic countries, since it equated Islam with violence. Now a Middle Eastern court would like to prosecute Wilders for the “crime.” (Ironically, a Dutch court dropped charges against him for inciting hatred against Muslims with his film the day before the Jordanian court issued its subpoena.)

The Jordanian court’s move is only the most ambitious attempt to silence debate about Islam. Until now, the preferred strategy has been to file civil lawsuits in western courts to intimidate critics. The latest version of what may be called the legal jihad is even more disturbing.

This new campaign of intimidation against the West is being mounted by a Jordanian organization calling itself “Messenger of Allah Unite Us”, which is made up of “… media outlets, professional associations, parliamentarians and thousands of volunteers.” This organization, according to one account, arose as a “civilized response” to the Mohammad cartoons’ republication in 17 Danish papers last winter, after which it took the matter to a Jordanian court and successfully had charges pressed against the Danes, and later against Wilders.

perhaps most ominously, this incredibly brazen measure shows that even a small Islamic country like Jordan has no fear of Europe. And, indeed, no retaliatory response met the Jordanian court’s action against European citizens.

Europe’s appeasement is also evident in the second part of Messenger For Allah group’s anti-blasphemy campaign. This part calls for a commercial boycott of all Danish and Dutch products in Jordan and of anything associated with the two countries, such as airlines and shipping companies. The boycott campaign actually began late last February but was suspended due to the losses Jordanian importers were incurring that had large stocks of unsold Danish and Dutch products.

The boycott, however, was resumed June 10. One million posters containing the logos of banned Dutch and Danish products will eventually hang in Jordanian businesses under the title “Living Without It.” The boycott will also be spread by television and radio ads, t-shirts, and bumper stickers.

Dutch and Danish companies were instructed they could get their products off the boycott list if they, essentially, betrayed their nations’ values and their countrymen.

The overall goal of the Messenger of Allah group’s legal and commercial campaign against the two European states, it says, is the enactment of “a universal law that prohibits the defamation of any prophet or religion”, especially of the Prophet Mohammad. Islamic countries are already pushing for such a law at the United Nations.

“The boycott is a means but not an end,” said Zakaria Sheikh, a spokesperson for Messenger of Allah Unite Us. “We are not aiming at collective punishment, but when the Danish and Dutch people put pressure on their governments to support the creation of an international law, we are achieving our goal.”

The Muslim organization wants Denmark and Holland not just to muzzle themselves but to help it muzzle the rest of the world.

NEW YORK - Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won’t eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative.

Say it on the Internet, and you’ll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.

Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that’s controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.

The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as their services — from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video — become more central to public discourse around the world. It’s a fallout of the Internet’s market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.

Dutch photographer Maarten Dors met the limits of free speech at Yahoo Inc.’s photo-sharing service, Flickr, when he posted an image of an early-adolescent boy with disheveled hair and a ragged T-shirt, staring blankly with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

Without prior notice, Yahoo deleted the photo on grounds it violated an unwritten ban on depicting children smoking. Dors eventually convinced a Yahoo manager that — far from promoting smoking — the photo had value as a statement on poverty and street life in Romania. Yet another employee deleted it again a few months later.

“I never thought of it as a photo of a smoking kid,” Dors said. “It was just of a kid in Romania and how his life is. You can never make a serious documentary if you always have to think about what Flickr will delete.”

There may be legitimate reasons to take action, such as to stop spam, security threats, copyright infringement and child pornography, but many cases aren’t clear-cut, and balancing competing needs can get thorny.

“We often get caught in the middle between a rock and a hard place,” said Christine Jones, general counsel with service provider GoDaddy.com Inc. “We’re obviously sensitive to the freedoms we have, particularly in this country, to speak our mind, (yet) we want to be good corporate citizens and make the Internet a better and safer place.”

In Dors’ case, the law is fully with Yahoo. Its terms of service, similar to those of other service providers, gives Yahoo “sole discretion to pre-screen, refuse or remove any content.” Service providers aren’t required to police content, but they aren’t prohibited from doing so.

While mindful of free speech and other rights, Yahoo and other companies say they must craft and enforce guidelines that go beyond legal requirements to protect their brands and foster safe, enjoyable communities — ones where minors may be roaming.

Guidelines help “engender a positive community experience,” one to which users will want to return, said Anne Toth, Yahoo’s vice president for policy.

Dors ultimately got his photo restored a second time, and Yahoo has apologized, acknowledging its community managers went too far.

Heather Champ, community director for Flickr, said the company crafts policies based on feedback from users and trains employees to weigh disputes fairly and consistently, though mistakes can happen.

“We’re humans,” she said. “We’re pretty transparent when we make mistakes. We have a record of being good about stepping up and fessing up.”

But that underscores another consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations. Rules aren’t always clear, enforcement is inconsistent, and users can find content removed or accounts terminated without a hearing. Appeals are solely at the service provider’s discretion.

Users get caught in the crossfire as hundreds of individual service representatives apply their own interpretations of corporate policies, sometimes imposing personal agendas or misreading guidelines.

To wit: Verizon Wireless barred an abortion-rights group from obtaining a “short code” for conducting text-messaging campaigns, while LiveJournal suspended legitimate blogs on fiction and crime victims in a crackdown on pedophilia. Two lines criticizing President Bush disappeared from AT&T Inc.’s webcast of a Pearl Jam concert. All three decisions were reversed only after senior executives intervened amid complaints.

Inconsistencies and mysteries behind decisions lead to perceptions that content is being stricken merely for being unpopular.

“As we move more of our communications into social networks, how are we limiting ourselves if we can’t see alternative points of view, if we can’t see the things that offend us?” asked Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina researcher who tracks online communities.

First Amendment protections generally do not extend to private property in the physical world, allowing a shopping mall to legally kick out a customer wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a smoking child.

With online services becoming greater conduits than shopping malls for public communications, however, some advocacy groups believe the federal government needs to guarantee open access to speech. That, of course, could also invite meddling by the government, the way broadcasters now face indecency and other restrictions that are criticized as vague.

Others believe companies shouldn’t police content at all, and if they do, they should at least make clearer the rules and the mechanisms for appeal.

“Vagueness does not inspire the confidence of people and leaves room for gaming the system by outside groups,” said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist and Internet activist. “When the rules are clear and the grievance procedures are clear, then people know what they are working with and they at least have a starting point in urging changes in those rules.”

But Marjorie Heins, director of the Free Expression Policy Project, questions whether the private sector is equipped to handle such matters at all. She said written rules mean little when service representatives applying them “tend to be tone-deaf. They don’t see context.”

At least when a court order or other governmental action is involved, “there’s more of a guarantee of due process protections,” said Robin Gross, executive director of the civil-liberties group IP Justice. With a private company, users’ rights are limited to the service provider’s contractual terms of services.

Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard professor who recently published a book on threats to the Internet’s openness, said parties unhappy with sensitive materials online are increasingly aware they can simply pressure service providers and other intermediaries.

“Going after individuals can be difficult. They can be hard to find. They can be hard to sue,” Zittrain said. “Intermediaries still have a calculus where if a particular Web site is causing a lot of trouble … it may not be worth it to them.”

Unable to stop purveyors of child pornography directly, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently persuaded three major access providers to disable online newsgroups that distribute such images. But rather than cut off those specific newsgroups, all three decided to reduce administrative hassles by also disabling thousands of legitimate groups devoted to TV shows, the New York Mets and other topics.

Gordon Lyon, who runs a site that archives e-mail postings on security, found his domain name suddenly deactivated because one entry contained MySpace passwords obtained by hackers.

He said MySpace went directly to domain provider GoDaddy, which effectively shut down his entire site, rather than contact him to remove the one posting or replace passwords with asterisks. GoDaddy justified such drastic measures, saying that waiting to reach Lyon would have unnecessarily exposed MySpace passwords, including those to profiles of children.

Meanwhile, in response to complaints it would not specify, Network Solutions LLC decided to suspend a Web hosting account that Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders was using to promote a movie that criticizes the Quran — before the movie was even posted and without the company finding any actual violation of its rules.

Service providers say unhappy customers can always go elsewhere, but choice is often limited.

Many leading services, particularly online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace or media-sharing sites such as Flickr and Google Inc.’s YouTube, have acquired a cachet that cannot be replicated. To evict a user from an online community would be like banishing that person to the outskirts of town.

Other sites “don’t have the critical mass. No one would see it,” said Scott Kerr, a member of the gay punk band Kids on TV, which found its profile mysteriously deleted from MySpace last year. “People know that MySpace is the biggest site that contains music.”

MySpace denies engaging in any censorship and says profiles removed are generally in response to complaints of spam and other abuses. GoDaddy also defends its commitment to speech, saying account suspensions are a last resort.

Few service providers actively review content before it gets posted and usually take action only in response to complaints.

In that sense, Flickr, YouTube and other sites consider their reviews “checks and balances” against any community mob directed at unpopular speech — YouTube has pointedly refused to delete many video clips tied to Muslim extremists, for instance, because they didn’t specifically contain violence or hate speech.

Still, should these sites even make such rules? And how can they ensure the guidelines are consistently enforced?

YouTube has policies against showing people “getting hurt, attacked or humiliated,” banning even clips OK for TV news shows, but how is YouTube to know whether a video clip shows real violence or actors portraying it? Either way, showing the video is legal and may provoke useful discussions on brutality.

“Balancing these interests raises very tough issues,” YouTube acknowledged in a statement.

Unwilling to play the role of arbiter, the group-messaging service Twitter has resisted pressure to tighten its rules.

“What counts as name-calling? What counts as making fun of someone in a way that’s good-natured?” said Jason Goldman, Twitter’s director of program management. “There are sites that do employ teams of people that

do that investigation … but we feel that’s a job we wouldn’t do well.”

Other sites are trying to be more transparent in their decisions.

Online auctioneer eBay Inc., for instance, has elaborated on its policies over the years, to the extent that sellers can drill down to where they can ship hatching eggs (U.S. addresses only) and what items related to natural disasters are permissible (they must have “substantial social, artistic or political value”). Hypothetical examples accompany each policy.

LiveJournal has recently eased restrictions on blogging. The new harassment clause, for instance, expressly lets members state negative feelings or opinions about another, and parodies of public figures are now permitted despite a ban on impersonation. Restrictions on nudity specifically exempt non-sexualized art and breast feeding.

The site took the unusual step of soliciting community feedback and setting up an advisory board with prominent Internet scholars such as Danah Boyd and Lawrence Lessig and two user representatives elected in May.

The effort comes just a year after a crackdown on pedophilia backfired. LiveJournal suspended hundreds of blogs that dealt with child abuse and sexual violence, only to find many were actually fictional works or discussions meant to protect children. The company’s chief executive issued a public apology.

Community backlash can restrain service providers, but as Internet companies continue to consolidate and Internet users spend more time using vendor-controlled platforms such as mobile devices or social-networking sites, the community’s power to demand free speech and other rights diminishes.

Weinstein, the veteran computer scientist, said that as people congregate at fewer places, “if you’re knocked off one of those, in a lot of ways you don’t exist.”

Amsterdam - Dutch legislator and Islam critic Geert Wilders wants the Dutch government to break off all diplomatic relations with Jordan if that country does not cease its efforts to seek his extradition. On June 10, the Jordan public prosecutor announced he was charging Wilders with incitement against Islam following a complaint, filed by a group the Messenger of Allah United Us, over his 16-minute political film Fitna, released late March.

In the film, Wilders expressed concern about what he called the Islamization of the Netherlands and the spreading of Muslim fundamentalism in Europe.

Writing in Dutch daily newspaper Volkskrant on Thursday, Wilders said Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen should defend Dutch interests substantially more than he is doing today.

Wilders suggested calling the Jordanian ambassador for a full accounting, or even expelling him from the country and recalling the Dutch ambassador in Amman.

He said a third stage would be to break off the “close relations” between the two royal houses and to stop Jordan businesses from operating in the Netherlands.

According to Wilders, Verhagen has refused to call in the Jordan ambassador, claiming he cannot interfere in the judicial system of a sovereign country.

Calling this decision “stupid and naive,” Wilders argued that Jordan did not have an independent legal system.

Wilders is the leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, which runs on a platform of strong criticism on the Islam. According to Wilders, Islam is a “fascist” and “backward” religion.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Legislator Geert Wilders will not be prosecuted for inciting hatred of Muslims with his film denouncing the Qur’an, Dutch prosecutors announced Monday.

Wilders’ film “Fitna,” or “Ordeal” in Arabic, and statements Wilders wrote in Dutch newspapers were hurtful and insulting but not criminal, a prosecution spokeswoman said.

The film juxtaposed Qur’anic verses against a background of violent film clips and images of terrorism by Islamic radicals.

It aroused protests around the Muslim world after it was released on the Internet in March.

Wilders also was investigated for remarks published in the newspaper De Volkskrant calling the Qur’an fascist.

“I’ve had enough of Islam in the Netherlands; let not one more Muslim immigrate,” he wrote in the paper. “I’ve had enough of the Qur’an in the Netherlands: Forbid that fascist book.”

Prosecution spokeswoman Hanneke Festen says Wilders’ statements were allowable under Dutch law, which forbids inciting hatred against groups on the basis of their race or creed but also grants leeway to freedom of speech.

“We came to the conclusion that (Wilders’ statements) may be hurtful and painful for Muslims but they were made in the context of a debate in society,” she said.

“That doesn’t mean you can say anything, but you have to really cross a line and be unnecessarily hurtful and insulting and not add anything” to the national debate in order for prosecutors to act, she said.

Wilders told The Associated Press that he was not surprised by the decision because he had stayed within the boundaries of Dutch law.

Wilders said that in the months since his film attacking radical Islam was broadcast on the Internet, he had received reactions from all over the world. “Most were very negative, but some were very positive,” he said.

Mohamed Rabbae, chairman of the moderate National Moroccan Council, said the Dutch group will go to court to ask a judge to order a prosecution of Wilders anyway.

“My reaction is one of disappointment and divergence with the point of view of the prosecutor,” he said.

Rabbae said the prosecutors had decided that Wilders’ position did not amount to discrimination against Muslims, but that it criticized Islam.

“Islam is a big part of the identity of Muslims, so if you attack Islam it is for us the same as attacking and discriminating against Muslims,” he said.

Wilders said he hopes prosecutors will send a copy of their decision to prosecutors in Jordan, where he faces a lawsuit. Wilders has said he is worried he could be arrested if he leaves the Netherlands because Jordan has informed Interpol he is wanted to face charges there.

THE HAGUE, The Netherlands — Having run the polite-but-grim gauntlet of Dutch government security to gain access to Geert Wilders, I finally understood what the 24-hour security requirements of the man’s continued existence really mean: To make the survival of Western-style liberty in the Netherlands his political cause, this Dutch parliamentarian has to live under high-tech lock and key.

This stunning paradox, with no end in sight, illustrates how far political freedom in the West has already eroded. Think of it: For writing about the repressive ideology of Islam, for arguing against the inequities of Sharia (Islamic law), for making a video (”Fitna”) to warn about Islamic jihad, Wilders lives in his own non-Islamic country under a specifically Islamic death threat.

If it is politically incorrect to notice this, it is also indisputably true. True, too, is that, sans state security, this death threat could conceivably be carried out anytime, anywhere — from the picturesque streets outside the Dutch parliament, to the house Wilders hasn’t slept in since 2004. That, of course, was when, on an Amsterdam street, a Muslim assassin plunged a knife into Theo van Gogh’s corpse, thus attaching the Islamic manifesto threatening both Wilders and his then-parliamentary colleague, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, with death.

Not long ago, political debate in the Netherlands met with, well, more political debate. Now, however, with a growing Muslim minority — and it’s politically incorrect to notice this, too — political debate sometimes meets with Islam-inspired political assassination. At least it has, traumatically, twice in recent years: once, with the 2002 murder of the anti-Islamic-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn by an animal rights activist who claimed Fortuyn was scapegoating Muslims; and the following year with the ritualistic Islamic murder of Van Gogh, director of “Submission,” a short video made with Hirsi Ali about Islamic mistreatment of women. In all, such Islam-inspired violence has been enough to chill Islam-inspired debate.

And that’s just the situation at home. This week, even as Amsterdam’s chief public prosecutor, Leo de Wit, announced that no charges would be brought against Wilders for “discrimination” or “incitement to hatred” related to Wilders’ writings or video (”We find Mr. Wilders’ remarks were limited to Islam as a religious movement,” De Wit said), Jordan announced it is bringing a “Fitna”-related criminal case against the Dutch parliamentarian.

In other words, Jordan will indict a Dutch politician according to Jordanian (read: Islam-inspired) law. “Jordanian authorities are not aiming to arrest” the Dutch leader of the Freedom Party, Radio Netherlands Online reports. “They say the decision to prosecute was taken in order to send a signal to the Netherlands.”

A “signal”? How about a gag? Of course, like other Western peoples, the Dutch seem content to censor themselves, happily mouthing multicultural platitudes that effectively rationalize their own culture’s Islamization. Not Wilders.

I recently asked the 44-year-old Dutchman what was stronger in his country: Islam or multiculturalism.

“Unfortunately, they are both strong,” he replied, seated in his lightly furnished but heavily guarded office. “But cultural relativism is the biggest problem.” He went on to explain: “Multicultural society would not be that bad — I don’t really believe in it — but it would not be that bad if, at least, we would be strong enough to say that our culture is better and dominant. But when you combine multicultural society with a dominant sense of cultural relativism, you are heading in the wrong direction. You are committing suicide when it comes to your own culture.”

He continued: “I am not advocating a monocultural society. I just want what the Germans call leitkultur (leading culture). I want our own culture to be dominant — not the only one, but to be dominant. I have a big problem with the cultural relativists who say every culture is equal. I don’t believe every culture is equal.”

Hoping to preserve the primacy of Western culture in this Dutch corner of the West, Wilders advocates a halt to Islamic immigration. “I’m not saying that every Muslim in the Netherlands is a criminal or a terrorist,” he explains. “We know the majority is not. Still,” he continues, “there is good reason to stop the immigration, because the more we have an influx of Muslims in the Netherlands, the strength of the (Islamic) culture will grow, and the change of our societies will increase.” He sees his efforts as “a fight against an ideology that I believe at the end of the day will kill our freedom, kill our societies and change everything we stand for.”

He’s right — and, yes, it’s politically incorrect to say that, too. Everything the West stands for, starting with freedom of speech, is already changing as our institutions, up to and including, for example, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, increasingly proscribe critical references, or indeed, any references to Islam. While it’s clear that the European manifestation of Islamic ideology has already killed Wilders’ personal freedom in the Netherlands, the general impact on freedom throughout the West has yet to be fully appreciated.

“I have a mission,” Wilders said. “I believe very strongly in what I say, and my party fortunately shares this view. And nobody in the Netherlands is doing (what I do). And somebody should. And I pay a high price for it.”

What is the expression — freedom isn’t free? This is literally and acutely the case when it comes to this heroic and dedicated Dutchman.

AMSTERDAM — Right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders is planning a sequel to his anti-Muslim film “Fitna,” the local daily De Telegraaf reported Tuesday. The move comes after the Dutch Ministry of Justice on Monday decided not to prosecute him for inciting hatred of Muslims with his film denouncing the Koran.

About 40 complaints were filed against Wilders by both Muslim and non-Muslim organizations in the Netherlands after “Fitna” was released on the Internet. A number of those groups are thought to be considering appeals against the Dutch Prosecutors decision.

Wilders also was investigated for remarks published in the newspaper De Volkskrant calling the Koran fascist and calling for it to be banned.

In a statement, Wilders told the Associated Press he was not surprised by the decision because he had stayed within the boundaries of Dutch law.

Fearful of a Jordanian boycott of their products, two Dutch companies have distanced themselves from the film Fitna, produced and released earlier this year by Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders. On Sunday, Friesland Foods and the Zwanenberg Food Group placed adverts in Jordanian newspapers to announce that they have nothing to do with the film. They’re hoping to prevent their products ending up on a Middle East blacklist.

They took this step after ‘The Messenger of Allah Unites Us’, a broad coalition of Jordanian political parties, professional organisations and media, printed one million posters showing Dutch and Danish products that - they argue - consumers in Jordan and other Middle East countries ought to boycott. In addition to a number of Danish brand names, the list includes such Dutch companies as KLM, Philips and baby food manufacturer Friso.

There’s considerable anger in Jordan regarding Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and Dutch politician Geert Wilders. The chairman of the coalition, Zakaria Sheik, says that both men have offended Muslims throughout the world and shouldn’t escape their punishment.

Distance
Dutch company Friesland Foods took steps to distance itself from Fitna as soon as it was released in March 2008. Although that earlier announcement was recently repeated in an advert by a Jordanian distributor it has, says company representative Bram Franken, had little success. Both Friesland Foods and the Zwanenberg Food Group are hoping that their new advert will prevent the names of their products ending up on a new series of posters. Friesland Foods has stated:

“The contents of the poster have been changed a number of times. When it first appeared, it contained several Danish brand names. Subsequently, several products of ours were added. One has since been removed, but the others have stayed. We’re in the same position as KLM, which has also distanced itself from Fitna, but which also remains on the poster.”

No panic
Zakaria Sheikh says that companies wanting to avoid the boycott should also put out posters in their own countries and speak out there against Fitna. Right now, Friesland Foods isn’t worried about a huge slump in business, since Jordan is a relatively small market for its products. But if such a boycott were to spread to more countries in the Arab world, its sales would be at risk, since the Middle East as a whole is one of its most important markets. Up to now, Dutch companies have not really suffered economically in the wake of Fitna’s release.

KLM, too, is not too worried about the boycott as yet.

“It certainly has our attention and we’re keeping our finger on the pulse of our local people in Jordan,”

says representative Nanke Kramer. But she hasn’t noticed any losses for the company so far. For a start, she says, KLM doesn’t fly to Amman. Nor, as far as she knows, have travel organisations in other countries been called upon to boycott the airline.

Charges
Zakaria Sheikh has also urged the Jordanian authorities to investigate the extent to which Kurt Westergaard and Geert Wilders can be prosecuted. Criminal proceedings have already been filed against 11 Danish media companies in the country. They are accused of blasphemy, inciting disorder and threatening national peace: offences that could result in a maximum of three years in jail.

Tøger Seidenfaden, editor-in-chief of the Danish paper Politiken, is considering whether or not to go to Jordan to defend his paper against the charges. He hopes that he would be given the opportunity to explain how the Danish media work and how Danish society deals with freedom of speech.