On the morning of November 2, 2004 Theo van Gogh, a descendant of the famous artist's brother, was killed in broad daylight on an Amsterdam street. The murder would forever change the image of the Netherlands as a place of tolerance and libertarianism. Two years before on May 6, 2002, a Netherlands politician called Pim Fortuyn who had criticized Islam as a "backward culture" was killed by an animal rights activist. Fortuyn's killer claimed to act on behalf of Muslims, but was not a member of the Netherlands' burgeoning Islamic community.

In November 2004 the film-maker Van Gogh was cycling to work. He had recently finished a documentary called "Submission", which had been scripted by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. This had been aired on Netherlands TV, and had shown verses from the Koran which advocated wife-beating projected onto the naked bodies of women. Van Gogh was attacked by a Moroccan-born Dutch national called Mohammed Bouyeri, who shot him and stabbed him. The assailant tried to decapitate van Gogh, ignoring his pleas for mercy. Bouyeri left a "hit list" of other individuals who could be killed for insulting Islam. This list, held in place on van Gogh's chest with a knife, included the names of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and right-wing politician Geert Wilders.

Wilders was born on September 6, 1963 in Limburg. Before the attack upon Theo van Gogh, he had been outspoken in his criticism of Islam, seeing it as a threat to Dutch and Western culture. He had belonged to the same party as Hirsi Ali, the VVD or Liberal Party. In late 2004 he had left this party after his protests at plans by Muslim-majority Turkey to join the European Union. His party had expelled him due to his "rightist" views. He had founded his own party called the Party for Freedom (pvdV). In the elections of November 2006, this party gained nine seats in the 150-member parliament.

The killing of van Gogh would change Wilders' life dramatically, and would also see him becoming more confrontational towards Islam. From 2005 until March 2006, Wilders and Hirsi Ali had received more than a hundred death threats from Netherlands-based Muslims.

In 2005 Geert Wilders introduced a bill in the Netherlands parliament to outlaw the wearing of the all-enveloping burka, even though only 50 Muslim women were known to wear such a garment. The bill was passed by the parliament, but more than two years later it still has not been officially made into law.

In late April last year, Wilders called for all Islamic schools to be closed, arguing on his website: "Islam is rapidly pushing our Western civilisation close to the edge of the abyss. We have too much Islam in the Netherlands. Islam is more a violent political ideology than a religion." A member of the Netherlands' National Coordinator for Anti-terrorism (NCTb) had earlier warned that he should tone down his comments, which led to more controversy. In August 2007, he called the Koran a "fascist book".

Wilders' constant criticism of Islam has led to the growth of a political movement against him from some native Dutch political activists. Some of these activists believe that his comments create "dangerous tensions in society."

Since the murder of Theo Van Gogh, Wilders has been forced to live in hiding. In January this year, he said: "I receive death threats daily. My opinions are strong, but I am not violent. Still, I have to live with personal security guards around the clock. I lost several friends because they feared to become a target too. It also affects my family. That is particularly painful. What I miss most in my life today? Freedom."

As Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle states: "He lives a life of unrelieved misery, surrounded by armed guards at all hours; the death threats pour through his letterbox like junk mail. Islam is, of course, a peaceable and tolerant religion, and anyone who says it isn't will be decapitated. I've always found a certain irony in that perspective."

Fitna

At the start of this year, Wilders began to publicize his plans to produce a movie abut Islam. With his previous reputation for castigating the religion, there were rumbles of dissent long before the movie was released. In Afghanistan the Taliban warned that they would attack the 1,500 Dutch troops in the country if the movie was to be released.

In January, Iran warned that there would be "consequences" should Wilders' movie be released. In the same month, Moroccan mosques in the Netherlands announced that when the movie was released, they would open their doors to the public, presumably to show that there was nothing threatening in their religion.

The Arab European League (AEL) said that it would produce a movie to refute Wilders' movie. (In 2006, the AEL's considered "response" to the controversial Danish cartoons was a series of blatantly anti-Semitic cartoons, making "fun" of Holocaust victims including Anne Frank).

On January 23, Tjibbe Joustra, head of the National Coordinator for Anti-terrorism (NCTb) warned Wilders that he might be safer if he briefly left the Netherlands when the movie was released. At this stage the movie was not anywhere near completion. The next day, Netherlands-based Moroccan groups announced that they wanted Wilders prosecuted for discriminating against Muslims. The extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir jumped on the bandwagon to attack Wilders in a petition.

On February 12, the foreign ministers of Syria, Egypt and Morocco criticized the movie. By this time the movie was more or less complete. Its name had been released to the public. It was to be called "Fitna", a word meaning "conflict" in Arabic. Six days later, Wilders was refused permission to fly on a booked seat to Moscow. KLM, the Royal Dutch airline, cited security reasons.

On February 24, Pakistan blocked YouTube because a trailer for Wilders' movie had appeared on the website. The movie trailer was withdrawn and two days later Pakistan restored access to YouTube.

Al Qaeda threatened that Wilders should be "slaughtered" on February 27. Shortly after that Wilders condemned the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Jan Peter Balkenende, for not making any comments about the death threats from Al Qaeda. The following day, Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen advised Wilders not to show the movie. He said: "I am not trying to meet demands from anti-democratic forces and terrorists in the Middle East. I am simply protecting Dutch interests abroad."

At the start of March, it was revealed that the Dutch government had tried to have "Fitna" banned, even though it still had not been distributed, and no full previews of the movie had been circulated. In Afghanistan, 300 members of the Afghan parliament demonstrated against "Fitna". Around this time, it had become obvious that no television channel wished to show the movie.

Wilders had decided to use the internet to distribute his movie. He had booked a website, and as of Wednesday March 5, this site was up and running. The movie was not itself available, but a legend on the screen promised it would be "coming soon".

The movie would not be coming soon on the "fitnathemovie" website. On March 28, the movie in its final state was to be screened on the website. However, US-based hosting service Network Solutions pulled the plug on the website. On Saturday March 22, Network Solutions announced that it had capitulated to complaints against the movie, which it had not seen. The company stated that it was investigating whether the unreleased movie contravened its Acceptable Use Policy.

When the US-based hosting service refused to handle "Fitna", a far-right political party in the Czech Republic offered to host the movie on its website. This offer was not taken up by Geert Wilders. On March 22 the Dutch Muslim Broadcasting organization offered to host the movie, but only on the condition that "Fitna" did not "violate any constitutional rights". Wilders refused this offer too.

On March 27, the movie was finally shown on the internet. It appeared on the hosting site of LiveLeak, a British-based service. After only a day of being on display, the movie was taken down because of threats of violence.

LiveLeak reported on the site: "Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly affect the safety of some staff members, Liveleak has been left with no choice but to remove Fitna from our servers. This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and wel being of our staff above all else. We would like to thank the thousands of people from all backgrounds and religions, who gave us their support. They realised LiveLeak.com is a vehicle for many opinions and not just for the support of one."

"Perhaps there is still hope that this situation may produce a discussion that could benefit and educate all of us as to how we can accept one anothers culture.We stood for what we believe in, the ability to be heard, but in the end the price was too high. LiveLeak.com."

Since then, the movie is once again available on the LiveLeak website. A message appears above the movie, which states that "we have worked constantly on upgrading all security measures thus offering better protection for our staff and families. With these measures in place we have decided to once more make this video live on our site. We will not be pressured into censoring material which is legal and within our rules. We apologize for the removal and the delay in getting it back, but when you run a website you don't consider that some people would be insecure enough to threaten our lives simply because they do not like the content of a video we neither produced nor endorsed but merely hosted."

The few individuals who have threatened the lives of anyone connected with this movie do nothing to protect their religion. What they do is confirm to skeptics and bigots that Islam is a violent ideology. A religion that has survived for 1429 years in a diversity of forms can not be so vulnerable that it is threatened by a short movie.

The Movie's Contents

The movie starts with an image of a Koran being opened. The infamous cartoon image of Mohammed with a turban as a bomb appears. Then appear the words "Quran, Surah 8, Verse 60" with a page in Arabic. "Prepare for them whatever force and cavalry ye are capable of gathering... to strike terror... to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies, of Allah and your enemies."

There then follow images of 9/11, of the second plane approaching the twin towers of the World Trade Center from four sources. The final one, in which the plane embeds itself in the structure, is shocking. The detail of the image, the sheer speed of the plane and the eruption of smoke and flame, in which innocent lives were instantaneously incinerated, combine with the sound of bystanders voicing their disbelief and horror to make a sickening introduction.

Then there is footage of the first tower collapsing. Then people trapped at the windows. Bodies plummeting to their deaths. The soundtrack at this point has the phone conversation of a woman trapped in the south tower, the first structure to collapse. A phone operator tries to reassure her that she would be rescued even though she never escaped. The woman is 32-year old financial manager Melissa C. Doi, who was trapped on the 83rd floor. She can be heard saying: "I'm going to die," while the operator says "No,no, no, no." A photograph of Ms Doi is superimposed over the images of the bodies falling to their doom. The last words heard are: "It's so hot, I'm burning up."

Ms Doi's heartbreaking words have emotional impact but she is not mentioned by name. Before one has time to digest the enormity and horror of her situation (she was lying on the floor of a smoke-filled room with five other people, suffocating from a lack of air) the scene changes. Images of Atocha railway station in Madrid from March 11, 2004., where blasts on ten railway carriages killed 191 people and injured nearly 2,000. As CCTV footage appears of the some of the blasts, followed by the grizzly images of mangled corpses and injured victims, the image of a fanatical Muslim preacher is superimposed.

The cleric says: "What makes Allah happy? Allah is happy when non-Muslims get killed." Another cleric is shown, who says: "Annihilate the infidels and the polytheists. Your enemies and the enemies of the religion. Allah, count them and kill them and kill them to the last one, and don't leave even one."

I am not going to list every scene from the movie. What I find frustrating about the presentation is the way that images appear that are shocking and disturbing, but no details are given. The fanatical preachers are not named, nor are dates and locations given for their speeches. The video treats the victims of Islamist horror as props, rather than people. At one stage, a beheading is shown (though the actual decapitation is not depicted). The figure who is shown kneeling in an orange suit as a knife is taken to his throat, whose bloody head is then displayed being held aloft, is a person. To not give details of that person (it is either Eugene "Jack" McCarthy or Ken Bigley) seems remiss and dehumanizes the individual as much as Zarqawi's thugs who butcher him like an animal.

Five significant quotes from the Koran appear in the movie. The first (Surah 8: 60) has been mentioned already. Surah 8 (Al-Anfal, the Spoils of War) specifically deals with Mohammed raiding a caravan on its way back to Mecca. The caravan was led by Abu Sufyan, who was an enemy of Mohammed. The raid led to a battle, the Battle of Badr, in which the Muslims prevailed. Abu Sufyan survived. The quote refers to a "wartime" situation rather than a time of peace. According to scholar Mohammad Al-Hayek, the verse is meant "to urge Muslim governments to be militarily strong in order to intimidate its enemies. Building up power is meant to serve as a deterrent to those wanting to attack Muslims."

Another quote in the Fitna movie comes from Surah 4: 34: "Those who have disbelieved our signs, we shall roast them in fire whenever their skins are cooked to a turn, we shall substitute new skins for them that they may feel the punishment: verily Allah is sublime and wise." In this Surah (An-Nisa, the Women) the burning of skin refers to the bodies of sinners in the afterlife. This is followed by a clip of a fanatical preacher stating: "If Allah permits us, oh Nation of Mohammed, Even the stone will say, 'Oh Muslim, a Jew is hiding behind me, come and cut off his head. And we shall cut off his head."

The preacher then draws a sword from its scabbard. "By Allah, we shall cut it off! Oh Jews! Allahu Akbar...Jihad for the sake of Allah". The cleric is referring to a Hadith repeated by Imam Muslim (Book 41, Number 6981) and Bukhari (Vol 4, Bk 56, No. 791). Even though the Hadith is anti-Semitic, it refers to events in the days immediately before the "Last Hour", the Day of Judgment.

Surah 47, Verse 4 features in the movie. This reads: "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers, smite at their necks and when ye have caused a bloodbath among them, bring a bond firmly on them." Again this verse refers to actions in time of war.

Surah 4, Verse 89 is quoted, which reads: "They but wish that ye should reject faith as they do, and thus be on the same footing as they, so take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah." This refers to the Battle of Uhud in the third year of the Hijrah (625 AD) in which many Muslims were killed when they fought against forces from Mecca who were led by Abu Sufyan. According to Mohammad Al-Hayek, the "friends" were part-time allies who ended up betraying Mohammed's Muslim warriors. Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall refers to these traitors as "Hypocrites" or "lukewarm Muslims."

Surah 8, Verse 39 reads: "Fight them until there is no dissension and the religion is entirely Allah's". This refers to the Battle of Badr which took place between the early Muslims and the inhabitants of Mecca, a year before the Battle of Uhud. Eventually Abu Sufyan, who opposed Mohammed, would become a convert to Islam.

Geert Wilders does not mention the specific context of the quotes he gives. However, even when the historical context of these quotes is clarified, they still refer to war and acts of war. For those brought up in a Judeo-Christian background, these warlike aspects of early Islam are hard to reconcile with accepted notions of what is "spiritual".

At the conclusion of the movie, a sound is made that gives the impression that a section of the Koran has been ripped out. Wilders himself has mentioned ripping out sections of the Koran. The viewer is informed that the sound is that of pages being ripped from a telephone directory, not from a Koran.

Reactions To The Movie

Al Qaeda appeared unhappy that the movie was released on LiveLleak, and photographs of Geert Wilders appeared on several Islamist sites with links to the terror structure.

Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations, condemned the movie. He said Fitna was "offensively anti-Islamic." Wilders is not apologetic about offending Islam. He maintains that he is against Islam, but not against Muslims. He strives not to become associated with groups that are associated with fascism and states: "I have a problem with Islamic tradition, culture, ideology. Not with Muslim people."

On Friday March 28, the movie was condemned by Iran and Indonesia. Iran called the movie "blasphemous", and in Indonesia, a government spokesperson said: "We are of the view that the film has a racist flavour and is an insult to Islam, hidden under the cover of freedom of expression. We call on Indonesian people not to be incited."

On Monday March 31, radicals demonstrated in Indonesia. These individuals came from the Front Pembela Islam or Islamic Defenders' Front, an extreme Islamist group that attacked the US Embassy in 2006 during the first "cartoon row". In February 2008, FPI had called for the death of Salman Rushdie and celebrated the murder of Theo Van Gogh. On Monday, some of the FPI members called for Wilders to be killed. The organizer of the protest announced: "We don’t just want an apology, we want legal action to be taken against him."

In Chechnya spiritual leader Sultan Mirzayev said: "On the pretext of democracy and freedom of speech, the Netherlands have published works that endanger interfaith and interethnic stability both in Western Europe and throughout the world."

Nafigullah Ashirov, who co-chairs the Russian Council of Muftis complained that the West had "assumed an anti-Islamic direction." He condemned the movie, but added: "One cannot rule out the regrettable reaction of Muslim street crowds. I do not think there can be any official statements. However, the Islamic world may react unpredictably to such an insult."

Russia's foreign ministry claimed that it was "worried" about Wilders' movie. It stated that it "strongly condemns the film as a provocation that may have negative consequences, similar with those of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons published by certain European media."

Somewhat surprisingly, the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who like Wilders has been subjected to death threats from Islamist extremists, was not supportive of Wilders. Westergaard's image of Mohammed with a turban morphing into a bomb is used at the beginning of "Fitna". On the day after the movie was released, Westergaard announced that he would be suing Geert Wildelrs for copyright infringement. Westergaard's image has been reproduced numerous times without his permission, yet this is the first time he has threatened to sue for copyright infringements.

73-year old Westergaard said: "My cartoon has been misused again. It has been pulled from its original context and set in a completely different one." Westergaard thinks Wilders "has a overly generalized perception of Muslims as potential terrorists. But it's not like that at all.... There is currently friction between Muslim and Christian culture. But I am quite sure that our Western democratic culture will prevail over the darker version of Islam. We must have Islam-light."

Wilders has revealed that he will be making changes to the movie, following complaints of copyright infringement. As well as Kurt Westergaard being angry about his material being used, rapper Salah Edin objected to his photograph being used. Additionally Robbie Muntz, a Dutch TV executive has insisted that he be credited for audio material on the "Fitna" movie.

Some Muslims have ambivalent attitudes to the movie, rather than hostile reactions. Wilders said after the movie appeared on LiveLeak: "I am happy with the positive reactions and the fact that we had a quiet night... it was not my intention to cause riots." He added: "I want to organize debate nights in the Netherlands to talk about the film now, also with Muslims."

One thing is clear - when Muslims are exploited by local leaders to react with hysteria and violence to Western "insults", such as cartoons, or the "Regensburg address" of Pope Benedict XVI, Islam does not gain anything. Geert Wilders' movie is far less controversial than material made by Sunni Muslims which urges attacks against Shia Muslims. It is also less controversial than the preachings of fanatics who feature on his movie who call Jews "apes and pigs".

The movie, according to Dutch author Ian Buruma, is not aimed at Muslims. Buruma states: "He's not directing this at Muslims, but rather at the Dutch in general to make his point about the dangers of Islam."

Wilders' movie is not without flaws, and certainly it only focuses on the extremists within Islam. This does not reflect the attitudes of peaceful, law-abiding Muslim citizens. The best thing that has happened (so far) is that for the most part Muslims have not responded with the violence that accompanied reactions to the Danish cartoons in February 2006. Then, at least 50 people died in riots.

In a climate where there is not a violent over-reaction to controversial works, then discussions can take place. The parts of Wilders' movie that Muslims may object to can be openly challenged when fanatics are not calling for death. Maybe, after previous episodes, Muslim leaders are now sensing that calling for violence when a Westerner implies Islam is violent is a self-defeating exercise. And for that Muslims and non-Muslims alike should be thankful. Removing the threat of violence is the first step to beginning a genuine dialogue.

Adrian Morgan is the Westminster Journal Current Affairs Editor.

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