All the films Fitna to show

Timothy Garton Ash discusses and defends freedom of expression:

At the time of this writing, the dissemination on the worldwide web of the deliberately provocative anti-Islam film Fitna, made by the Dutch populist MP Geert Wilders, has not provoked violent protest on the scale of the Rushdie affair or the Danish cartoons. If things remain this way, that is progress of a kind.

In the meantime, three questions need to be asked about the film, which anyone can find by googling "wilders" and "fitna". The first is "Should Mr Wilders be murdered for making it?"..

[...]

This is how a mature free society responds to such a film. Not by appeasement of murderers, not by censorship, and not simply by blanket condemnation. Let the majority ignore it - as they seem to have done so far, and heaven knows there are better things to do with your time - and let a minority of those interested engage with it (for my sins, I've watched it three times), take it apart, argue with it, reveal its game, refute the refutable and accept the irrefutable, separating those specks of truth from the fat turds of falsehood.

Mark C.

Damian adds: someone once said the best way to criticize a movie is to make another movie, and one enterprising Saudi has done just that. You can agree or disagree, but you have to admit, it's a much better way to respond than burning down the Dutch embassy.

Posted by markc at April 10, 2008 08:42 PM