The foul minority is our responsibility

Images of terrorist attacks, snippets from ferocious sermons, angry crowds chanting venomous slogans, young children being brainwashed - there was something depressingly familiar about Fitna – the controversial movie by Dutch MP Geert Wilders.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37w-aXGk8M0

Islam is inherently evil and is spreading like a disease across Europe – is the film’s central message. We, in the West, have been too tolerant for too long. The time has come to rid this evil ideology from our shores before it is too late (- cue image of fiery Muslim cleric inciting death to ‘unbelievers’ before a frenzied congregation chanting in adulation – I think you get the picture). Each carefully selected video clip provides Wilders with his ‘proof’ – sophisticated cinema this is not.

OK – so we all know Al-Qaida, and the like, use verses from the Quran to justify terrorist acts. But I for one am getting sick and tired of having my entire faith reduced to the latest mad mullah’s taped sermon. Wilders paints a grim picture by misquoting the same verses from the Quran that the extremists misquote to justify their criminal acts. ‘Think not that I have come to spread peace on Earth. I came not to spread peace but a sword’, Jesus tells his twelve disciples (Matthew 10:34). All faiths can be taken out of context. I am no scholar of the Bible or the Quran – but neither should have lines plucked out and read in isolation.

Fitna does, however, raise some embarrassing home truths. The footage of a three year old Muslim girl being encouraged to hate Jews was hard to watch. Though all faiths can be distorted – we would be pressed to find Christians today using verses from the Bible to justify acts of terrorism – yet within the Muslim world it is becoming all too common. The clips in Wilders’ film, though representing a foul minority, are not fictional – and can not be brushed under the carpet (as much as I would love to sweep them away).

For far too long Muslims have accepted the abuse of our faith by those pushing their own political agendas. The onus is certainly on us, the silent majority, to recapture Islam from the extremists. I do feel a sense of responsibility for this. But it doesn’t stop here. The wider community must listen to this voice – and not ignore it in favour of the more sensationalist story. But then, hey, we all like a scandal.

Fitna ticks all the boxes of a sensationalist fear-mongering video and provides another outlet for extremist voices to be heard. Some of the messages are, sadly, true – but painting the entire Muslim faith with the Al-Qaida brush – only adds fuel to the fire. And alienates all those Muslims, like myself, who abhor such views. Muslim extremism, like all forms of extremism, is a problem that we must work together to resolve. This is where the conversation should be.