Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Reflections on Fitna, and it's response- Schism

By now, you've surely heard of Geert Wilders' Fitna, and the responses it has generated- Inodensia (the country with the world's largest Muslim population) has banned YouTube and other countries are reacting similarly- other bloggers are discussing its accuracies, and shortcomings, and how the relate to the Muslim world. People have taken to the streets in protest, and caused the Dutch embassy in Pakistan to temporarily move to a hotel, for safety.
This film is protected under concepts of free speech, and as such YouTube as refused the Indonesian Government's request to remove it.
What you may not know about is Raed Al Saeed's response to the film, Schism. Which was removed within minutes due to it being offensive- it was however reposted and has since stayed. While some Muslims are protesting, or threatening violence, Al Saeed has given Wilders a taste of his own medicine.

Al Saeed was angry at Wilders, but instead of projecting it onto others, or taking to the streets he took the same road (although, not necessarily the high(est) road) that Wilders took.
What really irks me is that YouTube refused to remove Wilders' video, but wasted no time in removing Al Saeed's video. When they contain essentially the same content.
Al Saeed showed that ANYONE can corrupt ANY body of thought to further his/her agenda. I had (semi) personal experience with this one day when I was reading my school newspaper (so you know it was a while ago!) The Opinions section had a submission condemning abortion (note: I am not anti-life, nor am I anti-choice). That's not so unexpected, but what took me for a ride was the argument itself- which employed quantum mechanics. The famous Schrödinger's cat hypothesis essentially states that when an event has not yet occurred, it must be assumed that the final state of the object on which the event occurs is both A and ~A. The author concluded, therefore that the fetus must be assumed to be a complete, healthy baby, because there exists a .00001% chance that that is the case.
Ridiculous right?
Well, what about the Eugenics movement in the first part of the last century? Or it's resurgence in Nazi Germany? That is simply a corruption of Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
The point is that you can corrupt any body of thought in order to further any agenda.

Another point of this post is to praise Al Saeed's level headed reaction when so many were expecting (perhaps even trying to elicit) a violent reaction from the Muslim community.
I will close this blog with a plea to everybody out there to follow Saeed's example, whenever you get mad. Take some time out of your life to present a response that 1) will be seen/heard with an open ear, 2) will be new and interesting, 3) will have a bit of humor to it!

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