Truth or dare

One should never respond to a criticism by proving the point of the criticism. Yet this is the very thing that some party/parties did when they threatened harm to the staff of LiveLeak.com 'of a serious nature'. LiveLeak.com, if you don't already know it, was where Geert Wilders, the Member of the Dutch Parliament had his 15-minute 'Fitna' video shown originally. In Fitna, Mr Wilders attempted to show the worst side of radical Islam, quoting from the Koran, showing scenes of the Prophet Mohammad cartoon that angered so many Muslims around the world, and recounting terrorist acts from 911 to the Madrid train bombings to many reports of violence and hate speeches made by radical Islamic clerics and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against Christians, Jews, the US and probably everyone else except themselves.

LiveLeak.com has since pulled the video from their website, but not before it was copied and can now be found freely available in several privately hosted website as well as Youtube.com. The video has even been translated to English from the original Dutch (which made sense as much of the major events that are shown in the video happened in English-speaking countries). What struck me as I watched the video was how much of the material were assembled from real events and newspaper reports. In other words, it is not fiction at all. Perhaps some may take issue with the Koranic verses quoted, that perhaps they were quoted out of context to bring out the worst interpretation possible to the texts. As I am not familiar with the Koran, I cannot decide one way or the other. But enough people have formed an opinion for them to leave messages on the internet in support of Wilder's message in Fitna.

Of course, this is not the politically correct view and national governments, including the UN Secretary-General, Mr Ban Ki Moon, have condemned the message of the video as spreading hatred. Why should hatred be countered with hatred? Should we kill to avenge another killing? I cannot say so one way or another. But in the interest of balance and allowing people to decide for themselves, the video should be made available. Hiding it would only perpetuate the suspicion that parties on both sides have for each other. Truly, the Islamic radicals have done themselves a dis-service - or are they admitting to what is shown in Fitna?