The film begins with the cartoon of Mohammed with the bomb in his turban that sparked deadly riots in 2006 (and a murder plot against cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who later said that he meant to show how terrorists misuse Islam). Except in "Fitna" -- "ordeal" in Arabic -- the fuse on the turban bomb is lit. The film continues by showing images from the 9-11 attacks, then the 3-11 train bombings in Madrid and the London bus and train bombings, interspersed with Quran passages and quotes from clerics. It also includes images and quotes from van Gogh, as well as his killer Mohammed Bouyeri. Wilders features himself in the context of a newspaper noting that van Gogh, he, and Somali-Dutch politician Aayan Hirsi Ali were on extremists' hit lists after "Submission."
Up to this point, it looks like a number of other documentaries made about militant Islam. Yet two-thirds of the way into the movie it moves into a segment titled onscreen "The Netherlands Under the Spell of Islam." Wilders puts up charts showing the spiking population of Muslims in the Netherlands over the years, superimposed over footage of women in the niqab or hijab pushing strollers. After pegging the 2007 population of Muslims in Europe at 54 million, Wilders' film shows a Muslim man saying he would commit "honor killings" if his mother or sister acted un-Islamic. Then are clips of statements reportedly recorded in Dutch mosques, putting down democracy, advocating stoning women for adultery, etc. Then, with the title "The Netherlands in the future?!" it shows images of gays being hanged in Iran, women being executed, etc. Following this is a succession of Dutch newspaper headlines related to the Muslim population and extremism. Included here is another Wilders headline, about al-Qaida putting a death sentence on his head.
Then, just when a hand is on a page of the Quran, the screen goes black with a ripping sounds and the title "The sound you heard was a page being removed from the phonebook. For it is not up to me, but for Muslims themselves to tear out the hateful verses from the Quran. Muslims want you to make way for Islam, but Islam does not make way for you. The Government insists that you respect Islam but Islam has no respect for you. Islam wants to rule, submit, and seeks to destroy our Western civilization." Then the film states that Nazism and Communism were defeated, and "now, the Islamic ideology has to be defeated. Stop Islamisation. Defend our freedom." You can guess what then happens to the Mohammed cartoon's turban bomb.
The film's credits? "Geert Wilders & Scarlet Pimpernel" on the script.
In response to "Fitna," the Netherlands put its embassies on alert. The Dutch socialist party stated that there wasn't too much cause for alarm, seeing as how the film expressed what Wilders has been saying for years. The National Moroccan Representation responded to the film by opening the doors of its mosques to Dutch people for a day, hoping that they'd come inside and take a peek for themselves.
Al-Qaida called for Wilders' assassination back on Jan. 28, 2008: "In the name of Allah, we ask you to bring us the neck of this unbeliever who insults Islam and the Muslims and ridicules the prophet Mohammed."
