Islamophobia within the Framework of the Movie “Fitna” by Dutch Politician Geert Wilders as an Image and Perception

In this study, taking the starting point as the field study we conducted in the Netherlands in 2008 "Muslims and Islamophobia in Europe" (Holland Example) Master Thesis study, the concept of Islamophobia is evaluated by the content analysis technique by scanning the Geert Wilders' "Fitna" movie and the Netherlands press (on the internet) after that date. The islamophia has undergone different evaluations from various perspectives since the day it was first introduced as a concept. In this study, the concept of islamophobia was used as opposition to Islam and Muslim originating from economic, social, cultural and religious reasons against Muslim immigrant society in Europe. In this context, it was revealed that the word "phobia", which is used as a concept component, does not fully reflect the phenomenon of Islam and the Muslims opposition. Although the “phobia” is used here as irrational fear, it is thougt that this usage contains an expression that makes scared people innocent. It is seen that religious identity-based attacks against Islam and Muslims, which we have revealed in field work in 2008, have increased year by year with reports published by various organizations in 2014, 2015 and 2016. The arsons of the sacred places, exposure of Muslims to physical attacks and various violent incidents are some of them. "Fitna" is an anti-Islamic, short propagandist movie published online by Geert Wilders on the internet on 27 May 2008, when the hall for demonstrations could not be found in the Netherlands. In this movie, Wilders exhibits Islam and Muslim opposition very strictly and did not hesitate to use “terror” and “terrorist” expressions clearly. In this movie, Wilders has shown his anti-Islamic and Muslim opposition the most harshly, and has not hesitated to use "terror" and "terrorist" expressions explicitly. In the movie, the orientalist images and approaches of western societies dating back to old days and the phenomenon of the relation of violence to Islam handled in the recent Western media are used quite often. In the images, the Qur'an verses and the Muslim scholars’ speeches were isolated from the context and conjuncture and presented in the direction of construction of a perception accompanied by violence images. In this study, Islamophobia incidents and attitudes are researched in two categories. The first is the Islamophobia as the attitudes and opposition expressions that hold the "effective means" of the society and that are put forward in a more systematic process. The second one is the category of Islamophobic attitudes encountered in