The violence continues in the Middle East over the movie “Innocence of Muslims,” about whose making much remains mysterious. But one thing is for sure: the U.S. government had nothing to do with it. Despite that, Muslims offended by the movie continue to riot and kill: today in Afghanistan, a suicide bomber killed 14 people, including 10 foreigners, and an Egyptian cleric issued a fatwa calling for the death of everyone involved in the movie. The unrest will continue and more will die, all testimony to the vicious xenophobia inherent in “the religion of peace.”
I haven’t been able to find the whole movie, but I’m putting up the 13-minute trailer below. It’s simply dreadful: amateurish acting, fake backgrounds, and a blatant attempt to cast Islam in the worst possible light compared to Judaism or Christianity. In fact, it’s so awful that it’s hard to believe that anyone, including Muslims, sees it as a threat to their faith. Nevertheless, it is, for it insults Mohamed.
According to Reuters:
The film portrayed Mohammad as a fool, a philanderer and a religious fake. In one clip posted on YouTube, Mohammad was shown in an apparent sexual act with a woman. For many Muslims it is blasphemous even to show a depiction of the Prophet.
So merely making a movie about Mohamed, even if he’s cast in a favorable light, could also ignite riots?
Watch this clip from “Innocence of Muslims” and see if it isn’t the most dreadful stuff you’ve ever viewed:.
BUT, for Muslims,or others who are offended, consider this: movies just as bad as this one, showing Jews as money-grubbing, evil, Christian-killing devils, are regularly shown on television in the Middle East without protest. One of them is described at CiF Watch (which also describes some others):
Al-Shatat (“The Diaspora”) is a $5.1 million, 30-part “mini-series” produced by state controlled Syrian television. It was broadcast during Ramadan in 2003 by Hezbollah’s satellite television network available to millions of viewers throughout the Middle East and was also shown in Iran in 2004 and in Jordan during 2005 on Al-Mamnou.
The film, based in part on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, depicts a classic anti-Semitic blood libel. A Rabbi, played by an Arab actor, directs a member of his synagogue to help him:
1) kidnap the son of his Christian neighbor;
2) bring the boy to the synagogue;
3) slit the boy’s throat;
4) drain the boy’s blood into a basin;
5) use the blood to make Passover matzoh bread;
6) serve the matzoh to the members of the synagogue.
Here’s a clip from the movie showing the abduction and killing of the boy, and the eating of the blood-infused matzoh (unleavened Jewish bread eaten at Passover). WARNING: it’s a bit gross, though one sees not the throat-slitting itself but the receiving vessel of blood.
Now why aren’t all aren’t Jews rioting throughout the world about this and similar movies that are regular fare on Middle Eastern television? Why didn’t Christians riot after seeing “The Life of Brian”? Why didn’t the US government condemn “The Diaspora”?
The difference here is that many Muslims are quick to take offense, and to perpetrate filthy crimes, when they perceive an offense to Islam. I, too, was offended by “The Diaspora” (it’s not funny like “The Life of Brian”, and is based on the discredited “Protocols”), but I have no urge to riot and kill, nor to issue fatwas against the filmmakers. The reasonable response to movies like “Innocence of Muslims” and “The Diaspora” is to air them and criticize them. As you see from the clips above, both movies actually discredit themselves.
Contra Joe Hoffmann, the proper response is not to roll over and coddle offended Muslims. If we did that, Islam would be the only religion in the world that is immune from criticism. The proper response is to continue to throw light on all the excesses of faith, and to question their tenets. (We should also take apart the movie, which is awful and bigoted). And we should never give in to murderous thugs.
Well, they did try (sometimes successfully) to ban it…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_brian#Religious_satire_and_blasphemy_accusations
(just sayin’)
The general principle, that religion poisons everything, still holds. But Islam has it’s own special style regarding matters of offense, making it dramatically more dangerous to the rest of us. Xtians these days seem to limit their offense-responses to whining about persecution and the occasional women’s health clinic bombing. Not a huge improvement, I’ll grant you. But something.
oh.. and sub.
IMO, it is because most Christians are in countries with a strong secular law system, that holds no religion exempt. It is inconvenient to Christians to actually do much about their purported values, seeing that such actions generally lead to prison or being killed themselves. Christians in less lawful countries are often just as violent as their fellow theists.
Indeed. One is reminded of Rwanda.
In a nutshell: The reasons why (a very small percentage of) Muslims riot and kill when they are offended, whereas Christians and Jews generally do not, are geopolitical in nature. The reason why ANYBODY feels it’s okay to riot and kill when they are offended are (often) religious in nature.
Those who want to reduce this to being either purely geopolitical or purely theological are ignoring important factors. People in stable life situations living under effective rule of law don’t tend to think it’s worth it to pull this shit no matter what their holy book says. On the other hand, people in the most desperate circumstances imaginable generally don’t get it in their heads to pull this shit (or, at least, they will pull this shit over causes that matter, like getting food and medicine; but certainly not over something as asinine as a crappy movie that nobody saw) unless they are inspired to do so by their holy book.
That is not true.
There have been several attacks in Europe from economically secure individuals who felt that Islam provided the justification for violence against either cartoonists or the general public. One of them blew himself up a couple of years ago right beside one of the main shopping streets in Stockholm (incidentally, a place where I had been walking with my wife and child just a few hours earlier.)
IMO, it is because most Christians are in countries with a strong secular law system, that holds no religion exempt
Yes, because Christians generally accept the secular values underlying those laws. Muslims generally don’t.
I don’t agree with that at all. Christians accept that going to prison is inconvenient. Most Christians may accept the secular values in the US; and many rewrite their own religion to accept those laws; but many of them do not considering their nonsense in this current presidential election and their lies about how the US is some sort of a “christian nation”. I suspect that Muslims generally have no problem with the rule of law either. Both sides are unfortunately defined by their lunatic bretheren.
I don’t agree with that at all. Christians accept that going to prison is inconvenient. Most Christians may accept the secular values in the US;
If you believe that most Christians accept the secular values in the U.S., I’m not sure what it is I wrote that you’re disagreeing with.
I suspect that Muslims generally have no problem with the rule of law either.
The issue here isn’t “the rule of law” but acceptance of liberal secular values like freedom of speech and tolerance of dissenting views. Muslims have a huge problem with those values. In fact, Islamic countries tend to be among the worst human rights abusers in the world. Their abusive laws and customs are often explicitly based on Islamic scriptures and religious traditions.
“Xtians these days seem to limit their offense-responses to whining about persecution and the occasional women’s health clinic bombing.”
Though almost universally the vast majority of Christian leaders will openly condemn the bombings. The mainstream Muslim leaders tend to be silent.
Nevertheless, the Christian holy book has many of the same fanatical statements as the Muslim holy book. Kill unbelievers, kill gays, kill nonvirgin brides, dash babies’ heads against rocks, kill your own kids if they talk back (Mark 7:10; in the supposedly enlightened New Testament!), etc. There must be cultural and political reasons why many Muslims choose to take these kinds of lines literally while most Christians do not.
Well, definitely cultural since biology is not likely to be the source of the difference!
I suspect, though I am not a scholar of Islam, that the Koran is more consistent in it’s condemnation of infidels and what is to be done to them. The Bible has so much inconsistency in it that it is relatively easier to cherry pick your way to a less hideous version.
At least that’s my hypothesis.
I think you are correct. The nasty pieces in the Bible are mostly – but by no means entirely, as some would have us believe – in the Old Testament, and those come across as either more descriptive than prescriptive or can be written off as applying to a Jewish people.
Whereas if you read the suras in translation, it reads a lot more like an instruction manual, and some of the longest suras, like suras 2 and 4, they are violently xenophobic.
These are the themes as I’ve seen them so far:
* Large swaths of why infidels / Jews / Christians suck… even when Allah made them that way (2:7) but Allah is still really mad at them
* Lots of “why you should believe me” with a helping handful of “you should have faith instead of demanding proof”, much seeming addressed to various detractors (e.g. 2:118) and reasons why the Prophet can do what he wants
* Rather short summaries of Old and New Testament stories – some going differently than you might expect due to coming from Syriac Christianity (like someone else dying on the cross instead of Jesus) or half-remembrance
* Ritual purity, sometimes to excess
* The place of women (2:222 menstruation as illness, 4:34)
* Imprecations to kill and subjugate non-believers (2:191) (8:12)
* Some good cultural practices (e.g. the poor-due)
* Remember, Allah is forgiving and merciful
* Repetition, repetition, repetition… and repetition
For as xenophobic and violent as the Qur’an *can* be, it can get even worse when it comes to the hadiths, which essentially override the Qur’an in the same way “abrogation” overrides chronologically early (a little tough, since the suras are ordered by length, not time) and usually more conciliatory verses with later ones when Mohammed had more power.
For example, there is some support for cutting off the hands of “corrupters” in the Qur’an (though Quranic apologetics works around this), but for it to become standard practice needed Al-Bukhaari, e.g. “The hand (of the thief) should be cut off for (the theft of) a quarter of a Dinar or more.” and many other such phrases, and I’ve been in online conversations with people who strongly defend the practice (it’s surreal, and it just seems like the bottom line is “how else could you possibly prevent a thief from stealing again?”)
It’s also worth looking up “There can be no compulsion in religion”… and then looking at the next verses.
I also think there’s something to this. Compared to the Quran, the Bible is a big, sprawling anthology that doesn’t even claim to be written by a single person over a short period of time. Thus it provides ample opportunity for cherry-picking to construct a religion to one’s liking, be that humane or horrible. I don’t believe that there is a single “authentic” version of Islam any more than there is of Christianity or any other largish, oldish, religion — but the founding documents have to have some influence on the evolution of the intra-faith culture, and those of the latter seem to allow more wiggle room than those of the former.
I remember seeing ‘The Life of Brian’ in Ireland at the time of its banning. I was part of a youth group and we had hired out a church hall for an afternoon. As far as I can recall the plan was to show movies and one of the videos someone brought along was ‘The Life of Brian’. We assumed it was banned for reasons of nudity (the reason for 99% of movie censorship in Ireland at the time) so we thought we were in for a great show (we were about 13!)
I can recall being a bit bored by the whole experience (it was only years later that I got to appreciate the jokes in the film, which I now think is fantastic)
Slightly off topic, but the odd thing is, ‘Life of Brian’ is rather respectful to Christianity – Christ appears briefly (sermon on the mount), is never traduced; Brian is a man mistaken for a messiah but is never represented as competing with Jesus – in fact he wants nothing to do with it, and I think the whole idea is based on a historical fact – that there were often bursts of ‘Messiah Fever’ where various charismatic leaders were lauded and followed.
I tend to view that as a bit of disingenuous misdirection on the part of the filmmakers. They *say* Jesus is Not Appearing In This Film, but LofB is a satire on the whole idea of messianic figures. A viewer not determined to exempt Jesus from the ridicule can’t help asking: how do we know that the real Jesus wasn’t just as mundane, and his posthumous apotheosis just as accidental, as that of the comical Brian.
We don’t, and I certainly hold no brief to be respectful to JC, but it made it very difficult for ‘offended’ Xtians to claim blasphemy. As is common, many of the offended proudly advertised the fact that they hadn’t seen the film at all.
Life of Brian was a satire on many aspects of (mostly modern) life, including cults and personality cults, the disorganised British left wing (Peoples Front of Judea), grammar Nazis (‘Romanes eunt domus’). My favourite sketches were John Clees ‘don’t say Jehovah’ stoning, and Michael Palin’s lisping Pilate and the soldiers trying not to crack up. (You couldn’t make that now, it would be considered too offensive to the elocutionally challenged 🙂
Direct attack on Jesus, no. Probably the most sensitive aspect was the crucifixion, but I’d say Life of Brian’s chief offence there was in demystifying it, by reminding us that it was a commonplace punishment done to thousands of people in Roman times, rather than the exceptional and apocalyptic event that the Christian church would like to make it seem.
Salafism does for levity what Paul Ryan’s manifesto does for the proletariat.
“…we should never give in to murderous thugs.”
One of the first things one learns in Psychology 101 is that if you reward bad behavior, you get more of it. L
Absolutely true! I remember it well. (For some reason it was P111. We had rats the next semester in P112.) Government officials all over Europe seem to have missed out on this valuable lesson, and the State Department doesn’t seem to have many psych majors, either.
“Now why aren’t all aren’t Jews rioting throughout the world about this and similar movies that are regular fare on Middle Eastern television?”
Because that is not what gets the Jews’ goat. Try to make a movie about the Jews coming up with the idea of charging 29.9% interest on credit cards and you’ll see how quick they will be to react. Or ask Rick Sanchez why he got fired from CNN…
I see: so if they made such a movie you’d predict that Jews throughout the world would riot and kill? Give me a break!
No, they wouldn’t. Because it would be difficult to charge 29.9% on credit cards during such unproductive times.
It’s more convenient for them to keep a low profile and, in the meantime, try to mock some other ethnic group, say, the Eastern Europeans in movies like Borat.
Um…the movie didn’t mock Eastern Europeans. It mocked Americans.
Seriously. That you don’t “get” that is telling.
Oh really? I thought it was the people of Kazakhstan who were having sex with their sisters. Or was it the Romanian gypsies? Not that it matters much, though. As long as one doesn’t make fun of Mohammed or says that CNN and the other networks are all run by Jews, nobody needs to get upset.
Oh, the poor persecuted anti-semites.
Mocking Sanchez? You must be an anti-hispanic.
You know, loosing one’s employment as a public media figure due to bigotry is actually somewhat different than rioting and killing people. At least over here on my side of the street.
*losing
It’s not that they don’t react. They just argue back in a more civilized way.
I’m feeling a bit rioty now I’ve watched that.
Yes they did try to have in banned.
In the UK we now no longer have blasphemy laws – and better for it.
Progress against the theists.
Two things come to mind. First Hitchens’ observation that “religion poisons everything”. And second the Johnny Mercer lyrics, When an irresistible force (freedom), meets an immovable object (religion), something’s gotta give. Wouldn’t it be great, if it was religion and not freedom that always did the giving.
don’t think there’s an actual full length film.
There is, it’s 1 hour 14 minutes and 13 seconds long and I got it via bittorrent. You can find the magnet info via your favorite torrent site.
I’ve watched enough to know that the trailer does include a segment from it.
From the small amount I’ve watched, it makes Plan 9 From Outer Space look like Oscar material.
The production values are so bad it would be a terrible task to sit through it and critique the content.
It’s playing right now and the female character (a wife of Mohamed I suspect) sounds like a Cylon.
So Mohamed (he’s carrying a sword and looks ready and willing to use it) has just commanded a Jewish tribal leader to read the Koran. I don’t think it’s going to go well for this guy.
I had to turn it off to protect what remains of my sanity.
Mohammed: “Read the Koran.”
Jewish guy: “It’s in Arabic. I only read Hebrew.”
Mohammed: “Off with your head!”
I’m sure there’s a drinking game in this somewhere.
Not to mention the fact that the Koran did not exist in written form until well after the death of Mohamed.
Funny, Plan-9 is exactly what came to mind when I watched this clip. Literally jaw-hanging open at the idea anyone could think they could pass off that level of production value and incompetence as a watchable movie. It really does give Plan 9 a run for it’s money.
*resists strange urge to riot…*
Vaal
Wait a second..so Jews dont use Christian blood for matzoh bread???
The most shocking thing about this movie is that Pauly Shore was not involved with it in any way.
There seems to be a lot of overdubbding but by the same actor, so there is no way they didnt know what they were producing – a pretty serious lack of forsight. I’m guessing most of the actors had no real acting ambitions – they probably answered Craigslist ads, but if they did have ambitions to be in the next DeNiro flick they can kiss that goodbye
RW
This of course is not “the religion of peace.”
http://imgur.com/a/tlCyI
Or JAC is cherrypicking.
You tell me.
“Why didn’t Christians riot ….”
Never heard of The Troubles in Ulster/North-Ireland, I suppose?
Never seen demonstrating orthodox jews in Jerusalem?
Wow, JAC using the same logical fallacy as the first creationist around, who could have thought that.
Yes, I’ll grant you that some Muslims have opposed the violence. But really, are you saying Islam is the religion of peace? And are you equating the “demonstrating Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem” with the suicide bombers and murderers and rioting thugs that are active right now in response to the film? Give me a break! The fallacy is yours, and, before posting again, you’ll apologize for equating your host to a creationist.
There’s even a name for this fallacy, so often is it bandied about: The No True Scotsman – Fallacy.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_Scotsman
I have to wonder if they are rioting because of the movie, or if some people can only express themselves thru violent behavior. It seems that anything can set off violence in the Muslim world, a woman driving a car, lack of foreign aid, too much foreign aid, blasphemy, dancing. I’m not sure if religion is the cause or the excuse, but either way, it’s not helping.
Christians in the US protested The Passion of the Christ and Harry Potter, but I don’t know anyone who took them seriously. Maybe the only difference is that violence is an acceptable form of protest in the Muslim world and in the US it will land you in jail.
As for the movie, I was impressed with how bad it was. It was almost bad enough to be a spoof. I didn’t believe any movie could be worse than the 3-D version of Treasure of the Four Crowns, but I was wrong.
You !*surely*! mean Christians in America protested Scorcese’s “Last Temptations of Christ” not Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ”!!!!
Secularists in America protested Passion of the Christ. It was a torture movie, in both senses.
Yes, I did mean “Last Temptation of Christ”. Fingers not doing what brain thinks, again. Both movies were awful. Although casting Willem Dafoe as jesus was perfect. He plays crazy well.
If people had a strong faith, they would not feel like they need to defend their imaginary friends which are supposedly omnipotent and omniscient. By their acts, theists always show that they have no real faith in such things at all, but have to treat attacks on their gods as attacks on their self-worth.
Excellent point. You would think that if Mohammed were really upset about the movie he could get his buddy Allah to do some serious smiting. Have California fall into the ocean or something. Way more effective than burning embassies.
Do you remember that silly story about the atheist professor who got knocked out by his student? It was an urban legend going around the internet a while back. As I recall, the gist of it had an atheist professor mocking God in his classroom, going on about where was God when this happened and where was God when that happened and asking why God didn’t smite him for blasphemy. Whereupon, the story goes, a big, burly Christian student in the back of the class comes up and punches his teacher in the face. As the man falls, the kid says something like “God was busy — so he sent me.”
Apparently this is supposed to provide the listener with a warm chuckle and sense of the atheist getting his ‘comeuppance.’ It is the dark version of that old joke about the drowning man who refuses to get on the boat with his rescuers because “God will save him.”
Silly, silly man. Sophisticated believers have faith enough to know that God doesn’t act directly. He doesn’t come down like the giant foot in Monty Python. Dear me, no.
God acts through PEOPLE. People who do his will. That’s what real, true faith is. It’s allowing yourself to become a mere instrument of the divine, here on earth.
It’s the immunizing strategy again. Clear and direct action would reveal God, sure — but how much BETTER it is when indirect action is good enough. Bottom line, they think they’re being sophisticated to not expect God to smite blasphemers directly. God has a more complex game in mind.
God sure seemed to do a lot of smiting in Old Testament times. Then again, my observation has been that one of the hardest things for any new boss to learn is effective delegation. Maybe God just needed some time in job to get the hang of the whole omnipotent deity thing.
I suspect that, to someone on the ground, most of God’s “smiting” in the Old Testament would have looked just like random natural events which happen from time to time in the region anyway. The Hebrews were not reading their own lives as characters in a book using third person omniscient.
I mean, clearly God is smiting the tourist spot of Antigua for the crimes of the United States in allowing this third-rate movie to air on UTube. Or not.
Even God’s “direct” actions in the Bible are seldom direct enough to avoid perfectly reasonable misattribution if you don’t have the narrator. So I think Monty Python had it right: a giant foot coming down from a cloud. Unambiguous.
I think there’s a particular form of supernatural belief which, while common to almost all religions, is more pronounced in some religions than in others: the concept of essential purity and honor.
In a mind-and-value based universe there is always a way things ought to be, a holy perfection which has become corrupted and adulterated by the world in general and what is ungodly in the world in particular. Many religions emphasize that Man’s role in the scheme of things is to do his duty, return to the righteous path — and protect what is sacred from insult and disgrace. Follow the chain of authority and respect for authority and enforcement of authority. This is what honor means.
The more concerned a religion and culture is with this concept of purity — a purity which requires constant vigilance to maintain — then the more emphasis it will put on the importance of “honor.” And the more important honor is, the more violence in its defense will seem justified. Since holiness is so very very significant, a failure to respect it properly is seen as a very deep harm. If what is sacred is disparaged, then it needs to be defended as a matter of duty and courage. Danger can come from those inside the system or those outside of it: one is obligated to fight. Maintain authority. Keep to the sacred system of duty and obedience. Value purity. Throw out what is corrupt. Defend what matters.
I’m hard pressed to come up with any religion which is violent and oppressive which is NOT obsessed with this idea of purity and honor. And I can think of secular (or quasi-secular) situations where honor is paramount and you end up with the same or similar problems.
And isn’t it interesting that these concepts, honor, insult, disgrace, righteousness, authority are all central to the maintenance of male machismo?
Yes. Within these systems, when a woman is said to have “lost her honor” that usually means she is no longer sexually “pure.”
There’s very little individualism within these toxic honor systems. It’s all group hierarchies and fitting in. The machismo man is subject to a higher machismo man, till we get to the Most Macho One Over All, praise be His name.
This is now my mostess favoritest allusion for god. Now let me go clean this chocolate protein shake out of my nose.
Then hopefully technology will partially solve the problem. Honor is the low-tech solution to the problem of how to confirm identity and history. Both business and law run, in part, on being able to confirm people’s identities and past histories. Banks need to figure out if this Joe Blow is the Joe Blow who reneged on that last loan. Police need to verify aliases and determine whose blood is at the crime scene.
In pre-technological societies, we used people’s word for stuff like that, so honor was a very big deal. It served a social purpose; it was a proxy for evidence. But modern societies don’t need honor in the same way. So, perhaps one way to reduce the problems of such violence is to support the development of modern social institutions.
Then I guess I should put in another plug for Pinker’s Better Angels. He talks about how cultures of honour exist where there is no effective Hobbesian Leviathan to enforce civil peace and act as a trusted arbitrator of disputes. Eg: some places in the Mid-East, but also the American Frontier (and the tradition dies hard in the Old South), and poor urban areas.
The development of effective civil institutions, and the resultant giving way of honour culture, is one of the causes for the decline of violence cited by Pinker.
“Now why aren’t all aren’t Jews rioting throughout the world about this and similar movies that are regular fare on Middle Eastern television?”
I hope this doesn’t sound accommodationist – it’s not meant that way – but if the literacy rate in Israel was as low as it is there, and if the literati only read the OT, I suspect you could get the same result.
That is one extremely long trailer. I suspect that what we’re seeing is the work in its entirety.
Someone already posted above that it is available on bittorrent.
The blogger Cuttlefish, over on FTB, recently made an observation that has also played on my mind for a while.
He called the current scenario an ‘unstable’ situation.
When some virtual nobody, like the produced of this film, or that idiotic anti-muslim pastor, Terry Jones, can do something that is totally within the free speech laws of their country and in so doing precipitate a series of riots and even murders on the far side of the globe where exactly does that leave us?
Jones and the film producer are essentially trolling the entire muslim world and are getting huge publicity for it.
But they are only highlighting a feature of the modern internet world. Any teenager with an internet connection and a webcam has the ability to carry out the same sort of provocations, but in this case anonymously.
The only way to prevent this is to retreat into a kind of totalitarian censorship that is simply unacceptable to the majority of the western world.
Perhaps this aspect of the modern internet world will apply pressure towards a more generally tolerant humanity? At some distant point in time, maybe? After lots of turmoil?
A theater in Paris was firebombed in 1988 for showing the Last Temptation of Christ with 13 people injured, several seriously. It was done by a group of Catholic extremists.
There are surely not many people that would deny the point you are implying with your stated example. But, in the real world degrees do matter. In fact it is all about degrees.
For what it’s worth, one of the actresses says that the actors were told they were filming a different movie and were later dubbed over.
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/The%20Innocence%20of%20Muslims
Just went to Neil Gaiman’s site and read that actresses’ letter, and I feel deeply sorry for the cast who were duped into it. I also feel a bit guilty for criticising the acting – given that the apalling dialogue was (quite obviously) overdubbed, the whole thing was (quite conspicuously) green-screened, then even Burton and Taylor at their best could not have emerged with any credit.
This Muhammad film makes Edward D. Wood Jr. look like Stanley Kubrick. Depraved amateurish clown act. These riots give this pathetic piece of garbage way too much recognition.
That depends on whether you think the real objective is to protest the ‘movie’. An alternative view is that the movie is simply and excuse for Islamic extremists to exert their authority over the masses. They are simply using trolling (and that’s really all that this movie is) to act like this is some sort of emergency that needs a drastic solution – one that, coincidentally, places the extremist leaders in a position of power and moral authority.
I doubt it. I suspect this movie is the match to an already short fuse of a bomb.
Interesting short article about it here
http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=9253
You may find yourself nodding along with many of the comments, then be surprised by the identity of the author.
And the venue that published it!! Thanks for this link.
Thanks for the link – well worth the few minutes taken to read it.
Crucial difference between anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic films: there’s no prophet being denigrated in anti-Semitic films. Adherents it seems are fair targets but not prophets or Gods. Anyone remember the protests when The Last Temptation of Christ was released? But no one died as a result of that film. Generally Christians think Jesus is capable of retaliation himself by torturing offenders in hellfire later. Don’t Muslims feel Allah is powerful enough to easily avenge the wrong himself?
Martin Wagner over at The Atheist Experience thinks that this might not be “real”.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/axp/2012/09/12/are-people-being-murdered-because-of-trolling/
It seems to me that attempts to explain the outbursts of rage in Muslim countries in terms of religious sensibility or sensitivity, actually fall short. Maybe all this has less to do with religion, faith or theology than it seems at first sight. I suggest that concepts of sociobiology and mass psychology are probably more effective and useful in this context. Concepts like ’emotional contagion’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion)
or ‘mass hysteria’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria).
And I suggest that it is futile to contrast the phenomena in Muslim countries with the (currently) less violent religions elsewhere. Instead one should focus (I think) on comparable phenomena of mass hysteria in non-Muslim countries, such as at the beginning of the First World War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_1914), or the public mourning after the death of the last North Korean leader, or Stalin? All this was partly manipulated and partly ‘spontaneous’ (if that is the right expression).
Back to “Life of Brian”.
It’s a pretty classic case of Christians taking offense when hardly any was intended, as John Cleese argued vigorously in a televised debate with one of Hitchen’s old bete noires, Malcolm Muggeridge.
This film we can say was intended to offend.
Maybe they wouldn’t have rioted if “Mohammed”‘s mother had appeared in the film and said “He’s not the Messenger of God. He’s just a very naughty boy!”
http://sphotos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/252552_464911573553855_1886119671_n.jpg
The video is gross. Thanks for the warning.
I’d like to know who encourages these people to riot like that. It’s not something that comes out naturally, you have to learn it. That album posted above is evidence that, while islam isn’t necessarily “the religion of peace”, it doesn’t have to be the religion of bloodbath and terror either. How to drive out of power the people who teach hate and massacres are the way to go, that I’d like to know.
I think that this analysis of the issue ignores the context. For the past decade the US has had troops on the ground in multiple Muslim-majority countries. And it’s not like we weren’t fucking with these guys in the years before. So what we have is a recent history of US-led occupation and oppression of Muslim-majority countries.
What is happening here is not just a bunch of people upset because their sky-fairy was insulted. Instead what’s going on is that this video is seen as a microcosm of the hate that Muslims feel comes out of the US every day.
Perhaps a better comparison would be to the Rodney King riots. Rodney King got the shit beat out of him for being black and this set of a rage in blacks in Southern California that resulted in one of the biggest riots in the countries history. Though you may not condone the violence of the riots (who does?) to say that it was just a bunch of dumb people getting angry about ONE event is fundamentally wrong. It was the culmination of a context of oppression that led to the riots.
Similarly, this video was made to be offensive to Muslims for the sake of being offensive. And in this case it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
None of this is to say that the violence is acceptable or anything, but to have this holier-than-thou attitude about a group of people who have been squashed under our shoe for so long seems a bit misguided.
Bullpucky. The film is intended to offend. So what? A bunch of dumb people getting angry about one event. Who made that claim? This is a religion whose zealots get offended continuously. The entire Islamist movement is organized around exploiting offenses to a religion. There is no end of opportunity for Muslims to take offense, just as there is no end of opportunity for me to take offense from the inane spouting of Xtian believers. Nobody has the right to not be offended.
I disagree strongly. If you read the Pulitzer-Prize-winning “The Looming Tower,” by, Lawrence Wright, you’ll see that the roots of anti-Western hatred, the calls for jihad, etc., far antedate the “occupation” of the middle east by US troops, and stem completely from Islam and the desire to found a pure Islamic state. It starts with Sayyid Qtub in the 1940s and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which strongly opposed secularist reforms by the Egyptians. Those are the roots of the present strife, and they grew purely in religious soil. The US is demonized as an opposition to all things Islamic, not because it was an occupier, because it wasn’t at that time.
Have you read that book? If not, what makes you trace the “jihad” mentality purely to US “occupation” of the Middle East?
First of all, I have not read that book and maybe I’ll put it on my “to-read” list. But to ignore the influence of foreign powers and European/American imperialism in the formation of e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood seems ludicrous. The Muslim Brotherhood gained popularity in Egypt in part because of its humanitarian and populist messages that raged against imperialism in the region.
The desire to form a “pure Islamic state” may very well just be a symptom of wanting to be free of foreign influence. Even if the US wasn’t the primary imperial power in the region in the early part of the 20th century, we have certainly taken over as the world’s most powerful imperialists. So maybe that hatred for being occupied by foreigners was transferred to the US as it became an increasingly powerful player on the international stage. Is that feeling so hard to imagine?
Moreover, since at least 1948, the US has essentially had a colony right in the middle east in the form of Israel. Of course people in the region would feel threatened by having a large amount of land suddenly taken over by foreigners, regardless of any past animosities. Imagine if Canada suddenly declared Idaho part of their country and sent a bunch of settlers! Even if we don’t have much of a problem with Canada right now, we would probably see that as a pretty big infringement on our sovereignty.
“Moreover, since at least 1948, the US has essentially had a colony right in the middle east in the form of Israel. Of course people in the region would feel threatened by having a large amount of land suddenly taken over by foreigners, regardless of any past animosities. ”
That’s not what dictated Arab attitudes at the time. If you read David ben Gurion’s account of his discussions with Arab leaders prior to the creation of the State of Israel, their objection to the idea of Jewish statehood was simply that they did not believe that it was something that Jews should have.
I tend to see the situation as much more complex, with truth in both what you and Josh are describing — and with lots of feedback loops thrown in.
Somebody above made the comparison with the Rodney King riots, which I think is also apt, at least in part. But the LA riots didn’t (that I’m aware of) have the backing of an organized resistance movement, while it’s pretty clear that Al Qaida is behind the current rioting. But poverty, oppression, and general civil unrest are certainly fueling today’s riots just as they fueled the LA riots.
And, while, as you correctly point out, the US wasn’t in the Middle East in the ’40s, the British certainly were. I’m sure that, just as many Americans can’t distinguish between Persians and Arabs, many in the Islamic world can’t distinguish between Americans and the British. It’s not so much US v Islam, and not even East v West, but Us v Them, and the American flag is currently painted on the drones that’re killing their women and children.
The religious aspect has more to do with the fact that Islam never had its Enlightenment. The fundamentals of both Christianity and Islam are equally vile, but the religions as practiced are quite different, with the one being tempered by the Enlightenment and the other basically unchanged over millennia. I don’t know why that happened, but it’s pretty clear today that Islam is stuck in a vicious circle, where the lack-of-Enlightenment is powering the fundamentalism which is preventing an Enlightenment.
I think this is one situation whose sheer complexity should caution us against latching on to the first plausible explanation and thereby dismissing all other explanations. Most of the explanations have merit, and many of them reinforce each other.
Hell, even cognitive dissonance is surely playing a big role. “We” wouldn’t have stormed the embassy unless they were really nasty people, so therefore they were really nasty people and we should keep up the fight. And now “they” are fighting back, which they wouldn’t do unless they were evil — and, hey! They killed Usef! Let’s revenge his death!
I don’t know what the solution is, but I very much doubt it involves continuing our illegal war of conquest in Afghanistan and associated assassination campaign, or of continuing to operate the Guantanamo Gulag, or in general being the bad guys.
b&
+1 I agree, this is not simple at all. The particular poison it seems that Religion is injecting into this mix is to control the people as a cover for more concerted actions. It’s not entirely to blame, but it’s certainly not making the situation better. We can’t bomb the crap out of them, kill thousands of women and children, and then say “Oh, look, those Muslims got all bent out of shape over a lousy movie!” There may be many reasons that they hate us, many unjustified or artificial, but we don’t exactly give them a whole lot of reason to love us.
“…but we don’t exactly give them a whole lot of reason to love us.”
Some would point to the schools and water systems the US and allies are building there and ask how much of that the Russians or British before them built. But I suppose in re. the schools, anyway, since they are intended for use by those of the female persuasion as well, that can’t be counted as a reason to look kindly on the US. And that is a viewpoint rooted completely in the Islam they follow.
How many schools does one have to build in order to offset the deaths of the civilians we’re killing?
According to the U.N., foreign forces are killing hundreds of Afghani civilians every year.
Yes, the article also states that the Taliban is responsible for most of the rest of the civilian deaths. But we’re still killing hundreds of Afghani civilians every year — and we’re also widely seen as the invaders bent on conquest (whether or not you or anybody else thinks that’s reasonable).
So, again: to somebody living in Afghanistan, how many schools would we have to build to offset the death of a single civilian? One? Several? Hundreds?
Even at the rate of one school per ten civilian deaths, there’s no way we could possibly hope to keep up.
Just because you give a prisoner a cigarette and a good meal after waterboarding him doesn’t mean that he’s going to suddenly be all happy smiles best friends with you.
b&
Yes, I also agree that this is caused by a complex mix of religious fundamentalist poison, political (global and local) factors, and economic factors. Ben’s statement that Islam never had an Enlightenment may need correction though; during Europe’s Dark Ages, Islam was the religion of the scientific world (think “algebra”).
Make that, “never had an Enlightenment that stuck,” then.
And, to be fair, we’re talking about a dozen centuries ago….
b&
Islam-dom was certainly ahead of Christendom in science and mathematics at the time. But how close were they to developing humanist ideas about rights, personal freedom and free inquiry? (I’m asking; I genuinely don’t know) Because that is probably the more fundamental legacy of the Enlightenment, and that is what broke the dominance of Christianity (particularly Catholicism). Given that, science is certain to happen; without that, you may get science, but only in the service of the current tyranny.
In his book Illusion of Harmony: Science and religion in Islam Taner Edis challenges the view that Islam had science while Christian Europe stumbled around in the Dark Ages. The Muslim world certainly had what passed for what we’d today call science at the time, but it’s misleading to consider medieval “science” to be a simply less developed form of modern science. Modern science was a very radical departure.
Not a secular one.
It’s an interesting analysis. A lot of what the Islamic intellectuals of the time were doing was brilliant, but more like technology than science. Their explanatory theories were still “classical” and grounded in both revelation and the sort of armchair rationality which doesn’t lend itself to empirical testing. Classical science remains static. It took a lot of happy accidents and contingencies for Europe to be able to break away from the idea that religion and science need to be in harmony, as One Truth — and that dissent and argument are not bugs in the system.
Which may help explain problems today, and why Muslim countries didn’t continue to thrive. According to Edis, “Modern science is simply too different; Muslims cannot adapt to it in medieval terms.”
It’s a very good book. I recommend.
That book is certainly touching on important differences between the secular enlightenment and Islamic science, but maybe it is not as simple as the author claims. Similar occult motivations could be ascribed to many early western scientists, such as Newton. And the author’s claim that Islamic science was not experimental also seems false; 9th century Arabic /Islamic scientists performed measurements and tests.
“Arabic thinkers made original contributions, both through writing and methodical experimentation, in such fields as philosophy, astronomy, medicine, chemistry, geography, physics, optics, and mathematics.”
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science
Nevertheless, they do indeed seem to have had an Aristotelian penchant for putting more weight on their philosophical beliefs than on experimental data.
But even today’s scientists might seem to do this. Will future scientists laugh at our physicists who demands that reality conform to certain symmetries? We would say those symmetries are extrapolations from observation, or mathematical necessities, but maybe ancient scientists would have made similar arguments about their beliefs.
“The Enlightenment had a hopeful beginning;
But to Xians it was nothing but sinning.
We hope for the season
When all embrace reason;
But at present, the other side’s winning”
>>I don’t know what the solution is, but I very much doubt it involves continuing our illegal war of conquest in Afghanistan and associated assassination campaign, or of continuing to operate the Guantanamo Gulag, or in general being the bad guys.
Here, here.
It is extremely dangerous to assume that only religion is to blame for these events — dangerous, and all-too-convenient for the politicians, corporations, military and financial institutions that gain from occupations and wars.
Religions are toxic. So is imperialism.
I don’t know what the solution is, but I very much doubt it involves continuing our illegal war of conquest in Afghanistan
It’s funny how quickly the rhetoric has shifted on Afghanistan. A few years ago, a sharp contrast was drawn between the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The conventional wisdom on the left was that Afghanistan was the “good” war against the “real” enemies (the Taliban, Al Qaeda), as opposed to the “illegal” war in Iraq against the supposedly trumped-up enemy of Saddam Hussein and his supporters. Now that Iraq is fading from memory, the rhetoric coming from the left increasingly portrays Afghanistan as another Iraq, as if the previous sharp distinction never existed.
I have never been in favor of the war in Afghanistan.
Never mind my abhorrence of war on principle, it’s always been obvious to me that any attempt to conquer Afghanistan would result in the exact same quagmire that the Soviets and the British fled from…and that all other would-be conquerors throughout the ages have fled from.
And, yes. “I told you so.” We’re still losing the war in Afghanistan, the same as we’ve been losing the war from the moment we first landed troops there.
We never should have gone there.
We’ve never had a good reason for staying there.
We should get the fuck out of there as fast we can.
And, four years from now, if we haven’t gotten the fuck out of there and we’re still having this debate in the next presidential election cycle, I’ll be making the exact same points.
b&
And, yes. “I told you so.”
No, you didn’t.
The US is not occupying or oppressing any muslim countries. Its troops in Afghanistan and Iraq are there with the agreement of the democratically-elected governments of both nations, governments that were only able to come into being because the US and its allies overthrew the preceding vile dictatorships that afflicted said countries. Prior to that, the US+allies acted to liberate Kuwait from the clutches of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Most recently, the US+allies helped the Libyans get rid of Gaddafi, and didn’t intervene to prop up Mubarak in Egypt when things got hot for him.
Far from “oppressing” the muslim world, the actions of the US, and the west generally, offer the people of that region the only route of escape from their internally-generated tyrannies, and the possibility of establishing stable, democratic, humane societies. The fact that the people there seem to prefer Islamic tyranny when given the choice is not our fault, it’s due to the unfortunate fact that a high proportion of them are barbarian savages in the grip of religious mania. There’s nothing we can do to make them like us, other than commit cultural suicide and convert to Islam. We should go all out to develop our own energy sources, free ourselves from dependence on Middle East oil, end immigration from muslim countries, stop all financial aid and leave them to stew in the mediaeval squalor that they so obviously long for.
I can’t tell if this jingoism is a Poe or what. Do you honestly believe that the US did anything it has done to “liberate” anyone? Especially considering that we supported Hussein, Gadaffi, Mubarak, the Taliban, etc. when it was politically expedient? Or our history of fighting “communism” by installing puppet governments in South America? The US does what it wants to do to further its own interests, and our great wealth and technology gives us an unprecedented ability to wage war across the world to do just that.
I don’t even know how to respond to the second paragraph, accusing millions of people of being “barbarian savages”, who “long for” “medieval squalor.” I really can’t imagine hating so many people without even understanding them.
>>Do you honestly believe that the US did anything it has done to “liberate” anyone?
“Liberation” is an American political myth, and like the myths of religion, it refuses to fade away.
Tell that to a school girl who has had acid thrown in her face for the offense of going to school.
By the same token, I could tell that to a man whose entire family has just been wiped out by drones. I could tell it to a father whose only son has been “disappeared” and jailed without trial under suspicion of being a terrorist. I could tell it to a mother whose babies are deformed from the effects of depleted uranium, or from any number of exotic weapons used in a pre-emptive war.
As I’ve said, liberation is an American myth, and myths are a good way to make people blind to the implications and direct results of their actions.
Apparently in quite the same way as American imperialism is a myth, given your argument.
By the same token, I could tell that to a man whose entire family has just been wiped out by drones.
Which is just an attempt by you to divert attention from the religious barbarity that Dave and gbjames are pointing out. Whatever your opinion of the morality of American military action in the middle east, it didn’t cause practises like executing people for having homosexual sex or throwing acid in women’s faces for bringing “dishonor” to their families. Those practises are directly attributable to Islamic teachings and traditions about sexual morality and the role of women.
For the past decade the US has had troops on the ground in multiple Muslim-majority countries.
We’ve had troops on the ground in Germany, Japan and Korea for a lot longer. But those countries aren’t behaving like the Muslim-majority ones.
So what we have is a recent history of US-led occupation and oppression of Muslim-majority countries.
I think this claim is nonsense. And I think your rhetoric (“squashed under our shoe,” etc.) is ridiculous.
Josh’s position is far more appropriate than you give him credit for.
Consider WWI, where Germany was conquered and left to rot. The aftermath led to WWII, where Germany started a war of conquest, was conquered in turn, and this time rebuilt to European standards. But the Allies at Versailles unequally applied the lessons of WWII and repeated the errors in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, leading first to the Korean and Vietnamese wars, and also to the British occupation of the Middle East that the United States is continuing today.
Clearly, the conclusion is that either you should conquer, force a bilateral surrender (where your enemies admit defeat), and then rebuild their nations to your own standards; or get the hell out and never go back (the Vietnam model). Any sort of middle ground leads to perpetual chaos. (Ideal, of course, is to never start a war yourself.)
Hell, we even see echoes of that today in the parts of the American South not properly rebuilt during Reconstruction. It’s precisely those same areas where people still refer to “The War of Northern Aggression.” Those parts of the South that flourished after the Civil War are amongst the most patriotic in America.
b&
I have no idea what your point is. The U.S. and its allies fought wars in and against Germany, Japan and Korea, occupied those countries and helped install new governments. To this day, the U.S. has tens of thousands of troops in these nations. Yet all three of them have become peaceful, stable, prosperous democracies. I think the idea that the violence and oppression that is characteristic of Muslim nations can be blamed on U.S. foreign policy is absurd. It’s a scapegoat for the real problem, which is the religion of Islam. Unless Muslims follow the example of western Christians and embrace the values of secular liberal democracy, their nations will continue to be plagued by violence and oppression.
If you really think that watching American bombs and drones and soldiers kill Muslim women and children isn’t going to incite somebody to violence, then you have absolutely no understanding whatsoever of human nature.
Sure, you can sit there comfortably behind your computer and justify the deaths as unfortunate examples of collateral damage — just as many Muslims thought of the women and children who died in the 9/11 attacks as unfortunate collateral damage.
The situation is enormously complex.
Does religion play a role? Of course.
Is it also partly a reaction to the presence and actions of US armed forces? Without doubt.
Are there petty tyrants playing power games to further their own empires? Absolutely.
Are there economic forces at play as well? You better believe it.
To deny the complexity of this, of all situations, and to insist on a single cause is almost the textbook definition of naïveté.
b&
If you really think that watching American bombs and drones and soldiers kill Muslim women and children isn’t going to incite somebody to violence, then you have absolutely no understanding whatsoever of human nature.
America and its allies dropped enormous quantities of bombs on Germany and Japan in WWII, killing millions of people and injuring millions more. It firebombed many of the larger cities, such as Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo. It dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities. Then it invaded and occupied those countries and installed new political institutions and governments.
Germany and Japan did not respond with anti-American hatred and violence. They embraced the values of liberal democracy. They became staunch allies of the U.S. The fundamental cause of violence and oppression in Muslim countries is the religion of Islam. Until that is acknowledged and confronted, the problems will persist.
Again, you miss the point.
We bombed the shit out of Germany in the First World War, too. And in the aftermath, did they become our staunchest allies?
Ha!
The difference between the outcomes of the First and Second World Wars had nothing to do with the religions of the combatants. Clearly
It had everything to do with the post-war reconstruction that took place in Germany after WWII, as compared with the punitive reparations imposed upon Germany after WWI.
You know? The same reconstruction that happened in Japan?
And, fancy that — it’s Germany and Japan who became our biggest allies after WWII.
And, before then, after the reparations of WWI, it was Germany that was our biggest foe.
Two wars, identical combatants, identical results on the battlefield, radically different post-war programs, radically different post-war outcomes.
We bombed the shit out of Iraq in the first Gulf war, but that wasn’t enough. We bombed the shit out of them again, and this time we’re doing a not-totally-fucked-up job of rebuilding the country…and they don’t totally hate our guts.
I’m beginning to sense a pattern here, I think.
But help me out here. We’re totally bombing the shit out of Afghanistan right now, and we’re hardly doing anything on any meaningful scale to fix what we’re breaking. And the reaction of Afghanis and their allies is…? And this does or doesn’t match the pattern?
b&
No, *you’re* missing the point. You blamed anti-American violence by Muslims on American military actions in Muslim countries. The examples of Japan and Germany and Korea, which suffered far greater destruction and loss of life at the hands of the U.S. and its allies, show that that excuse for Muslim violence simply won’t work. As does the fact that Muslim violence and oppression long predates any modern western involvement in Muslim nations.
You persistently ignore the overwhelming link between acts of violence and oppression perpetrated by Muslims and the teachings of Islamic scripture, Islamic tradition, Islamic clergy and Islamic scholars.
There is no politically correct way to say it. Any system of beliefs intent on world supremacy will devise vicious ways too silence its critics. Irrationality, self-righteousness, propaganda and violence are usually part of the mix.
The reaction is nothing but a knee-jerk response driven by continuous out-of-control hysteria. My first thoughts after seeing the plethora of news coverage was, “I wonder how many of these rioters actually watched the movie?” … considering that their beliefs supposedly constrain them to actually view images of the prophet. Who are the actual blasphemists?
lol. they’re like children.
I wonder why it never occurs to violent Islamists that all they’re doing is proving the point of the moviemakers. L
Some sign of sanity perhaps?: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/its-our-shortcoming-we-have-not-really-engaged-with-these-individuals-20120918-264uf.html
It is the silence of the moderates (?) that allows these thugs and bullies the latitude for violence.
Jews may be able to laugh it off now, or brush it off, but they have not always done so – and rightly so.
For a somewhat different viewpoint:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/18/islamophobia-left-and-right/
Please allow me to offer my perspective on this matter, I hope that it will offer some insight. I am an ex-muslim atheist from Lebanon, currently resident in Europe, so the context of these riots is more closer to home for me. Everyone is asking the important question: why don’t christians or jews riot when they are offended, why are muslims the only people who do that?
Last week, in my home city Tripoli (Lebanon), protesters against the movie burned down a KFC restaurant (being an american icon). But I don’t know anyone who participated in those protests. My parents, my extended family, my friends are all devout muslims. They pray 5 times a day, fast Ramadan, read the Quran frequently, go to the mosque on Friday, never eat pork, etc. So just in case you’re thinking they’re not “true” muslims, I assure you, they are quite observant. But none of them even considered participating in these protests, and I can’t imagine that any of them would dare to hurt anyone for making fun of their beliefs. So who are those people who burned down KFC?
Not sure if you follow news from around that part of the world, but about a month ago, sectarian armed fighting erupted in the city and lasted about a week. It’s something that has happened many times over the last few years. The people engaged in the fights are exceedingly poor. They often don’t have money to buy food. They have no trust in state or government and always feel oppressed and helpless. Some people estimated the the cost of bullets they fired during that week would’ve fed entire families from that region for up to a year. So where do they get their weapons from? Probably they were being paid by radicals to carry weapons and shoot at each other, I can’t see no other explanation.
I am willing to bet that the people who burned down the restaurant are also the ones who were involved in the armed clashes a week ago. I come from a more middle class part of the city, and that’s my environment, a much more peaceful one. So I am pretty sure that economics and well being and feeling of security and stability are major factors in determining who riots and who doesn’t. Most of the Christian world has been well off economically for a long time, generally trust their governments and feel protected to a certain degree, when it comes to economical well being and stability. Countries like Libya and Egypt have just been through revolutions that liberated them from dictatorships. My own country suffered 15 years of sectarian civil war, leaving the economy in ruins. I don’t think religion is the main problem but rather it is a vehicle for feelings of anger and resentment against oppression. Religion actually can be surprisingly malleable, can be read both in violent and nonviolent interpretations, it really depends on the reader. People have a natural sense of morality, which, when allowed to develop in a healthy manner, often overrides and reshapes any violent tendencies that might be inherent in religion, so people faced with cognitive dissonance while reading scripture often opt for a nonviolent restatement of the commandments. I’ve seen it happen in many instances in people around me.
So I guess what I want to say, while I believe it’s very important to condemn the events of last week, it is also important not to lose sight of the real context and underlying problems, or of the fact that the Muslim world is very diverse although the media tends to focus only on the most exciting/aggravating parts of it. These rioters are by far a minority (but sadly it only takes a few people to burn down an embassy) and come from exceedingly bad living conditions. I hope I made sense…
Two thoughts sprang to mind as I read your post.
First, I couldn’t escape the parallels between the rioters and Al Qaeda and our own Tea Party and the Koch Brothers.
Second was the degree of trust people put in governments. The solution, of course, is for governments to be of the people and by the people, which is what our electoral process is supposed to solve (but obviously with non-trivial problems). The Middle East, for the most part, has no such democratic history — which would explain the rightful distrust the people have in their governments. The governed grant consent much more readily to themselves and their own representatives than they do to those who claim right through might.
b&
Thank you for sharing your valuable insiders perspective. It would be great if you could frequent this website and comment on these sorts of topics on a regular basis.
Given the diversity of the Muslim world that you refer to it is important to reiterate the fact that it is Islam that unites the “few people” you refer to. I would be more convinced by the “bad apples” argument if the social and legal conditions in countries where Islam predominates were not so backward. The “few people” who riot and kill do so in an environment that is systematically hostile to women and that fails to treat non-believers with the respect that is granted Muslims who live in non-Islam-dominated lands.
The “few people” who riot and kill do so in an environment that is systematically hostile to women and that fails to treat non-believers with the respect that is granted Muslims who live in non-Islam-dominated lands.
Sam Harris quotes more than 50 passages from the Koran that express contempt and hostility towards non-Muslims here:
http://www.truthdig.com/images/diguploads/verses.html
Sam summarizes:
Yes, the Q’ran is rife with contempt and violent hostility towards outsiders.
But so is the Bible. Hello? The Plagues? Hell for non-Christians? Not to mention all the explicit quote-worthy passages, such as the one that you can have any slave you like amongst the foreigners or Luke 19:27.
There’s clearly a difference between the modern expressions of each religion, and we know it doesn’t have anything at all to do with their respective holy books because they’re both powerfully toxic (even if one might be more toxic than the other).
And we even know that it doesn’t have anything to do with the religion itself, since what Christianity did in the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Conquest of the New World puts the modern antics of the Muslim world to shame. On the other side of the coin, as others have pointed out, there was a time loooooooong ago when it was the Islamic world that was enlightened and leading the way on peace and science.
Clearly, something else is at play here than just the particular flavor of religion. And, if you can’t figure that out, then, as Sam points out, you’re the one in need of the services of a neurologist.
b&
Clearly, something else is at play here than just the particular flavor of religion.
No it is precisely the “particular flavor of religion.” Namely, the flavor called Islam. And the passages from the Koran cited by Sam Harris help to show why Islam is so profoundly and relentlessly hostile towards non-Muslims. There is simply no remotely comparable degree of hostility towards non-believers by Christians, Jews or Buddhists.
So, if it’s religion that causes Muslims to act on those passages in the Q’ran, what’s the religious principle that prevents Christians from following the command of Jesus in Luke 19:27 to kill all non-Christians, or of Jews from following in Moses’s genocidal model?
And if the current uprisings are uniquely attributable to Islam, what non-religious explanation do you have for the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Conquistadores?
Lastly, how do you explain the relatively peaceful nature of the Islamic world during the time of the European Dark Ages? Were they not True Muslims then?
Your cake. It cannot be et and haved simultaneously.
b&
what’s the religious principle that prevents Christians from following the command of Jesus in Luke 19:27 to kill all non-Christians, or of Jews from following in Moses’s genocidal model?
I don’t think either Jesus or Moses taught Christians to “kill all non-Christians,” but the question is irrelevant. For whatever reasons, Christianity has largely embraced the principle of tolerance for other religions. So have Judaism and Buddhism and other faiths. Islam has not. Given the profoundly intolerant teachings of Islam’s sacred writings, this isn’t terribly surprising. It’s one of the features of Islam that makes it so violent and destructive.
And if the current uprisings are uniquely attributable to Islam, what non-religious explanation do you have for the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Conquistadores
I don’t have a non-religious explanation for those things. The Crusades and the Inquisition were clearly motivated by religion. Fortunately, Christians no longer support such barbarity.
A theory which explains everything explains nothing.
You’ve just claimed that religion is responsible for the current unrest in the Islamic world; for the lack of unrest in the Western world; and for the historical unrest in the Western world. And you’ve presumably also conceded that it’s responsible for the lack of unrest in the historical Islamic world.
Again, I’m not at all trying to excuse any religion, especially Islam. I’m just trying to get you to understand that this is an extremely complicated matter and that there’s a lot more going on than can be explained from a bunch of passages in a slim book. If you focus all your attention on those passages, you’ll not only have no clue as to what’s going on but you won’t have a prayer at understanding what can and should be done about it.
Worse, simply blaming Islam is a non-starter. What, you think that there’s some potential utility in telling people who want to behead all those who insult Muhammad that they should abandon Islam? Would you tell them that at the point of a nuclear bomb? Or does it just give you license to sit smugly superior behind your computer and congratulate yourself on your rational superiority?
b&
You’ve just claimed that religion is responsible for the current unrest in the Islamic world
I claim that Islam is responsible for the violence and oppression that is characteristic of the Islamic world. The causal relationship is obvious, right down to the explicit citations of Islamic scriptures to justify barbaric laws and customs. Islam doesn’t simply “play a role.” It is the foundation of everything from the intolerance towards non-Muslims (“infidels”) to the appalling treatment of women within Islamic countries themselves.
The absurdity of the claim that the violence and oppression of the Islamic world can be attributed to U.S. military action is illustrated not only by the fact that the violence and oppression long predates — by centuries — any American involvement, but by the fact that some of the worst human rights abusers of all (e.g. Saudi Arabia) are U.S. military allies.
Worse, simply blaming Islam is a non-starter. What, you think that there’s some potential utility in telling people who want to behead all those who insult Muhammad that they should abandon Islam?
Yes, of course I do. Just as I think there’s “utility” in telling Christians that they should abandon Christianity. Religion is harmful nonsense. Encouraging people to abandon it is a good thing.
Or does it just give you license to sit smugly superior behind your computer and congratulate yourself on your rational superiority?
When you don’t have an argument, you make a nasty personal attack. It doesn’t matter what the topic is, you do it every time. And your personal attacks get more and more vicious as you go along.
Remind us, Gary.
What was Osama bin Laden’s nationality, and what was his official position in it before his fall from grace?
What was the nationality of the 19 hijackers on 9/11?
How many bombs has the US dropped on hostile targets in Saudi Arabia in the past century?
Who bought the biggest single sale of arms in US history, and when?
Who’s the world’s largest producer of oil and who’re said producers two biggest customers?
Now, one last trio of questions. What is the official state religion of the country that was the answer to the other questions; what proportion of its population are adherents of said religion; and how many large-scale violent uprisings have there been in that country over the past few decades?
I mean, really? You’re attempting to prove your point that Islam by its very nature is the driving force behind the violent unrest in the Middle East…and you cite Saudi Fucking Arabia as your example?
Wow.
Time for me to step out of this one — you’ve gone right off the deep end, and I’m sure as hell not going to reach you.
b&
Another one of your common tactics when you don’t have an argument is to ask a bunch of weirdly irrelevant questions.
To answer your first one: Osama bin Laden was a Saudi. Considering that I just mentioned that Saudi Arabia is one of the worst Islamic nations, I’m not sure why anyone would find it surprising that a leading proponent of Islamic violence and oppression was a Saudi…
“… These rioters are by far a minority …”
I appreciate your opinion… but how do you know that your feelings on this matter are objective?
The Pew surveys indicate that in many Muslim communities, the percentage of Muslims who are willing to use violence to defend their religion are – to this Western observer – shockingly high. In some places in the Middle east, for example, this demographic is not a minority at all, but a majority.
I actually found the “Innocence of Muslims” trailer to be pretty funny. The B-movie quality just made it seem like a bad ripoff of Conan. I get that it was designed specifically to make Islam look as bad as possible, but I don’t see that as a great crime when most of the media is hellbent on presenting Islam as being all rainbows and sunshine and tolerance when it emphatically is not.
Depressingly on-topic…in the same fundraiser where Romney said he didn’t care about half of the American population and wasn’t interested in doing anything for them, he also admitted that he’s given up all hope of a peaceful two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-romney-middle-east-video-20120918,0,1384410.story
At least we don’t have to worry about him making it to the White House….
b&
I’m far less concerned about what Romney or Obama or any future administration thinks about the viability or lack thereof of a lasting peace solution than I am about the possibility that one or both of the two sides to the issue might give up.
Follow the link. Giving up is precisely Romney’s strategy — just as he’s given up on the half of Americans (including lots of Republicans and a significant number of multi-millionares, by the way) who pay no income taxes.
(Many of those who don’t pay income taxes still pay payroll taxes, capital gains taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, and all sorts of other taxes. Many are retirees, some just have really good tax accountants and / or lots of deductions such as for children and charity. And, yes, most of them are paid so little at their jobs that they qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit.)
But, yes. It’s the “giving up” that’s the problem, which is why I’m glad that Romney is doing such a spectacular job at sabotaging his own campaign that there’s no danger of him giving up on the Middle East from the Oval Office.
b&
I just don’t see any future administration (Romney or Obama) having much enthusiasm for pushing peace talks with the same doggedness that they’ve displayed in the past. If there is to be progress, it will come from one or both of the parties directly involved.
Jerry you are missing one big part of the picture: Any protest that happens in Iran or any other similarly undemocratic country is organized by the goverment/dictorship or the forces aligned with it.
I’ll stick to Iran because it’s my home country and I’m more familiar with it. It’s basically the standard procedure of the Iranian government to bus its fundamentalist supporters from around the country to “demonstrate” or to pretend to be students or perform any other media appearance. I am not saying that “muslims” are not rioting and killing and burning people over this movie but you should be aware that there are many definitions of “muslims”. There is the government’s of definition of ‘muslim’ which includes having a certain political ideology and alingment with the goverment that grants them the ‘right’ to protest; and then there is the common-sense definition of a ‘muslim’ that does not include any political baggage. This second definition does not necessarily give the ‘muslims’ any rights even in these ‘muslim’ countries. In other words, in other to be seen rioting, destroying, smashing things in public and in a dictorship, you should be the right kind of ‘muslim’.
Mo needs thicker skin. Are all prophets this sensitive?
“Are all prophets this sensitive?”
They are a flimsy lot which is surprising considering their ready access to the most awesomest being in the universe.
Yep: God the Omnipotent, the Invulnerable, has such a thin skin that he can’t take even the mildest of teasing, and his Divine Over-Sensitivity (would that be suprasensus divinitatis?) extends even unto his BFFs.
Mo is long dead. He is not the one being sensitive.
Not sure if anybody can answer this, but why do news outlets always seem to refer to Muhammad as ‘The Prophet Muhammad’, rather than simply ‘Muhammad’? They do not refer to Jesus as Christ, which is reasonable seeing as how, the opinions of a billion delusional people aside, Jesus was not really the Messiah. Similarly, Muhammad was not really a prophet, and I see no reason for news outlets to refer to him as one. Is this a new thing? Is there any data available on usage, etc.?
Possibly because Mohammed is also a popular personal name in Muslim cultures, hence a need for disambiguation? And I’m not convinced that people don’t refer to “Christ” about as often as they refer to “Jesus”.
So I’m not ready to declare a case of unusual privilege here just yet, if that’s what you’re getting at.
Eamon– I was not referring to “people” (I watch sports, and post-game interviews are filled with reference to ‘Christ’), I was referring to media outlets, which generally use ‘Jesus’ (I do not recall ever seeing ‘Christ’ in a newspaper article, unless it was in a quote). I assume there are some AP usage rules/recommendations on the issue or something.
And I was asking if this is a new phenomenon, not necessarily charging unusual privilege. Perhaps news folks are simply trying to distinguish between the many people today named Mohammad and the person they are named for, but ‘Founder of Islam’ would seem to be both sufficient and more accurate than ‘The Prophet’, which is both inaccurate (because like every other human ever Mohammad never actually talked to angles) and unnecessary.
In reply to GaryW:
“Whatever your opinion of the morality of American military action in the middle east, it didn’t cause practises like executing people for having homosexual sex or throwing acid in women’s faces for bringing ‘dishonor’ to their families. ”
What I am saying, here (and what Ben Goren has also been saying) is that it resolves nothing to see religion purely on its own, separate from any social or political context. I’m also saying that if *our governments* are in part responsible for contributing to that context, then we must recognize this and not fool ourselves into thinking that we are not involved.
As I see it, religions are based on false premises and false assumptions. But the ways in which these premises and assumptions are *expressed* depends upon political and social conditions.
Judaism and christianity are not as violent as they were; but islam remains extremely violent in certain countries under certain conditions. Is it any coincidence, do you think, that many of these countries have been ruled by dictators propped up or even imposed by Western governments? Is it any coincidence that many of these countries have been invaded and remain occupied? Is it any coincidence that these dictatorships, wars and occupations have made it almost impossible (until very recently) for people to stand up for themselves and their human rights in *political* struggles?
When you deprive people of political tools for rebellion, they fall back upon whatever means of revolt are available to them. In many islamic countries, the one tool still available to the oppressed is fundamentalism. And fundamentalism will remain their only perceived option, until we stop supplying arms and cash to dictators, until we stop waging pre-emptive wars and drone attacks, until we stand up and declare occupations and apartheid regimes immoral.
It seems to me, then, we have a choice. We can change our ways, and try to find other methods to deal with religious and secular differences, or we can go on bombing and occupying, while wondering why these “furriners” are so violently unreasonable.
What I am saying, here … is that it resolves nothing to see religion purely on its own, separate from any social or political context.
And I’m saying that that doesn’t make any sense. The “social and political context” in Islamic nations is the product of centuries of intense influence by the religion of Islam over almost every aspect of life. The politics and social structure and customs in Islamic countries are often directly lifted from the sacred writings of the religion. The reason they are so barbaric is that so many of the teachings of Islam are so barbaric. This has nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy.
It seems to me, then, we have a choice. We can change our ways, and try to find other methods to deal with religious and secular differences, or we can go on bombing and occupying
What “bombing and occupying?” The only Islamic country we might be said to be “occupying” is Afghanistan. That conflict was instigated by attacks against the United States by an international Islamic terrorist organization based in Afghanistan and supported by the Taliban government of that country. That government also had an appalling record of human rights abuses against its own citizens, especially women.
“The “social and political context” in Islamic nations is the product of centuries of intense influence by the religion of Islam over almost every aspect of life.”
And so was the Western civilisation shaped by the Christianity for the most of the last 2000 years. And it involved similar atrocities (burning witches at stake as a popular example). “Men’s ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.” I think the guy who said that is largely underestimated these days. People’s behaviour is largely shaped by the circumstances they have to live in – everywhere in the world more crimes, especially violent, are committed by people who live in poverty and have little access to healthcare, education and so on. And this creates the pressure for strong group consolidating behaviours and we vs them mentality and so on. Religions play very well into that but also ideologies like nationalism. You want to destroy fundamentalism you have to get rid of poverty and ignorance first.
Aaagh! I just watched 5 minutes of it, I couldn’t take any more. The acting! The dialogue! The production standards! I can’t remember ever seeing anything so bad.
If I was a Muslim, I would be totally offended that it’s so appallingly badly made. Attacking their religion with something as bad as that is a whole new insult in itself.
– got this from AVAAZ today:
Seven things you may have missed in the ‘Rage’:
http://en.avaaz.org/783/muslim-rage-protests-newsweek-salafists?utm_source=avaaz_newsletter&utm_medium=blast&utm_campaign=stop-the-clash