"Innocence of Muslims" so-called movie

[Pandemonium]

I can't believe anyone would riot in the streets over this ridiculous so-called movie. It's not even Ed Wood-level lousy.

[mockbee]

Egyptian protesters throw stones at riot police during clashes near Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo on Friday.

CAIRO — Anti-American protests inspired by a video denigrating the Prophet Muhammad entered a fourth straight day here in the Egyptian capital and other demonstrations erupted in much of the Middle East after Friday Prayer — an occasion often associated with public displays of dissent.

Egyptian protesters throw stones at riot police during clashes near Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo on Friday.

Witnesses in Cairo said protests that first flared on Tuesday — the day J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador in Libya, was killed in an attack in neighboring Libya — continued sporadically early Friday, with protesters throwing rocks and gasoline bombs near the American Embassy and the police firing tear gas.

In Lebanon, one person was killed and 25 injured as protesters attacked restaurants, while in Sudan demonstrations flared outside of the German and British embassies. There was also turmoil in Yemen, Bangladesh, Qatar, Kuwait, and Iraq. Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in Jerusalem, and held protests in the West Bank and Gaza.

State media in Egypt said that more than 220 people had been injured in the clashes since Tuesday.

Can anyone explain to me what the hell is wrong with these people who are protesting? They are protesting what??!!! (yes, I understand that there are fundamentalists but the Koran does not explicitly prohibit images of Muhammad...... )

The permissibility of depictions of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, has long been a concern in the history of Islam. Oral and written descriptions are readily accepted by all traditions of Islam, but there is disagreement about visual depictions.[1][2] The Quran does not explicitly forbid images of Muhammad, but there are a few hadith (supplemental teachings) which have explicitly prohibited Muslims from creating visual depictions of figures.

[Romeo]

I thought the movie was a joke because it is so amature-ish and so badly acted.

[sinep]

i think the middle east is probably just a pretty boring place with no beer and no pork.

protesting is probably the most fun they have all month. if i were there i'd be looking for excused to protest also.

[Hype]

In Saudi and a few other Arab countries, there are public beheadings... So ... there's that. Also, lots of people do drink alcohol, they're just not open about it... sort of like perpetual teenage-hood (a guy I worked with told me stories about how they'd go down to these hills in the middle of nowhere in Jordan and just get wasted on beer...)

[Artemis]

This is the 3rd day now that this nonsense is going on.
The news of the protesters and the growing anti-western sentiment is really making me angry. I'm angry at how out of proportion their reaction is to some asshole's lame movie. Violence isn't the way to garner empathy and understanding. All it does is create more hatred.

[Hype]

This is the 3rd day now that this nonsense is going on.
The news of the protesters and the growing anti-western sentiment is really making me angry. I'm angry at how out of proportion their reaction is to some asshole's lame movie. Violence isn't the way to garner empathy and understanding. All it does is create more hatred.

http://www.economist.com/node/21562960? ... ntcalmdown

Ignorance of the way the West works in many Muslim countries makes rabble-rousing easy. Protesters at the American embassy in Cairo on September 11th erroneously believed the offensive film to have been shown on “American state television”: in a place with a weak tradition of independent broadcasting, that claim is not as absurd as it might be elsewhere.

[Artemis]

I kind of agree with Bernard Lewis here. My perception is that the brand of Islam these protesters practise makes them feel inferior and humiliated...impotent in a sense. So, they look to blame someone-the west in this case- for their problems.

So why the ire? In a hallmark essay in 1990 called “The Roots of Muslim Rage”, Bernard Lewis, an Anglo-American commentator on Islam, blamed a mentality twisted by history. He cited the obligation of holy war, dating from the faith’s turbulent birth and shaped by centuries of setbacks ranging from the retreat from Europe to Western imperialism, and even the challenge to Muslim male authority from rebellious children and emancipated women. The result was an inferiority complex, in which humiliation was compounded by Western ignorance.

[Hype]

I kind of agree with Bernard Lewis here. My perception is that the brand of Islam these protesters practise makes them feel inferior and humiliated...impotent in a sense. So, they look to blame someone-the west in this case- for their problems.

So why the ire? In a hallmark essay in 1990 called “The Roots of Muslim Rage”, Bernard Lewis, an Anglo-American commentator on Islam, blamed a mentality twisted by history. He cited the obligation of holy war, dating from the faith’s turbulent birth and shaped by centuries of setbacks ranging from the retreat from Europe to Western imperialism, and even the challenge to Muslim male authority from rebellious children and emancipated women. The result was an inferiority complex, in which humiliation was compounded by Western ignorance.

It reminds me a lot of the historical (and sometimes current) treatment of Jews (or just an attitude toward "Jews") by Christians in Europe and the Slavic world. There's still a tendency among poor Slavs, and some racist idiots in North America to blame "The Jews" for their being poor, because "The Jews" control the businesses and the banks, etc.

The pogroms back in the day were often triggered by a bad harvest, or by a rumour started by a priest about Jews...

The behaviour is almost identical... anger and fear rising to a fever-pitch, sometimes resulting in mass-violence.

[chaos]

This is horrific. German and British embassies have also been attacked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/world ... =1&_r=1&hp

Anti-American rage that began this week over a video insult to Islam spread to nearly 20 countries across the Middle East and beyond on Friday, with violent and sometimes deadly protests that convulsed the birthplaces of the Arab Spring revolutions, breached two more United States Embassies and targeted diplomatic properties of Germany and Britain.
. . .
The State Department confirmed that protesters had penetrated the perimeters of the American Embassies in the Tunisian and Sudanese capitals, and said that 65 embassies or consulates around the world had issued emergency messages about threats of violence, and that those facilities in Islamic countries were curtailing diplomatic activity. The Pentagon said it dispatched Marines to protect embassies in Yemen and Sudan.

[mockbee]

Soooooooo..... let me get this straight. The US and friends go in and starts a war in Iraq and Afghanistan and sends drones into Pakistan and god knows where else and kills well over 100,000 innocent people (see figure and quote below...not counting Al Qaeda and Taliban and other people directly trying to kill our troops......) and the fundamentalist islam world is going ape shit over THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Courtesy of NYTimes

Afghanistan, Iraq Wars Killed 132,000 Civilians, Report Says

By Spencer Ackerman
Email Author
June 29, 2011 |
9:31 am |
Categories: Info War

At least 132,000 civilians have died from 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new study by Brown university. And that’s a conservative estimate.

No one can say with certainty how many civilians have died in these wars. But researchers at Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies found that between 12,000 and 14,000 of them perished in Afghanistan — the most recent of which came from Tuesday’s audacious insurgent attack on Kabul’s most famous hotel. Another 120,000 died in Iraq. An estimated 35,000 more lost their lives in Pakistan, where the United States is fighting a shadow war against terror groups and militants. (Although the report says it can’t “disaggregate civilian from combatant death” there, which is kind of a big deal.)

[Hype]

the fundamentalist islam world is going ape shit over THIS

But that's just it... they aren't really becoming violent just because of some guy's shitty movie. It's a trigger, not a main cause.

[mockbee]

Why wasn't the trigger 132,000 innocent people dead?

[Artemis]

Why wasn't the trigger 132,000 innocent people dead?

because fundamentalist islam doesn't give a shit about innocent people. they care only about control and furthering their own agenda.

[Hype]

Why wasn't the trigger 132,000 innocent people dead?

I assume because that didn't all happen at the same time, and each civilian casualty affects only a few people at a time, and they may simply feel powerless (unless they join the opposition, as it were). But if you get a few thousand people all triggered at the same time, each with pent-up emotion from decades of insanity... well, then you get senseless violence triggered by something that doesn't make immediate sense.

[Essence_Smith]

Without saying too much, I think its far to easy to only look at what's being reported in our press and sit from where we are and go "gee why are they mad?"

Why did people riot after the Rodney King situation? Why were jewish people mad about that Mel Gibson movie a few years back?

We could speculate all day...dismiss their anger and actions as sensless, etc...at the end of the day violence is USUALLY senseless...

I try the best I can to understand as many sides of a conflict as I can...but I think some are too quick to use the word ISLAM as if the system of beliefs itself is to blame for the negative behavior...not necessarily fair or sensible imho...I don't have a problem with people condemning the behavior...I DO have a problem with people saying its because of ISLAM...

[Hype]

Without saying too much, I think its far to easy to only look at what's being reported in our press and sit from where we are and go "gee why are they mad?"

Why did people riot after the Rodney King situation? Why were jewish people mad about that Mel Gibson movie a few years back?

We could speculate all day...dismiss their anger and actions as sensless, etc...at the end of the day violence is USUALLY senseless...

I try the best I can to understand as many sides of a conflict as I can...but I think some are too quick to use the word ISLAM as if the system of beliefs itself is to blame for the negative behavior...not necessarily fair or sensible imho...I don't have a problem with people condemning the behavior...I DO have a problem with people saying its because of ISLAM...

That seems pretty well right to me. The only thing I'd also add is just a clarification of what I see as two ways in which "beliefs" can go (morally) wrong:

1. Particular beliefs that are false.
2. A prescribed set of behaviours with associated beliefs.

In the first case, you get things like erroneous beliefs about women or Jews or whoever. E.g., "women shouldn't show skin, because that tempts men/rapists", or "The Jews are all greedy bastards who control the money supply and are making me poor." These sorts of beliefs transcend religion/culture -- they are ubiquitous (though you could sub-in/out different groups of people in different places based on historical indoctrination).

In the second case, you get things like Surah 4, verse 15 of the Qu'ran, which says: "Those who commit unlawful sexual intercourse of your women - bring against them four [witnesses] from among you. And if they testify, confine the guilty women to houses until death takes them or Allah ordains for them [another] way."

When people condemn "Islam", they may refer to behaviours or beliefs of either type. The problem is confusing erroneous beliefs people happen to have with religiously or culturally generated beliefs which are straightforwardly "justified" by a particular religious or cultural dogma. Both things happen.

One argument against Islam itself might, on the face of it, be that unlike Christianity, many more Muslims take the commands of the Qu'ran literally, and put them into practice than do Christians. But many Christians (maybe even most, since there are two billion of them, and many of these live in places where gay people are still treated like shit) even today are homophobic, and often justify this on the basis of Leviticus (while also, idiotically, eating shellfish and pork). It wouldn't follow from Christians behaving the same way that Islam was exempt from criticism (both religions should be criticized for the immoral contents of their holy books and religious edicts).

But it doesn't follow that individual actions can be attributed directly to the existence of the religion itself, or any kind of generalization about what the religion amounts to in practice. There certainly isn't anything in the Qu'ran, or as far as I know in any Hadith that says "When some guy does something you find offensive in some other country, go apeshit and attack the fuck out of that country's embassy in your country." So the reasons why people do this must be different.

[clickie]

Man...people will believe in whatever they choose and we cant do shit about it..
Eventually religion will continue to dwindle but people will always be spiritual about things.

[Essence_Smith]

I'm with Chris Rock...fuck the records, fuck the movies...whatever happened to CRAZY?

[Pandemonium]

I'm with Chris Rock...fuck the records, fuck the movies...whatever happened to CRAZY?

There's something about the script dealing with your (ES') particular avatar that causes it to tile 5 - 6 times in a row horizontally across every reply you post when this site is viewed on an iPad. It's actually kinda funny. Just thought I'd mention that....

[Hype]

I really like one of the related videos:


I guess we can hope that Arabs get "less crazy" (especially those crazy Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia) oh and the non-Arab Muslims... the Shia in Iran, oh and uh... Pakistan... and Burma and Malaysia.