"First as tragedy, then as farce" is the way history repeats itself as Karl Marx's words continue to teach us. But after an amateur anti-Islamic video went viral in North Africa leaving four state department officials killed in Libya and the US Embassy in Cairo breached, there is hardly anything farcical about this latest round of anti-Muslim provocation and senseless retaliatory violence.
We have been here before. The late Ayatollah Khomeini's notorious edict against Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses in 1989, The Danish Cartoon controversy in 2005, and Pastor Terry Jones's Qur'an burning stunt in 2010. Anyone who has a inkling of familiarity with the Muslim world knows that sacrilege and blasphemy are not understood as acts of free speech, political expression, or artistic creativity. No, they are bright red lines that promise public panic and guarantee violence. Couple that reality with two centuries of colonial and neo-imperial European domination of the greater Middle East and you have the perfect storm for an international communications disaster. So, as history repeats itself, the only thing ludicrous is the incessant stubbornness of both the West's commitment to "free speech" and the Muslim world's rush to violence, the irony of which is lost upon them both.
But first on the film: Muhammad: Prophet of the Muslims produced by Isreali citizen and California resident Sam Bacile and promoted by the extremists Christians Terry Jones and Morris Sadek is a purely venomous and malicious mockery of the life of Muhammad. Yes, Muhammad, the founder of Islam, the man whom 1.5 billion Muslims are taught to love more than their own selves and strive to emulate in their constant being. Unlike the Danish Cartoons or Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, Bacile and his financiers intended only to provoke outrage and violence and not to make an artistic or political statement. Even Geert Van Wilder's nonsensical propaganda, Fitna, or Hirsi Ali's provocation, Submission, can try to make the case that there is some kind of message behind their productions. But one look at Sam Bacile's film will demonstrate that its vitriolic message elevates it to the status of a hate crime.
The movie depicts Muhammad as sexually licentious, insane, and fanatically violent. It draws upon (in the most uncreative ways) a long line of anti-Muslim stereotypes that date to the crusades. In short these stereotypes are to Islamophobia what blood libel is anti-Semitism.
What is farcical is not only that Muslims who murder in the name of Islam reinforce the very stereotypes that caused their outrage but also that western democratic societies which continue to protect what amounts to hate speech reinforce their own stereotypes in the Muslim world as Godless moral relativists. Even more ironic however is that the chorus of condemnation on all sides will be loudly sounded, yet there will be no mechanism of force or law to stop this deadly child's play of provocation and retaliation.
Consider this: how is it possible that not the FBI nor Secretary of Defense Robert Gates could stop Pastor Terry Jones from putting the Quran on Trial and burning it when it was well known that the act would cause violence around the world and harm the security of the US personnel abroad? Likewise, how is possible that despite the most elaborate condemnations from Muslim religious authorities around the world that they could not stop a mob of thugs from storming the consulate in Benghazi and murdering the ambassador that helped them overthrow Qaddafi?
Another layer of irony, still, will be our own melancholy reactions. As more protests unfold in the coming days and more violence abounds, the average global citizen will simply shake their heads, dumbfounded, and make hollow appeals for calm and reason. What we have yet to understand is that whether it takes the shape of Muhammad or the concept of Free Speech, the sacred remains untouchable. Until we find a system of law that limits the abuse of our sacred symbols, we can count on Marx's promise that our coming days will be filled with nothing but farce.
Everyday I just want to blow everything up and hurt people cause that's definitely what Moslems do, right?!
On another note, America is number one! America's like the best country ever, like totally, oh my Gosh, like...you know???
Please people, a little less ignorance, a little more perspective. Frankly I am now just offended, both by the Moslems' violent means to an end and by the plain ignorance displayed in these comments.
This is just one area where there is no reconciliation between the Western and Middle Eastern points of view. To those who subscribe to the latter, free speech is something that simply does not extend to insulting the Prophet. In the Western view, anything's fair game. Neither view is ever going to change, and they will never be compatible.
Must have been schooled just liek Obama.
What a totally pointless article.... except to bring the right or free speech into light as a justified reason for people to kill.
There are NO WORDS...spoken or written that justify taking a life.
NONE.
Freedom of speech and freedom to worship.
Unless we fight to keep them..... they will soon be gone forever.
The people behind the film are scoundrels who were more concerned with promoting their ugly little vision than Artistic accomplishment. Without looking at the "message" for a moment, as a piece of Cinematic Art, it's about on the level of "Piss Christ", a piece of "Art" that was actually a 1987 photograph by the American artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine. The piece was a winner of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition,[1] which was sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a United States Government agency that offers support and funding for artistic projects.
As a Believer, I found it denigrating, and even more so as the highly secularized National Endowment For The Arts promoted it. As an Artists, I decided it wasn't even a good "Dada Ready Made"...Serrano is NO Marcel Duchamp-HE had a sense of humor. So do I.
Continuing to even discuss this bit of home-made s#@t gives it more publicity.
It will go away, when the rest of us stop giving it undeserving attention.
There are A-Hol*& who will denigrate abuse defile any one else's belief....many times to find their own moment of fame... often to satisfy their need to be abused in return... or justbecause they are....stupid.
We live in a country where we have accepted that anyone can express their opinion....
we just need to understand that there are others who hate us for that liberty.
This is not about religion... it is not about Christians, Jews and Muslims.... it is about teh few who want power over the many and are twisting the concept of their religious beliefs to justify corrupt, immoral persecution of their own brethren. ..... by any means.
Curiously of course it defies their own religious doctrine.... highlighting the insincerity of their convictions.
again.... VERY well posted.
All too often this is the response of a few Americans. We must curtail our freedoms, because those who have only lived under oppression and have no understanding of how our freedoms work are unable to control their anger and violence.
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-day-of-rage-in-rome.html
If Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Mormons, and Jews can all deal with being offended by this type of speech, art, movies, or whatever without resorting to violence, why is it that Muslims in that area of the world cannot?
http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/10/04/outrage-art-exhibit-depicting-jesus-sex-act-boosts-gallery-visits/
Compare the effects that this film had on the Muslims with the outcry from liberal community regarding that kid who got filmed having sex with his partner, and uploaded on youtube, which allegedly led to his suicide.
......he is proven right once again....
How about that Samule Johnson...a man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one...no more right to say a rude thing to another man than to knock him down.......
f&f'd