The Innocent of Islam excuse: jihadis conspire to be outraged
WHY are there riots in Middle East? Was Christopher Stevens, US Ambassador to Libya, murdered over a 14-minute clip of a pisspoor film called The Innocence of Islam? Julian Borger says he was. He tells Guardian readers:
The long fuse that led to the explosion of violence that killed the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was lit last summer in the pleasant hills of southern California, where a man who claims to be an Israeli-American real estate developer, Sam Bacile, set about making a film.
Sam Bacile is the fabrication of a Christian group.
The Guardian’s Andrew Brown agrees that the film was the cause of murder:
The material I have viewed, said to be linked to the US embassy attack, is purely and simply an incitement to religious hatred…it offends against the central values of liberal democracy. The justification of free speech put forward by John Stuart Mill is that the remedy for bad speech is better speech. But this presupposes an interest in truth, and perhaps some agreed means of deciding on it. It’s a system that breaks down when confronted with determined and malevolent liars.
Free speech is what it says it is. You either have it or you do not.
Green Left Weekly‘s Rachel Evans looks at the rioting in Sydney, Australia.She says:
This rally of 300-400 people included women and children, older men and young Muslims, were protesting against the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims, produced in California, which one woman at the rally described as “disgusting”. We had to protest this horrible film. If Jesus had been called horrible things in a film, Christians would have protested,” one of the women said.
But would they have carried sings calling for non-Christians to be decapitated? When Iranian paper Hamshahri created a contest to find the 12 “best” Holocaust cartoons, did Jews ask for suicide bombers to make a stand? You can mock religion – but not Islam. The jihadis have placed limits on your freedom of speech.
Says Evans:
They started praying, angry, but determined.
Angry prayer?
I think that if the police had left the protesters alone they would have marched, chanted and prayed in peace...
Get a load of those peaceful placards:
“Our dead are in paradise – your dead are in HELL”
“BEHEAD THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM”
Did a painfully stupid film trigger such outrage?
On September 30, 2005, Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Former British Foreign Minister Jack Straw called it “irresponsible“. In the ensuing protest, scores of people were killed. The cartoons were rubbish – as poorly executed as this anti-Islam film. But the imams who circulated the cartoons wanted it to be worse. In his letter of “apology” Jyllands-Posten editor Carsten Juste wrote:
“In our opinion the 12 cartoons were moderate and not intended to be insulting. They did not go against Danish laws, but have evidently offended many Muslims, for which we apologize. Meanwhile a couple of offending cartoons have circulated in the Muslim world which were never published in Jyllands-Posten and which we would never have published if they had been offered to us. We would have dismissed them on the grounds that they breached our ethical limits.”
Danish imams had included other faked images in their pamphlet.
Do we believe, really, that this dire film has triggered such outrage? These Muslims agree: it’s nonsense…
Posted: 17th, September 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
