A REVIEW OF THE INFAMOUS "MUHAMMAD MOVIE" (featured above) AND COMMENT ON ITS RECEPTION
I'm not one for censorship. Of any sort. There are some thing I don't have a particularly high threshold of tolerance for - things like ignorance and lack of cognitive abilities - yet I still would not expect people who display such traits to be censored for my sake. Nor for the sake of public safety, by the way, because I'm of the opinion that people who react to film, art, music, literature, journalism, or any non-violent action with violence are as much part of the problem as those to be censored.
That being said, I simply HAD to watch the Sam Bacile film that's had the Islamic world in uproar recently.
Now, I love taking the piss out of religion and religious bigotry, and all the contradictive, vindictive and ridiculous things that you can find in it. But this is not comedy, or anything of any intellectual value (save for the anthropologist studying the sorts of brain-dead racist scum that made it) - this film is as close to pornography for the hard-core born-again/evangelical redneck Christian (NB: not all Christians are like this, not even all evangelicals but please don't tell me off for using a stereotype that in this case really does fit) to fondle their pencil-dick 'intellects' to. In other words, its message is on the one hand that Christianity (with its somewhat misguided but kindly brother Judaism) is RIGHT, and that ALL Muslims a) are immoral, rude and savage, b) want to kill and rape pretty Christian women, and best of all, c) indulge in the apparently exquisite pleasure of fucking children.
I'm gonna ignore the rather overdone accents, the blacking-up, the really crude and lewd directorial instruction to the actor playing Muhammad himself, especially in that almost-oral-sex-scene... We should perhaps even give Sam Bacile credit for only going so far as calling the Islamic prophet "Muhammad, the father unknown" rather than outright "Muhammad the Bastard". That's subtlety for you.
Anyways, my point is that really what's most offensive - aside from the acting - is the content. And it's offensive even to an atheist like me, who would in many ways probably agree with Bacile on the objective truth of the claims of Islam. There are several reasons for this:
1) The outright hypocrisy of some piece of shit intolerant Christian bigot in cherry-picking all the really shitty stuff out of scriptures, even things like the section at 06:02 which portrays the plotting of the overtaking of some settlement, when you can find examples of exactly the same kind of thing in the Old Testament.
Even then, by the way, there is also no clear message given.
On the one hand (with regards to paganism):
"If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction."
On the other (with regards to the Canaanite - i.e. pagan - city of Ai):
"When the Israelite army finished killing all the men outside the city, they went back and finished off everyone inside. So the entire population of Ai was wiped out that day – twelve thousand in all. For Joshua kept holding out his spear until everyone who had lived in Ai was completely destroyed. Only the cattle and the treasures of the city were not destroyed, for the Israelites kept these for themselves, as the LORD had commanded Joshua."
I'd call that a direct contradiction.
Oh, and don't tell me that O.T. stuff doesn't apply anymore - you still hate gays and believe the world was created in 6 days, that there was a talking snake, and that the entire population of this planet came from two people...
With regards to the Jewish god not asking people to convert to Judaism in the Old Testament... no, he preferred to command the wholesale slaughter of people who were not Jewish; of whole pagan cities, of those who strayed, of people who were not circumcised and therefore not "properly" Jewish. Etc-fucking-etc.
... oh shit, I forgot - I kinda shot myself in the foot here didn't I? Because telling you brain-dead bastards that you've the same abominable shit in YOUR 'holy' book only proves the point that the Qur'an is plagiarised from the Torah and the New Testament, as you also stated in the film with regards to how the Qur'an was written.
Seriously? Are you trying to tell me that the Torah and the New Testament - i.e. the scriptures that in combination make up the Christian Bible, don't try to disassociate Jesus from the rest of it! - is not plagiarised? So that the figure of Yahweh himself is copied from Canaanite religion, the Noah's flood thing from the much, MUCH older Epic of Gilgamesh, and a lot of Jesus' life was copied from the supposed lives of other deities and mythical figures from the general Mediterranean/Middle Eastern/North African area (Mithras, Osiris, Hercules, Orestes, Dionysus etc), THAT doesn't bother you at all?
You, Sam Bacile and co., are fucking lunatics.
I mean, I'll give you that there is a hell of a lot of influence/re-telling of those texts in the Qur'an... the problem is, Mr Bacile, that this isn't viewed from the theological perspective as plagiarism because Islam does not disassociate itself from Judaism or Christianity. Its 'holy' book is seen as THEIR revelation from the same god as you have. There is no denial of the connection between your respective faiths on their part. The truth of your statements about the divine depend on looking at this in "spiritual" terms, whereby claims to divine inspiration are given the benefit of the doubt. In that respect, you really should extend the same courtesy to Islam.
But if we go into HISTORICAL terms, then I'd have no issues with you calling it that, since it is highly likely that the same as YOUR blabbery was plagiarised from the Sumerians, the Canaanites, the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, etc. the Arab religion of Islam took from the already prominent religions from that area to set up a "legitimate" religion and identity of their own, once polytheism no longer pandered. Do you not find it somehow odd to defend the divinity of your own scriptures when they are equally marred by plagiarism as those of the religion you have come to despise so much?
"What God is this that is such an oppressor and so unfair to the people?"
It's your god too, you imbecile.
And... consider these images. One if from your film, the other from my favourite religious satire, "Monty Python's Life of Brian"... do you really want to talk about plagiarism, Mr Bacile?
2) Going on to historical inaccuracy... I'm not a scholar of Islamic history, but even my feeble general knowledge tells me most of this is bullshit. To say that Islam says it isn't enough to believe in the one Abrahamic god, you have to declare Muhammad as his prophet... well, yes this is true to the extent that if you consider Islam to be truth, and therefore the universe functions according to it, you should subscribe to the notion that a 7th century merchant in Arabia got messages from a god if you want to reach paradise etc. It is also true that there are some, NOT ALL, who would say that you should either convert or die. But these are hardly in a majority. And historically, seeing as this film portrays explicitly the killing of Christians and Jews - there was for a long time, and still is even amongst peddlers of distasteful religious teaching like Dr Zakir Naik, this notion that the "people of the book", i.e. Christians and Jews, are to be respected and tolerated. That there is common ground between them because of the shared heritage of all three religions. Might I remind you that the only times I can think of in history where all three Abrahamic religions managed to live, integrate, and trade in peace were under Muslim rule: Moorish Spain (and I could really stop there, 'cause that was one awesome civilization)... there was also some caliphate/sultanate or other in Jerusalem (I'm sorry, I can't remember which) I read about once, where the Sultan threw gold pieces on a rubbish heap the Christians used in order to give them incentive to excavate what we now know as the Western Wall... oh and I'm not even mentioning the truce between Saladin and the Crusaders, where Saladin granted safe passage to pilgrims going to Jerusalem.
Obviously, this was ignored as it isn't convenient to the message of the film.
"The Pharaohs of Egypt believed in one god 5000 years ago" (08:20)??? By "Pharaohs" I take it you mean the PHARAOH (singular) Akhenaten who reigned around 1353-1336BCE... I mean, ok, maybe the plural was a typo in the script because at the end of his reign, the monotheistic beliefs he imposed were discarded and Amarna, the city he build as a city of his god, Aten (the sun disc) was abandoned. He was the only monotheistic Pharaoh of Egypt. But to set this film during the time of Muhammad, in the early 7th century CE, and then to say that Akhenaten, for the dates of whose reign we have precise archaeological proof, lived 5000 years before that... that would put his reign at around 4400BCE. This is in the pre-dynastic period in Ancient Egypt - i.e. there wereno Pharaohs; it is still the Neolithic. You know, it doesn't give me faith in your work, Mr Bacile, when you don't pay attention to this kind of thing whilst trying to promote this in part as a docu-drama. It's almost as though you were watching your favourite Evangelical television programme and heard the good pastor say "even the Pharaohs in Egypt believed in one god 5000 years ago", and decided to *cough* plagiarise *cough* And even if we do count from modern day (you can count, right?) even then it wouldn't correspond with the dates for Akhenaten's reign - you're just under 2000 years out.
I'm not going to even dignify the gay quip with a response, butwhat's so wrong with gay people anyway? Mr Bacile, I think that you and a hell of a lot of Muslims could sit down together and have a nice little homophobic bitch-fest. You really do have a lot in common.
And with regards to the child bride, Aisha... how many fucking times does one have to repeat that the historical and cultural context? Child marriage was commonplace from Asia to across Europe well into the Middle Ages. Christians did it too. It doesn't make it "moral" from our current, subjective and distinctly MODERN perspective, where life expectancy is much longer... and a Western perspective, idiosyncratic and by no means superior cultural perspective, that a girl does not reach sexual maturity when she begins menstruating ('cause when life past 25's uncertain, you don't wanna waste those eggs) but when she is emotionally ready... or when she marries, you religious might say, but we have SECULAR laws stating a minimum age to that which is usually 18 or 21.
3) The savagery you attempt to show on Muhammad's part is by no means worse than the savagery of the Biblical Jews against their enemies, nor the historical Christians who saw fit to murder "witches", scientists, Jews, Muslims, pagans, atheists, authors... and furthermore you forget that Muhammad's position as a general in 7th century Arabia would have meant that to retain power and control, he would have had to have made examples of those who disobeyed. In actual fact, he showed a hell of a lot of restraint more than most would have: he gave the Jewish occupants of a settlement 3 chances, and only when they betrayed by attempting for the third time to aid his enemies in overthrowing him, he had them all killed.
And if I'm allowed one reaaaaaally subjective statement, he also liked cats, which in my book makes him a good person :)
ANYWAY, as I said at the start, I respect Bacile's right to produce and distribute this kind of bullshit, since it is his, albeit retarded, opinion and one cannot cherry-pick who gets to have freedom of speech and who doesn't. Even while I simply cannot believe in their god, or any god, I will always defend any religious group when they are slandered... especially by pond-life like Mr Sam Bacile (which, incidentally, isn't apparently even the coward's real name).
What I can't respect is the reactions to this by some of the Muslim communities, especially in Libya and Egypt, who saw fit to react with violence. Firstly, nothing gives you the right to take a life, especially not for a crime not perpetrated by that individual or individuals. But even if you killed Bacile, as much as part of me would be glad that the world would be shorter of one instigator of bigotry and violence, it isn't your right. State your displeasure by all means, I would be pissed off too if I was in your shoes, but killing is a step too far. Doesn't your god actually explicitly tell you that killing is wrong? Oh, and if we are going to include any notion of holy war in this discussion... how incredibly insecure must you be to consider some lunatic American half-wit's badly produced, badly acted 15 minute film a direct threat to your religion? You guys have in the past built empires spanning several continents, built the most gorgeous buildings, advanced science and medicine and mathematics, written the most beautiful poetry, and so much of that was inspired by your faith... don't try to tell me that that entire heritage could come crumbling down because of insults. Please.
In absolute honesty, I cannot think of a less productive reaction on your part than turning into an angry and savage mob, wielding weapons against innocents, and killing people who do not share your beliefs IN RESPONSE TO A FILM WHICH SAID YOU WERE PRECISELY THAT.
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