The Middle East Problem

[Greenday]

This has just gotten plain ridiculous. A fourteen minute movie was made that basically kind of ripped on Islam (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsIqjg3VkrE). I watched it and quite frankly, I thought it was stupid and nothing to get upset over. Instead of just chalking it up to some asshole being an asshole, a large group of Muslims all over the Middle East storm US embassies (And a German embassy...?) burn their flags, then raise flags of jihad. In Libya, they shot bullets and rockets at the embassy, killing multiple people including the US ambassador. They take the action of one asshole and take it out on anyone American.

After seeing this gross overreaction, someone in France decided to laugh at their ridiculous and give them the middle finger by drawing a cartoon mocking Mohammad. Naturally, this pissed off the Middle East even more. More mobs have been attempting to storm American and French embassies across the Middle East.

Libya is trying to play it off as it being Al Qaeda doing the attacks. I don't buy it for a second. I think they are just trying to make excuses for what their people have done. I honestly think these people who are rioting need to grow up and just brush off the assholes like a normal adult does. Shit, if the Christians rioted every time someone bashed God or Jesus, the entire world would be up in flames.

America has sent Marines over to the embassies in the Middle East to help keep security. How long is it before the Marines shoot and kill rioters, then people in the Middle East will complain about how horrible America is for killing people.

Honestly, as long as people get offended over the most ridiculous shit, people are going to keep antagonizing them because they know they'll get a ridiculous response. It's like high school. Keep bullying someone if they keep giving you responses.

[Rapscallion]

This reaction from you is a perfect example of how insular many in the US are.

They shouldn't be upset? If you had the knowledge of other cultures, you'd know that they would have got upset over this sort of mention. Been plenty of examples of that over the years.

You're judging an entire culture by the way you would react. That's what we all do, but you've got to think on the fact that they are not you and will react differently.

There are two main branches of Islam - Sunni and Shia. From what I understand, they have a difference going back centuries over whether someone in their mythology was related to someone else or not. Other stuff exists as well, but that is a fairly strong basis for their faith.

I suspect that's what happened when this film was made - it's quite possible the maker knew that it would cause immense uproar and wanted them to react, in order to force 'the world's policeman' to crack down on on the Middle East.

Let's face it, this is a religion that protested strongly when a Danish newspaper printed cartoons of their prophet.

My solution for it is to get all the world's fundamentalists and send them to the Middle East from whence their ideas came. Move out everyone who's a moderate. Nuke the fucking lot.

It's the only way to be sure.

Rapscallion

[Greenday]

I understand not all Muslims are like this. I made friends from the Middle East in my time out there who are Muslim. They know it's just some random asshole and ignore it. But my post is directed at the dumbasses lighting embassies on fire over what one person did, as if it's somehow America's fault that someone abused their freedom of speech.

On another forum I'm on, someone suggested that if they keep getting offended over such silly stuff, we should airdrop DVDs of Mohammad gay porn all over the Middle East.

[AdminAssistant]

Salman Rushdie was on The Daily Show, and his reaction was, basically, these are people who have their lives so completely controlled by their governments, that they can't understand that the US government didn't personally approve this video. Also, extremists Muslim clerics/officials taking advantage and purposefully whipping their followers into a frenzy.

[TheHuckster]

Here's the thing: Feeling offended when someone makes a obscene video like this is perfectly fine. If you think your prophet, messiah, saint, or whoever was unfairly shown in a poor light, then fine. Express your condemnation of the film and move on. Look at the Da Vinci Code, which the Catholic church and other Christian denominations were offended by, and expressed such.

They didn't riot, blow up buildings, or kill people. There might have been some people who peacefully organized protests and boycotts at cinemas, but that, IMO, is perfectly fine.

I think the Muslims are perfectly entitled to condemn the film, make counterarguments against what the film says, and express their distaste for it. But that's where you draw the line. Violent behavior cannot be tolerated every time some group is offended by what another group says.

Sadly, I feel there is little to no hope of getting this idea into these rioters' and terrorists' heads.

[Andara Bledin]

In Libya, they shot bullets and rockets at the embassy, killing multiple people including the US ambassador.

From everything I've read about the Libya attack, it was an opportunistic terrorist movement taking advantage of the riots in other areas to launch a militaristic attack on the embassy there.

Considering that everywhere else, the people showed up with rocks and things like, say, molotov coctails and the Libya attackers showed up with military grade weaponry, I'm inclined to believe it was a terrorist group of some sort getting close in the guise of outrage over the stupid video.

^-.-^

[bara]

There are sadly a lot of people in the world who are easily controlled and manipulated. Some of this is can be blamed at the fact that this is pretty much always been the case in these regions. Some can be blamed on the people not caring whether they are being manipulated.

The best thing to do with these regions, is to leave them alone as much as possible. Why? Simple really, people have to want to change. We are not the worlds police. We cannot force people into changing and to have change thrust upon will make them angry and give those in power more ammunition in their propaganda.

I truly believe the best policy in dealing with the Middle East is benign neglect. As long as they aren't bothering us, we shouldn't bother them.

[crashhelmet]

I suspect that's what happened when this film was made - it's quite possible the maker knew that it would cause immense uproar and wanted them to react, in order to force 'the world's policeman' to crack down on on the Middle East.

Rapscallion

This. A million times this. In addition, I believe it was done to fuel up the Christian agenda here and show we can't allow Muslims in this country and why people need to vote Republican.

If I remember right, there was another "movie" released similar to this right before the 2008 election too.

[Greenday]

From everything I've read about the Libya attack, it was an opportunistic terrorist movement taking advantage of the riots in other areas to launch a militaristic attack on the embassy there.

Considering that everywhere else, the people showed up with rocks and things like, say, molotov coctails and the Libya attackers showed up with military grade weaponry, I'm inclined to believe it was a terrorist group of some sort getting close in the guise of outrage over the stupid video.

^-.-^

If it wasn't a terrorist attack though and just a mob, that'd sure be embarrassing for a government that was just put in power by the people being rioted against. Saying it was terrorists causing it sure is a convenient excuse to get out of that.

As for the latter, this is a country where the people just had an uprising in the last year. Average people have guns, rockets, etc. People go crazy over America having guns? Everyone seems to own guns in the Middle East.

[HYHYBT]

A large part of the trouble is that, even when people realize something is done specifically to manipulate them, they let it.

[BlaqueKatt]

This. A million times this. In addition, I believe it was done to fuel up the Christian agenda here and show we can't allow Muslims in this country and why people need to vote Republican.

actually like the danish cartoons(which the protestors were shown images that weren't even printed or drawn by anyone involved), some Arabic translator, translated some parts of the film and sent it to clerics to cause unrest, it's not a new film, no one cared until one person decided to use a poorly made film to further their agenda.

[Gravekeeper]

Salman Rushdie was on The Daily Show, and his reaction was, basically, these are people who have their lives so completely controlled by their governments, that they can't understand that the US government didn't personally approve this video.

This bears repeating. Several times. It's the crux of the issue and one many people, especially Americans in this case, simply do not understand.

These people do not have freedom of speech or freedom of the press. More importantly, they have absolutely no concept of freedom of speech. When something like this happens they blame the country of origin because to them if some dick cheese in America posts an offensive video it means that Obama personally approved and released it from the White House.

They perceive it as government sanctioned and endorsed. Because that's how everything is in their own country and their own country suppresses any knowledge of any other method of doing things. They have no concept and no knowledge of something like freedom of speech. This isn't some asshole on the internet to them. It's America, its people and its leaders as a whole.

If the Prime Minister of France came out tomorrow and officially declared that he, the entire government and the people of France had come to the conclusion that Jesus was gay and raped little boys. Then played a 15 minute video on national TV illustrating this point. You could be DAMN sure the southern US would react in a pretty similar fashion.

Throw in various governments and terrorist groups in the region with a vested interest in maintaining Death To America(tm) if only to keep people from thinking too much about their own country and this is what happens.

[fireheart17]

There was also a riot down here in Sydney. Which of course, has resulted in the usual tidal wave of "Go back to your own country", "Muslims are taking over the worlds" and so on. Unlike most cases however, the men who incited the riot have been charged.

David Penberthy (columnist) managed to put it into more perspective for the rest of us. Australia has 400,000 Muslims. That includes both migrants and Australian-born folks who converted. The number of people protesting in Sydney? Maybe 100 at first, but the snowball effect resulted in around 500 people by the end.

The way I see the riots, from what I can remember, Muslims have a rule (similar to Christianity) about not worshipping idols. This is the reason why most mosques do not have images of Muhammed or Allah and are usually decorated with patterns and whatnot instead of images. In this case however, someone's decided to bait Muslims with the film and draw them out, using the film to back up his/her beliefs that all Muslims are evil and should be converted.

[Racket_Man]

This bears repeating. Several times. It's the crux of the issue and one many people, especially Americans in this case, simply do not understand.

These people do not have freedom of speech or freedom of the press. More importantly, they have absolutely no concept of freedom of speech. When something like this happens they blame the country of origin because to them if some dick cheese in America posts an offensive video it means that Obama personally approved and released it from the White House.

They perceive it as government sanctioned and endorsed. Because that's how everything is in their own country and their own country suppresses any knowledge of any other method of doing things. They have no concept and no knowledge of something like freedom of speech. This isn't some asshole on the internet to them. It's America, its people and its leaders as a whole.

If the Prime Minister of France came out tomorrow and officially declared that he, the entire government and the people of France had come to the conclusion that Jesus was gay and raped little boys. Then played a 15 minute video on national TV illustrating this point. You could be DAMN sure the southern US would react in a pretty similar fashion.

Throw in various governments and terrorist groups in the region with a vested interest in maintaining Death To America(tm) if only to keep people from thinking too much about their own country and this is what happens.

THIS ^^^^^^ one million times.

I heard an interview of the new Egyptina president last week on the BBC after all of the protests and property damage in that country. in the interview he stated (and I am paraphrasing) that "The US government should SERIOUSLY consider changing the laws reguarding free speach and free press so to rein in persons or groups that post such things as the video in question."

Yeah I know he is pandering to HIS population and "base", but as GK stated above, most of these countries and their populations would NOT know free speech if it bit them on the ass.. Throw in the legacy of colonialism with its repression (not just European colonies either) and the legacy of dictators, feudalism, royality based government,, etc. throughtout human history and you see where it leads.

[wolfie]

Regarding this film, the response I would have most liked to see would have been the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations publicly condemning the film for promoting hatred against a specific group based solely on their religion, and equating the filmmaker with the authors of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Such a condemnation would be a simple expansion of "Never again!" to "Never again - not even to people who hate us!" - an attitude which many of the U.S. Founding Fathers had about rights needing to be universal, not just for people who agreed with you.

Considering the most extreme Muslims are opposed to anything Israel does BECAUSE Israel did it, this would be an interesting paradox. "Israel condemns film, therefore film must be good. Film an insult to Islam, therefore film is bad." Would we be able to hear the effects of so many "brains go 'splodey" from here in North America?