"Innocence of Muslims" Filmmaker Likely Doesn't Exist, Film May Not Exist

[Wezil]

Yes Kid. We've been through this.

You Christians should be more violent. Fewer bad things will be said about you.

[Krill]

Question: what is worse to a rabid muslim, a picture of Mohammad or child pornography?

[DinoDoc]

Yes Kid. We've been through this.

You Christians should be more violent. Fewer bad things will be said about you.

In general, that's correct for the UK at least: Mark Thompson: BBC director general admits Christianity gets tougher treatment

[Elok]

If it was an issue important to me, yes. I would not be silenced by the threat of violence.

If it was an issue important to you. I have not heard that this film/trailer expressed any particular (truthful) ideas or served any agenda beyond insulting and pissing off Muslims. It's not satire, as far as I know--supposedly it's all rubbish about how Mohammad swyved donkeys or some rubbish like that.

If this person had found something legitimately problematic about Mohammad--for example, if he found good historical evidence that the man took pleasure in killing small children--and spread this opinion by, say, publishing the text in a journal or writing a scholarly book about it, that would be rather different. His primary aim would be to discover truth, and he would be covering it in a responsible manner not intended to cause more trouble than necessary in the pursuit of that goal. Muslims would probably still freak the hell out and riot, but it wouldn't reflect so badly on him as this did. Because he set out with no other conceivable purpose than to piss them off, and succeeded, and to pretend he's not morally blameworthy is IMO disingenuous.

[Wezil]

Perhaps he wanted to reach a larger audience than he would in a scholarly journal?

Secondly, how is the truthfulness of what he presented challenged by rioting? If it's such a rubbish position it should be easy to counter.

[Elok]

It's not countered by rioting. Nothing is countered by rioting except an excess of intact store windows and upright cars. But you're essentially saying it's not in any way, to any extent, the troll's fault that his intended and obvious target got mad. It is. Now, it's their fault that they reacted by smashing **** up, but the getting mad part was, AFAICT, the whole point of the film, and they tend to react predictably when angered WRT the Ophet-Pray.

[Wezil]

They can't help but be trolled Elok. Intended offence or not.

We fought a very long time against the speech restrictions of state and religion to reach the point we are at. I'm not prepared to hand those advances back because some parts of the world are still backward in this regard. They need to figure out what a "troll" is and adjust accordingly.

[kentonio]

I'll ask one more time, who is asking for the law to be changed? Is it such a massive burden for us to expect people to act in a way that doesn't get people needlessly killed for literally nothing? We're not talking about locking folks like this up, just sending a message that their behaviour is abhorrent and that being a grown up human being means talking a little responsibility for your actions. Is that such a giant ask?

[Wezil]

Socially imposed self censorship is still censorship.

[Wezil]

All I'm asking is that the rioters behave in a mature and responsible way to any percieved slight to their 1400 year dead prophet. Is that too much to ask?

[Elok]

I said nothing about legal restrictions on speech--nor, AFAIK, has Ken. However, the man is an ass who bears some purely moral responsibility for agitating a pack of easily-manipulated people with a penchant for violence. Especially since we've been given no reason to believe he made the film to do anything besides make them angry. All he did was deliberately try to piss them off, and they went and got mad!

I'm speaking of this particular case only, of course. I don't think Rushdie's fatwa was his fault in any way, for example, because he predated this long trend of absurd overreaction, endangered none but himself, and ostensibly wrote The Satanic Verses with some kind of artistic purpose in mind. I haven't read the book so I wouldn't know.

[Elok]

All I'm asking is that the rioters behave in a mature and responsible way to any percieved slight to their 1400 year dead prophet. Is that too much to ask?

Everyone's asking that. I'm asking that, too. I happen to also be asking people like this guy not to be dumb****s until such time as hundreds of millions of mostly illiterate people spontaneously adopt our views WRT freedom of speech. The two requests are not opposed; indeed, I consider them complementary.

[Wezil]

I haven't seen this man's film or read Rushdie's book so I wouldn't be able to judge either.

It's funny you excuse Rushdie on "artistic" grounds though. Muslims were quite ticked off and still are.

[Wezil]

Everyone's asking that. I'm asking that, too. I happen to be also asking people like this guy not to be dumb****s until such time as hundreds of millions of mostly illiterate people spontaneously adopt our views WRT freedom of speech. The two requests are not opposed; indeed, I consider them complementary.

And Rushdie?

[Wezil]

The next question of course is how do we determine if something has artistic, educational, or some other redeeming feature without actually seeing it...