Muslim Rage over ‘Innocence of Muslims’ Film: Should Deference or Factuality Act as Cover for Defense?
http://islam-watch.org/authors/139-louis-palme/1166-muslim-rage-over-innocence-of-muslims-film-should-deference-or-factuality-cover-for-defense.html
If factuality would be the cover for defence, a defamation case against the "Innocence of Muslims" film-maker in a court of law would not stand a chance...
September of 2012 will go down in history as a month of rioting, murder, and intimidation over a poorly-produced 14-minute trailer about Islam’s prophet Muhammad. Over fifty people – among them Libya-based American Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three colleagues, the rest Muslim – were killed, Muslim-owned businesses were torched, and numerous pundits and scholars were forced to go into hiding. Meanwhile, Muslim nations in the U.N. and the O.I.C., as well as many Muslim organizations, have called for international laws to criminalize any defamation of Muhammad, the Quran, or Islam. Fatwas and rewards have been posted calling for the assassination of those involved in the notorious YouTube clip. Even the bounty for the head of Salman Rushdie, who had no connection with the film, was revived and increased.
There is scarce acknowledgement,
however, that most of the crudely-dramatized vignettes in the video were
taken directly from highly-respected hadith and biography accounts of
Muhammad (see Analysis of ‘Innocence of Muslims’ film below).
The outrage was not over the inaccuracy of the portrayals, but rather
about the exposure of the shameful side of a man, whose reputation has
been protected through extreme deference by faithful Muslims. For their
part, the producers of the clip would probably argue that uncritical
reverence for Muhammad has allowed militants to parley his violent
pronouncements into an international call-to-arms that threatens all
non-Muslim civilizations. So the question becomes, “Should respect for X prevent the public from knowing about the imminent danger of blindly respecting X?”
Consumers Union and its publication,
Consumer Reports, have provided American with a world-renown product
testing and evaluation for over sixty years. Engineers and scientists
purchase products and put them through rigorous tests to determine, if
they are safe, if they have hidden defects or hazards, and if they own
up to the manufacturers’ claims. In 1988, while testing the compact SUV
Suzuki Samurai, engineers found they could easily cause the vehicle to
tip over while navigating their standard short, “avoidance maneuver”
course. As a result, the prestigious magazine deemed the Suzuki Samurai
“Not acceptable” – the only car in history to earn such a rating. Suzuki
auto sales in the U.S. plummeted. Suzuki sued the Consumer Union for
$60 million in damages and unspecified punitive damages for what Suzuki
claimed was willfully fraudulent testing. While the suit was developing
and progressing through the courts, Suzuki rollover incidents resulted
in 213 deaths and 8,200 injuries. Suzuki’s own internal documents
confirmed that they were aware of the serious safety problem in the
vehicle’s design. In 2004, the lawsuit was dismissed with no penalties
paid by the Consumer Union. Meanwhile, Suzuki partnered with General
Motors to develop a new SUV model that met or exceeded all the national
auto safety standards. The moral of this story is that speaking up
truthfully about something that is dangerous saves lives and is to be
commended, not condemned.
Islam might be called the Suzuki Samarai
of religious ideologies. Analysis of the film trailer below will show
how everything portrayed in the movie was accurate. Therefore, any case
against the film-maker, claiming defamation of Islam and Prophet
Muhammad in the court of law, would not stand a chance like the faulty
Suzuki Samarai car case.
Analysis of the 'Innocence of Muslims' film
Was the “Innocence of the Muslims” video trailer inaccurate?
Most of us have seen “Innocence of the
Muslims”, the film trailer that sparked rioting resulting in over 50
deaths and damage of properties worth millions of dollars. Here is the
link, just in case:
Listed below are the scenes (by
time-stamp and theme) along with the references to Islamic sacred texts
that provide support for the assertions:
3:02 - Muhammad’s father is unknown. (His father died before he was born, and his mother never raised him.) Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, para. 105
3:45 - Young Muhammad taking orders from and married to older Khadija – Ishaq, para. 120
4:43 - Muhammad buries his face in Khadija’s garments to determine if visions are divine or satanic – Ishaq, para. 154
5:24 - Khadija’s cousin Waraqa is a Christian scholar who helped Muhammad – Ishaq, para. 121
5:43 - Muhammad’s revelations stopped when Waraqa died, prompting him to consider suicide – Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 6, No. 478
6:27 - Muslims used booty for their income – Quran Surah 48:20
6:35 – “Muhammad is our messenger and the Quran is our constitution.” – taken from the Muslim Brotherhood oath
7:19 - Muhammad given special privileges regarding women and marriage – Quran Surah 33:37-38
8:37 - Muhammad is linked to Allah in
authority and worship – Quran Surahs 3:32, 4:80, 8:20, 9:71, 24:47,
24:54, 47:33, 61:11, 64:8, 64:12, and many others
9:11 - Abu Bakr gives his 9-year-old Aisha in marriage to 53-year-old Muhammad – Sahih al-Bukhari Vol. 5, No. 234
9:27 - Muhammad and Omar are “gay”.
(With nineteen wives and concubines, Muhammad had very few children and
no male heirs.) References to bizarre sexual behavior can be found in
Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 4, No. 143, Sahih al-Bukhari, No. 2393, and Sahih
Muslim, Nos. 3663 and 3674. The story about Omar apparently comes from
this Shiite cleric’s speech: http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2012/06/london-based-shiite-cleric-yasser-al.html
11:15 – An elderly woman, Umm Qirfa, is torn in two by two camels – Ishaq, para. 980
11:32 – “Whoever refuses to follow Islam has only two choices – pay extortion or die.” – Quran Surah 9:29
12:38 - Torture of Kinana bin al-Rabi (a Jew) in front of his wife, Safiya, who Muhammad later raped – Ishaq, paras. 764 – 767
13:10 - Fight between Muhammad and two
of his wives – Hafsa and Aisha – when he is caught in bed with Hafsa’s
Coptic slave Maryah after he had promised not to sleep with her. This
is the subject of Quran Surah 66.
13:43 - “Every non-Muslim is an infidel; their land, women and children are our spoils.” – Ishaq, para. 484
Several scholars, who have studied the
origins of the Quran, have concluded that the traditional Islamic claim
of the Quran being the “verbal word of God”, transmitted to Muhammad by
Angel Gabriel, is not true. For example, the quotations enshrined on the
Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem do not match the canonical texts
of the Quran. The Quran seems to be a collection of religious and
political statements from various sources that was assembled in its
final form as an Arab national religious text during the rivalry between
Caliph Abd al-Malik and Abdullah ibn As-Zubair around 685 – some 53
years after Muhammad died (See “Did Muhammad Exist?” by Robert Spencer,
pg.58). Prior to that time there is no clear reference to Muhammad as a
prophet of Islam in either Islamic or secular accounts.
Rebecca Bynum has, quite eloquently, stated the dilemma regarding Islam:
Real peacemaking is the result of the
stout and unyielding defense of the values our civilization was founded
upon. We can start by defending the truth concerning the differences
between Islam and Western civilization. We can attempt to bring the
enemy to his senses (non-violently) by pointing out the errors in his
understanding of reality, because the truth is, Islam is deeply and
profoundly wrong. Pretending it is right only worsens our situation by
delaying actions that must be taken if our civilization, however
imperfect and unseemly it may be, is to be preserved. (“Allah Is Dead – Why Islam is Not a Religion,” pg. 61)
Rational people do not “respect”
something because they are legally required to show deference. True
respect is earned by the qualities that a person or ideology exhibit.
Other religious and political ideologies have had to make radical
changes in order to earn public respect. The Mormon (LDS) religion had
to abandon polygamy and discrimination against African-Americans to find
acceptance in the United States. Nazism was outlawed because there was
no way to reconcile its racist and violent ideology with Western
civilization. Despite the one billion plus followers of Islam, their
insistence on respect for their ideology must be preceded by conclusive
evidence that their sacred texts, values, and actions are worthy praise
and commendation.
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