Honestly, while the guy is an irresponsible/racist asshole for producing it (especially given his sincere hatred of muslims), a darker part of me wishes critical videos like that would start coming out all the time and force the fanatics to get used to it and maybe modernize a bit and handle criticism like normal people.

I'd be lying if I said Islamic extremism doesn't terrify me somewhat. I'm no fan of religion in general, but all that "every group has it's extremists" stuff is extremely naive. It's kind of objectively clear that in general islam is a more radical religion than the other major players (see treatment of women, gays, honor killings, etc), and that the extremists within the religion are far more prevalent and radical than in others (see stoning/burning of anyone criticizing their prophet), especially abroad.
Christian extremists will picket at soldier's funerals, and there'll be some lone crazies that might resort to physical violence. In the middle east there'll be a mob that will stone you to death.

In many ways it's like they're at where Christianity was 400 years ago, before the enlightenment and softening of doctrine.
Obviously this is a very broad generalization, I personally have several wonderful, intelligent muslim friends. This is mainly a problem overseas, but it's hard to deny that what we're seeing in the middle east is extremely troubling.

I think it's especially disturbing because even living in extremely secular places on the West Coast, this is one of the few ways you can still feel religion encroaching on your personal freedoms. If one of us made a stupid satirical cartoon about the Prophet, we'd possibly have to go into hiding and watch our backs, and could potentially endanger the lives of US citizens on the other side of the globe. That to me is unacceptable, and a real slippery slope that threatens everything our democracy stands for.

That being said, seeing Libyans protesting against the attack and apologizing for their radical countrymen gives me hope that with greater economic stability, many of these countries will modernize and the ratio of moderates/extremists will increase greatly, as it has been doing in the US/UK for decades.

Last edited by bullet3 (2012-09-12 23:25:58)

Yep, looks like it was a bunch of radical christians. Argh, I hate the world.
I mean look at this shit, it's major rioting in like 10 major cities: http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/12/world/mea … ?hpt=hp_t1

That is a really alarming amount of super-easily offended/violent people.

I'm amazed that when when all the reports came out about torture in Gitmo and in Iraq, etc, the waterboarding and sleep deprivation, etc was all justified by the American government. But one thing that was absolutely intolerable was when US guards were being disrespectful to the Koran. Don't worry about the torture to humans, but abusing a book had to be stamped out real fast. That was going too far.

The worst part is that it's a badly acted 14-minute atrocity of filmmaking that's no-one has even heard of, let alone seen. Granted the film is a crime against celluloid, it's that bad, but it's not worth any of this.

My cynical side laments the inevitability of a world war looming on the horizon, it's been a while since the last East vs West conflict after all, but then I'm reminded that this is a bunch of young, unemployed folks who haven't anything better to do, arguably 'having fun' using the flimsiest of justifications just the same as those young, unemployed folks in Ireland recently and London last year.

I was actually about to post the same thing. Yeah, that 5 million budget claim has to be a hoax. I mean, what the hell did they spend it on??? The video looks like "Birth of a Nation" and "The Room" had a baby.

I might be paraphrasing here, but I believe Richard Engel described it as "an insult to Islam and the history of cinema".