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| Decent View on THE FILM | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 20 2012, 01:30 PM (284 Views) | |
| Pasta | Sep 20 2012, 01:30 PM Post #1 |
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Chief Engineer
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From the BBC - one person's view. Pretty intelligent I figure: Malise Ruthven, author, Islam in the World and Fundamentalism - A Very Short Introduction Even if we discount the political opportunism of militants such as the killers of the US ambassador to Libya, Salafists in Cairo, Hezbollah activists in Lebanon and Taliban supporters in Kabul - all of them using the film to mobilise support against governments perceived as pro-Western, or pro-American - the fact remains that there is huge populist mileage in defending the aniconic (non-representational) image of the Prophet Muhammad, an image that has been programmed into the collective Muslim consciousness for more than 14 centuries. There is, however, a crucial difference between being seen to trash that image publicly - as in the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad first published in Denmark in 2005 and the most recent YouTube clip - and the deconstruction of that image using the tools of modern scholarship. Historian Tom Holland's book and TV programme questioning the historicity of the Arabian Prophet drew protests from some Islamic scholars, but did not generate riots from Benghazi to Kabul. These different responses suggest that there needs to be a two-pronged approach to the free speech issues raised by these epic furores. "Insulting" the Prophet should be categorised as a form of "hate-speech" comparable to racism or Holocaust denial, as forbidden in many European countries, because the sacred image of the Prophet is a constituent element of the Muslim communal identity. But challenging the myths underpinning that collective psyche is another story - it is something that critics of other faiths have been engaged on since the Enlightenment in the 18th Century. It would be utterly wrong for the law to discriminate in favour of Muslims by insulating them from this process, because critical engagement - about science, religion and politics - is a necessary precondition for human flourishing in the contemporary globalised world. |
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8:57 AM Jul 11