Saturday, September 15, 2012

Shame and Humiliation in the Middle East

By Justin Raimondo


The murder of US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other US diplomats at the hands of rioters probably wasn’t just another case of Islamists-gone-wild. The circumstances surrounding this horrific incident — the riot was in reactionto a “film” supposedly made by a mysterious Israeli-American director under what is probably a pseudonym — point to a carefully staged and well-thought out event. The question is: staged by whom?
Let’s take a look at the film itself, entitled Innocence of Muslims. Media accounts of the movie’s content universally describe it as “crude,” “insulting,” “amateurish” — in short, not exactly a candidate for the Academy Awards. Yet this fails to really capture the spirit of the film, which can only be described as leering: there is an exhibitionistic quality to the “script,” which dwells on matters sexual. The movie, which claims to portray the life and times of the prophet Mohammed, consists of a series of sexualized vignettes interspersed with scenes of violence. News accounts refer to the “wooden” acting, and I think this is literally true: the actors come off like puppets in a Punch & Judy show. There is the same slapstick quality to their actions and particularly the bantering that passes for dialogue. It’s all centered on sex — Mohammed’s alleged pedophilia, how he and his followers raped the villages they conquered, and naturally accusations of homosexuality loom large.
My favorite scene is when two of Mohammed’s followers are having a conversation about “did you know Mohammed is gay?” “Well, I knew about” Mohammed’s alleged sex partner, “but Mohammed? Is he submissive or the dominant one?” Mohammed, who has been sitting there listening to the conversation, leans over and says: “Both!”
Innocence of Muslims is the Grand Guignol of the Islamophobes: viewing it is like reading the comments section of Pam Geller’s blog, or Robert Spencer’s JihadWatch. On a somewhat higher level, the excerpts we have seen resemble nothing so much as a dramatization of the “theories” of one Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who averred in his 1973 book, The Arab Mind, that Arabs are peculiarly susceptible to sexual humiliation. As Seymour Hersh put it in his 2004 investigation into the horrors of Abu Ghraib:

3 comments:

  1. Yes, the poor little dears reaction was ok. Justin must also blame rape victims a lot, too. Listen, people do this shit all the time to Christians. Why do people such as Justin think so little of the islamist? He treats them like children, which maybe, intellectually and culturally, that's what they are. But, no the "blame" is not on the film maker, but rather on the uncivilized pieces of shit that committed the acts. Even it if the film was meant to elicit this response, the psychopathic islamists are at fault here. Allegedly, they are adults.

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  2. ...the riot was in reaction to a “film"...

    This has been put forth as the provocation, and the media and Admin have gone after the maker.
    They've printed photos of his car license plate, released his past run-ins with the law, etc.
    But it seems just as likely to have
    1) been a preplanned op for 9/11
    2) in reaction to BinLadenIsDead statements (they were chanting in Egypt-"we are all Osama")
    3) Dem convention Jerusalem vote, which was played about a million times on AlJazeera

    Blaming this on an obscure YouTube may be convenient. But it seems at least questionable that it is the actual cause.

    JimMtnViewCaUSA

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  3. I don't buy that it was the film that caused this. I don't know, but somehow nation-building and blowing up people's friends and family seems like a more plausible answer for their discontent.

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