Just how ridiculous can these 'protests' get?

[ludwig]

Isn't there something badly wrong when a cheap crappy video made specifically for the purpose of causing trouble can provoke such knee-jerk outrage. Shouldn't it just be dismissed as the rubbish it is? How thin skinned can these morons be?

People like this don't help ..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/...-middle-east-19619646

Cynical hijacking of the issue for political purposes. It wouldn't surprise me if it was an organisation like his that made the thing in the first place.

[jno]

is an insult better or worse if it's professionally acted with a million-dollar budget and lots of fancy CGI?

Surely rather than the "cheap crappy" it's the "made to cause trouble" that's the issue? Someone delivers a deliberate insult, and the object duly feels insulted. That's not really badly wrong, that's how things are meant to work.

[Kerosene]

I guess most people can display outrage at different things? This is obviously one of those which floats the Muslim boat, I guess.

[Ellipsis]

This isn't really about the film any more. I'm not sure it ever was.

The film was just the careless cigarette, tossed out of the car window into a tinder-dry landscape ...

[sandyRoe]

It seems to me that he does help. He's trying to pour oil on troubled waters by saying the ones who should be held accountable are those directly responsible for the film.

[sp1814]

Ellipsis

I like your analogy, but I don't think it was really a carelessly tossed cigarette...perhap a deliberately thrown match?

[ludwig]

// Someone delivers a deliberate insult, and the object duly feels insulted. That's not really badly wrong, that's how things are meant to work. //

Absolutely. I don't have a problem with that. It's the reaction to it that I'm questioning, as I'm sure you're aware. It seems out of all proportion to the nature of the insult.

Someone insulted me the other day. I was offended but took it on the chin. I'm not rampaging through the streets burning things. I haven't killed some random person that happened to come from the same town as the person that insulted me. I'm not calling for an international law to make it illegal for anyone to insult ludwig.

[ludwig]

sandy.

// In a speech broadcast on Hezbollah's al-Manar TV station, Sheikh Nasrallah called for a week of protests not only against American embassies, but also to press Muslim governments to express their own anger to the US. //

The American government didn't make the film, so how is this calling for those who are directly responsible to be held accountable?

[vetuste_ennemi]

<<"Those who should be held accountable, punished, prosecuted and boycotted are those directly responsible for this film and those who stand behind them and those who support and protect them," primarily the US, Sheikh Nasrallah said.>>
<<He says the primary responsibility lies with the governments in the Arab and Islamic worlds to pressure for steps to ensure that Islam and the other revealed religions are respected and that "this door is closed for good">>
I don't think you read the article with sufficient care, Sandy.
Note that taken literally the pourer of oil would include Mormonism as a belief which was immune to criticism. Apparently Hinduism and Buddhism remain fair game.

[pdq1]

I'm glad the Muslims who have come to this country can see the idiocy of the reaction in other parts of the world. They can see we are a peace loving country that welcomes all faiths and live together in quite happily.

[VHG]

>>>They can see we are a peace loving country that welcomes all faiths and live together in quite happily.

Really?

[Kerosene]

VHG,

Try telling that to those on either side of the laughably named 'Peace Line' in Belfast, for example?

[Duncer]

I remember a quote from a Pakistani leader/Imam saying "Islam is a peaceful tolerant religion, and those who say otherwise should be beheaded". I imagine his mantlepiece is overladen with prizes for irony.

[Duncer]

"Try telling that to those on either side of the laughably named 'Peace Line' in Belfast, for example?"

Strangely, many of these people work and socialise together.

[Kerosene]

Duncer,

That I do not doubt for one minute, but just look at those disgraceful pictures the other week, riot after riot? There would be no need for high walls if nutters - on both sides - didn't exist. Sadly, though, they do. Even the west of Scotland doesn't suffer as badly to that extent.

[douglas9401]

"Just how ridiculous can these 'protests' get?"

There's no limit on human stupidity.

[naomi24]

//There's no limit on human stupidity.//

Neither, it would seem, on human madness!

[factor-fiction]

Does anyone know what those protesting are hoping their protests will achieve?

[andy-hughes]

ludwig - it is essential to view this situation in terms of cultural identity.

Someone insulted you, and you took it on the chin. That's because you are a Western man, with commensurate behavioral attitudes, which are typical of people of the West.

You have to consider that the Muslim faith is not like Christianity if inedeed you are a Christian.

Christians live with their faith as part of their lives, and to varying degrees, they allow it to dicate their attitudes and behaviours.

For devout Muslims, their faith IS their lives, they are MUslims first and above anything else. Their faith directs their lives, and attitudes and politics to a degree which is difficult for Westerners to appreciate. That is why a small minority are reacting in such an extreme fashion - to do any other is as alien to them as it is to us to turn the proverbial other cheek.

That in no way excuses the extreme demonstrations and attrocities that have taken place, but it does place them in context.

So, the Muslims in question are not 'thin-skinned' - they feel that the very core of their being has been mocked and riddiculed, and they react with varyind degrees of anger.

I would repeat, I am not in any way attempting to justify the reactions in some quarters, merely to try and offer a degree of understanding as to why the reaction is so exrtreme, and so widespread.

The medium of the insult (a particularly lousy piece of film with some even more badly dubbed additional dialogue) is not the issue - the insult stands, and that is what needs to be understood, if we are to try and deal with the fall-out in a productive manner.

[factor-fiction]

I agree, sqad- but are they protesting for a purpose with a given aim (eg have the film destroyed and removed from the internet, have the makers punished)?

[naomi24]

//if we are to try and deal with the fall-out in a productive manner. //

Any suggestions?