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Technician

Innocence of Muslims

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I disagree with Enjay. Yes, the movie was only made to piss people off, yes they did some very underhanded tactics post-production, and yes, they knew how the middle east would react. But, in the end, who were the ones that actually got out their weapons and went to town slaughtering people? The protesters. The blame is on these barbaric overreactors.

If it wasn't this film, it would've been a cartoon drawing of Mohammed, or even just a negative comment about him. The root of the problem is the way they react, not those who provoke them. I think the provokers are innocent regarding the loss of life. I will say that I'm strongly opposed to how they lied to the actors and dubbed them over.

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I, too, agree. I hear a lot of people applying the poking the bear expression but we can't use that mentallity when dealing with humans. We all know radicals are not rational people, but we can't let murders and pillagers with a lick conscious get less attention and discipline than a guy who made a poorly filmed parody trailer. Even if he had political motivations.

The more you read into this situation the more you see it as a planned attack. The video has been on the net for months and all of a sudden they start to riot and kill on 9/11. It feels like al-Queda is just pumping out their chests and using their religious stooges to go ape and gain media attention.

U.S. officials: Attack on consulate in Libya may have been planned

U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said Wednesday that an attack that killed four Americans at a U.S. Consulate in eastern Libya may have been planned by extremists and inspired by al-Qaeda.

The U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans were killed Tuesday in an assault on the consulate in the city of Benghazi. President Obama strongly condemned the attack and pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice, vowing that “justice will be done.”

The attack followed a violent protest at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo over a low-budget anti-Muslim film made in the United States, and it initially appeared that the assault on the Benghazi consulate was another spontaneous response. But senior U.S. officials and Middle East analysts raised questions Wednesday about the motivation for the Benghazi attack, noting that it involved the use of a rocket-propelled grenade and followed an al-Qaeda call to avenge the death of a senior Libyan member of the terrorist network.

Libyan officials and a witness said the attackers took advantage of a protest over the film to launch their assault.

[edit by mod: don't copy and paste an entire goddamn news article]

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Maes said:

Better still, being an Atheist of any sort is considered even worse than belonging to a rival (and obviously FUCKING WRONG) religion. The logic behind this is perverse: believing in another god is considered "salvageable". Not believing in anything creates such a dissonance, that it just flips the kill switch. It's like trying to divide Allah by zero.


What if you're a buddhist, pagan, or something else...

"Don't kill me bro-hammed, I'm a scientologist!"

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I honestly don't understand it at all. People post inflammatory shit about Islam on the Internet constantly. Why single out this film?

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geekmarine said:

I honestly don't understand it at all. People post inflammatory shit about Islam on the Internet constantly. Why single out this film?

Yeah, about that.

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Honestly, I wonder if that crying is even real? It seems so fake. It sounds so obnoxious, snivelly and loud that I just want to slap him. This asshole's calling for an end to free speech on the basis of "allah is going to kill us for others speaking out against him!". Such stupidity and difference of social values seems very, well, foreign, to a westerner such as myself. Free speech takes priority over the feelings of butthurt that an almighty deity may face.

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Technician said:

YouTube video

Meh, refers to himself as a moderate then demonstrates just how conservative Wahhabism is. I don't buy the crocodile tears.

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flubbernugget said:

http://imgur.com/a/tlCyI

The media portrays violent extremists as being the majority.


I'm amused as how they all copied the same misspelled text. "Eslam and profit".


Sure, most people anywhere are reasonably decent. But when the fringe extremists are numerous enough, it gives an unflattering view of the whole. Even a minority that most people considers loony can be a force to be reckoned with, if they are enough and strongly motivated. Look at, say, the Tea Party protests in the USA; it actually wasn't all that many people involved in proportion to the rest of electorate.

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Technician said:

EDIT: You know, it's funny. The first of the film starts with actual location shots but the scenes that could have easily been shot in the California desert were done on a sound stage.

According to the actors, most of it was filmed in front of a green screen. The background was then added in (very badly in most scenes).

Sodaholic said:

I disagree with Enjay. Yes, the movie was only made to piss people off, yes they did some very underhanded tactics post-production, and yes, they knew how the middle east would react. But, in the end, who were the ones that actually got out their weapons and went to town slaughtering people? The protesters. The blame is on these barbaric overreactors.

Technician said:

I, too, agree. I hear a lot of people applying the poking the bear expression but we can't use that mentallity when dealing with humans. We all know radicals are not rational people, but we can't let murders and pillagers with a lick conscious get less attention and discipline than a guy who made a poorly filmed parody trailer. Even if he had political motivations.


I agree that people should be able to make comments and not fear recriminations but, sorry, life ain't like that and you have to keep that in mind, especially when dealing with humans. When you "poke the bear" you know what is going to happen - the bear is going to get pissed off and maul someone. If you are the potential bear poker, you know the likely consequences of the poking and you have to decide whether you are OK with the consequences happening.

In this particular case I can only see the content of the film as being intended to upset people (deliberate upsetting of an individual or individuals is considered a crime in many places BTW). The likely reaction of the people getting upset was very predictable. We've seen it before. The maker of this film almost certainly set out to upset Muslims. He almost certainly knew the form that such upset would take. He went ahead anyway. With rights come responsibility. Just because you can say something, it doesn't mean you should. People have died as a consequence of the reaction to this film. The reaction was quite predictable, even intended. The film maker is, in part, responsible because he knew it would happen if he made and released his film. It shouldn't happen, but he knew it would.

If you walk up to a guy with a track record of getting upset at insults and beating people up because of them and you call him a cunt, you can expect a beating. No one would think that you were wise for doing it. Everyone would expect you to get a beating. It would be reasonable to consider that you were, in part, responsible for getting a beating. If you make an intentionally inflammatory film ridiculing Mohamed and Islam, you know that significant numbers of Muslims will get upset and that rioting (and worse) is likely. The film maker knew this (possibly even wanted it) and went ahead anyway. As a direct result of his decision, people are dead. I know that shouldn't be the case, but the reaction is not a surprise. I'm not saying that the film maker shoulders all the blame. He isn't the one picking up weapons and killing people but he knew that it was a likely outcome of his film.

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The video in question really is a small part of the bigger issue. For years Anti-American outrage in these countries has been brewing. [I wouldn't be surprised if this outrage is at higher levels then it was when Bush was in office.]This video just caused everything to boil over.
The real unfortunate part is that other countries embassies has been the seen of riots and attacks also. From what I have heard German embassies have also been broken into and attacked.

I say every country should pull out of the middle east, cut all there financial aid and simply leave the entire region alone. Or pull all of the worthwhile people out of the region and wall it off. If such a large number of people want to act like animals, why not treat them like animals?

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Satyr000 said:

I say every country should pull out of the middle east, cut all there financial aid and simply leave the entire region alone. Or pull all of the worthwhile people out of the region and wall it off. If such a large number of people want to act like animals, why not treat them like animals?

Because we're going to walk away from all that oil right?

What you suggest may well happen once the Middle East has nothing of significance to offer the West. Until then, it's business as usual.

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With rights come responsibility. Just because you can say something, it doesn't mean you should. People have died as a consequence of the reaction to this film.


How many people have died and will continue to die because of the West bowing down before Islam? How many women have to live in oppression and ignorance? Not only people don't speak up against it, they do the opposite, publically accepting the religion and its barbaric practices.

If great minds of the 18th century hadn't spoken up, we'd likely still live under Christianism dominance. With rights come responsibility - the responsibility to stand up and say this is the 21th century, people killing other people because someone made fun of their made-up fictional people in the sky is not acceptable. Ideologies leading people to have that kind of behavior are not acceptable.

To shift the blame on someone else is to condone these killings. This is not an individual with psychological issues. This is not an animal defending his territory. This is an entire culture based on outdated values, a religion where the most extremist branches are thriving due to our condonment. There is room for a moderate Islam in this world, but most of us would rather close our eyes and do nothing, some of us would rather approve the entire religion, a few of us would rather wholeheartedly embrace anti-semitism, in fear of getting our necks sliced up. You, I, anyone here, have a part of responsibility in what is happening just as much as that filmmaker; a smaller part perhaps, but some responsibility nonetheless.

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No blame is being shifted. The guy who made this film knew it was highly likely to generate this kind of reaction. He most probably wanted that. He is responsible for that. No question in my mind: he deliberately provoked this reaction. How can he not bear some of the responsibility? He played fast and loose with other people's safety. Because he made a stand (to give him more credit than he is due - I suspect he is just a vile bigot himself), other people have died. The people doing the killing are unquestionably responsible for their acts. But their reaction was utterly predictable so "Sam Bacile" is guilty of provoking it. And let's not make this guy a hero of free speech. If he is Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, then he is a fraudster, tax avoider, drug manufacturer and dealer, probation breaker and a thief. In short, he's a cunt.

Does the West really bow down to Islam? Islamic nations don't see it that way. It's very easy to sit here being judgemental from our Western perspective. Judging one culture with the values of another is fraught with danger. From the other side of the fence, the fact that we would allow, even condone, someone ridiculing the prophet is utterly immoral. From that perspective, we are the ones behaving like animals. Despite the reactions on both sides, there cannot be "black or white" in this because we are all using different rules.

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Except their rules reek of stoneage mentality, so I can't bring myself to care about them.

That they reacted that way to some random idiot making a movie 15 minutes of which ended up on YT makes it even more insane than the drawings incident.

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Belial said:

Except their rules reek of stoneage mentality, so I can't bring myself to care about them.

Which you have the luxury of being able to do, risk free.

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@Satyr000's video: the people you can see there and the people of Libya are apes that haven't ever heared of videogames or good food. I hope the US military will react there, where are they? LOL to the whole situation.

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Deeforce said:

...and the people of Libya are apes that haven't ever heared of videogames or good food.


and the people of America are obese bullys with a shallow lifestyle, no cultural sensitivity and who haven't even heard of half the countries they invade.*

Sweeping generalisations, don't you just love them?


*and in case it's needed: that was a parody of Deeforce's statement, not a genuine opinion. :/

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hex11 said:

What if you're a buddhist, pagan, or something else...

"Don't kill me bro-hammed, I'm a scientologist!"


The way I understand it, middle-eastern monotheistic religions rank "first" in their fucked-up list of asymmetric "tolerance". But this often merely means that they will give Christians and Jews ONE chance "accept Allah as the One True God!" before going Jihad on their ass.

If you are a buddhist/pagan or something else, you're considered so unrecoverable and dissonant with their worldview that they won't even bother trying to convert you: they'll destroy you right away.

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I think that all this mess is a manipulation by the previous dictators, hum, by their followers before their fall.

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Enjay said:

and the people of America are obese bullys with a shallow lifestyle, no cultural sensitivity and who haven't even heard of half the countries they invade.*


Reminds me of how Bush Junior didn't know on which continent Afghanistan was.

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Muslims are idiots.

I can say this factually and without prejudice because all people are idiots, everywhere, including me and you, and the only thing we can do about this is to guard against common forms of idiocy within ourselves and try to understand the idiocy of others.

It's a belief of mine that a culture's innate, secular moral beliefs are the ones that motivate the most protest and outrage - it's merely convenient to ascribe these moral beliefs to a religion. Looking a bit closer to home for a moment, Christian fundamentalists see homosexuality as a sin because of their cultural and individual conservatism, which causes discomfort around novel social constructs; not because their prophet Jesus spoke out against it, because he didn't, ever. Fundamentalists speak out against evolution because they exist in a culture of scientific exactitude, and thus they are culturally trained to read even their own scriptures as scientific and factual, including Genesis, though this was not the original authors' intention. The old testament was written in a culture rich with story-telling, and it is meant as a collection of symbolic lessons about morality and man's role in creation.

I bring this up because the middle east is populated primarily by cultures of honour. In the distant past, many people in this region lived a subsistence life of goat herding, which favours those who can most jealously guard their own herd, while also most viciously responding to attacks and insults - both real and perceived. This cultural legacy seems to be immortal in all studied populations; American southerners are still more likely than northerners to hold onto grudges today simply because their ancestors include Scottish herdsmen who lived centuries ago. The Muslim culture is just that: a culture, in which feelings of resentment are constantly building and seeking expression. The banner of Islam is merely there to serve as a kinship bond, which focuses the people's rage onto a common enemy rather than on their own brothers' throats.

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Technician said:

Yeah, about that.

Well let me explain what I mean. I could go post an inflammatory comment about Islam on Twitter right now, and you're not going to see anyone protest it or riot over it. I'm certainly not going to be in any danger over it, despite people bemoaning how you can't criticize Islam without putting yourself in danger. The Internet is completely flooded with vile things written about Islam, but these rioters waited for this movie before saying anything. If it were really about what they claim it is about, these people would be rioting constantly - entire countries would fall apart because of the constant rioting over what someone said on the Internet.

I think there's something deeper going on here, but everyone's too damn focused on the movie itself to pay attention. I think the movie is just being used as an excuse, and that the actual turmoil prompting the riots goes far deeper than what they're claiming.

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Creaphis said:

Hey, why did you have to be all insightful and reasonable; we had a good Islam-bashing thing going on...


You're right, though. The problem is that we have a morality based on laws (lofty things such as people being equals, being treated as individuals first, etc.) and that is absolutely incompatible with the values of a culture of honor, where clan allegiances and appearances determine social status and confer privileges. Honor itself is a superficial notion; since it's a value attached to the perception of someone, rather than to that person. Honor breeds hypocrisy and deception, since appearances matter more than reality.

Ever thought that high school was bullshit (with all its cliques, bullies, popular kids, and all the rest of the teenage movie stuff)? It's a mini-culture of honor.

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The whole topic reeks of double standards to me. It's fine when western countries kill innocent people while pursuing their petty agendas, albeit using an army in an attempt to legitimise murder. But when people in the Middle East go around killing people they're savages? Take a step back and think how many lives have been claimed in fighting for whatever nonsense your nation/race/religion/etc believes in.

The only difference here is that it's a mob and not a military.

People kill people for bullshit reasons all the time, stop making out like we're somehow any better than they are.

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Creaphis said:

It's a belief of mine that a culture's innate, secular moral beliefs are the ones that motivate the most protest and outrage - it's merely convenient to ascribe these moral beliefs to a religion. Looking a bit closer to home for a moment, Christian fundamentalists see homosexuality as a sin because of their cultural and individual conservatism, which causes discomfort around novel social constructs; not because their prophet Jesus spoke out against it, because he didn't, ever.

Personally, my opinion is that religions are just collections of particular beliefs that propagate themselves. There's this fallacious notion that religious beliefs come from holy books, which I think is backwards - people use holy books to justify the things they believe in.

The classic example is the fundies who cite Leviticus as evidence that homosexuality is an "abomination" - but they have no problem with eating shellfish, which are also described as an abomination in the exact same book. Or look at the Westboro Baptist Church, which is essentially an expression of one man's strange obsession with homosexuality.

Holy books like the Bible or the Qur'an are useful because they can serve as perfect, unassailable authority figures. It's not just Fred Phelps saying how much he hates gays, it's the Bible that says it's wrong. It's an appeal to authority, except instead of a person - who can be shown to be corrupt - it's a perfect book. Notice how pretty much every religion claims their holy text has some kind of mystical quality that makes it special and important? The Bible is said to be divinely inspired, the Qur'an the word of god, the Book of Mormon came on magic golden plates from an angel. They're useful devices for religious groups to justify their beliefs and make their followers believe what they need to believe.

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DooMAD said:

albeit using an army in an attempt to legitimise murder.


I REALLY hope you aren't referring to the war in Afghanistan.

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Eris Falling said:

I REALLY hope you aren't referring to the war in Afghanistan.

I didn't have any specific conflicts in mind, but just to play devil's advocate, what if I was? They killed some people, so you had to kill them back? Sounds like the actions of savages to me.

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DooMAD said:

The whole topic reeks of double standards to me. It's fine when western countries kill innocent people while pursuing their petty agendas, albeit using an army in an attempt to legitimise murder.


I haven't noticed anyone in this thread claiming that war was a good thing to do.

Even then, armies are supposed to follow rules of engagement and things like the Geneva Convention, and in theory a soldier can be court-martialed for killing enemies in criminal ways. (That's why western nations have not, officially, been at war since Korea. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya? Those are not wars; there have been no formal declaration. It is very, very hypocritical.)

Anyway, speaking about something doesn't translate to condoning something else. Yes, the war in Afghanistan was a complete fiasco that should have ended long ago; yes the war in Iraq was a blatant oil grab built on transparent lies; and yes the war in Libya is something we shouldn't have gotten involved in. And yes, the western nations have given Near/Middle-Eastern nations plenty of legitimate grievances; from outright colonization to fomenting coups to install puppet regimes (hello, Operation Ajax); of which GWB's Iraq war was only the latest in a long series.

This is, however, not what we are talking about here. We're talking about how easily the Muslim world can be trolled by douchebags with money to burn on shitty movies; and how bloodthirsty they become when they're trolled.

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I don't deny that war, or any violence is bad. How could I possibly justify stating otherwise?
Somehow, I just think that without religion, or at least just one (preferably not Islam), the world would be a nicer place.

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