Is this the farce that launched a thousand sharia riots?

I’ve finally watched the 13-minute video, “Innocence of Muslims,” which has set the Muslim world on fire. On one hand, it’s a complete mess, utterly stupid and junky in its production values and presentation, like a fifth rate comedy farce, making it difficult for the viewer to keep watching it. On the other hand, most of the incidents seem to be based on authoritative Islamic sources. Basically it graphically and most disrespectfully dramatizes the monstrous character and career of Muhammad, which Muslim regard as exemplary. If the video had simply had an actor recite in a respectful manner the passages from the Hadiths, the Koran, and the authoritative biographies of Muhammad that are dramatized in the video,—with the rapes of his victims, the murders of his critics, his sexual shenanigans, and all the rest of it—the video would have been fully sharia-compliant. But because the video has an actor playing Muhammad (the image of the Prophet and his main lieutenants are never supposed to be shown), and because he and his followers are played very unattractively, the video is jihad-provocative in the extreme.

I’m looking at Jihad Watch for Robert Spencer’s analysis of the video. There are 20 entries there referencing “Innocence of Muslims,” but I don’t see one that discusses the video itself. Too bad. You would have thought Spencer would be all over this, explaining the historical context of each incident in the video.

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Jihad Watch’s main focus seems to be on the response of the U.S. government and of American liberals to the video, their attempts to suppress it, the threat to the First Amendment that this entails. Here are two of JW’s posts:

University of Pennsylvania prof calls for arrest of Muhammad filmmaker

Obama Administration asks YouTube to pull Muhammad video

- end of initial entry -

LA writes:

When I thought of the pun I used in the title of this entry, a paraphrase of

Is this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

from Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, I figured that the fairly obvious pun, “Is this the farce that launched…” must have been used numerous times before. But it does not appear in a Google search.

Simon P. writes:

The video reminds me of the day time TV shows for toddlers that I often had to watch while working as a care giver for people with brain damage. Same colors, use of green screens, and dialogue rhythm. Perfectly appropriate for the type of Westerners who think that Muslims are just like us.

September 16

Nik S. writes:

One of the most interesting things about the video is that our supposed journalists have provided NO LINKS to it. Go ahead, try it for yourself, try finding ONE mainstream article that actually provides a link to this supposed monstrosity of filmmaking. You would think that there would be at least one publication in America that would provide a link to the video. NOT A SINGLE ONE.

Look for yourself. There are dozens of articles, but not a single one actually provides a link to the movie in question.

We are already living under the shadow of Sharia.

Nik continues:

I cannot say for certain that not a single MSM article exists that provides a link to the film, I guess that is the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. Maybe you can “dig up” an article or two in the mainstream press that actually provides a link. It is still a depressing state of affairs—“freedom of speech” (except when it comes to Muhammad—we are not allowed to talk about him).

Michael C. writes:

According to this article at the Christian Science Monitor, the full movie may not even exist.

Thomas Bertonneau writes:

I too have watched the video. My reaction was that it was incoherent, poorly and weirdly dubbed, and full of what I take for deliberate anachronisms, which, badly executed, do nothing to help in continuity and clarity. Non-Muslims need to know the truth about Islam, but this video will not further that cause in any way. In addition, there is ambiguity whether what I viewed was a trailer for a longer movie or the movie itself. Of course, that Muslim mobs should be precipitated into savage acts by an incoherent trailer to a film that might not exist is unsurprising. The same mobs can be precipitated into action by no stimulus at all save their proclivity to take homicidal offense at anything and nothing and at any time.

Roger G. writes:

Your pun here was witty, but you’ll never equal your remark on Miss Havisham Hitchhiking. That one almost cost me some organs I’d prefer to keep.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 15, 2012 11:38 PM | Send