freecounterpoint: Ban this film?

Friday, March 28, 2008

Ban this film?

13 comments:

Tecumseh said...: Says Ban: "There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence." Precisely. And that's the point the movie makes.; 3/28/2008 3:09 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: Arguably an extreme movie about extremism. Contrarians have always kept Western Civilization intellectually healthy this way.; 3/28/2008 4:29 PM
Tecumseh said...: Why "extreme"? The footage (9/11, Madrid bombings, head-hackings, etc) are all well-known events. The quotes from the Koran are ad-literam. So those by themselves cannot be objected to, can they? Is the juxtaposition objectionable? But the terrorists themselves make the direct connection when attempting to justify the unjustifiable. Can't Wilders make the same parallel without having a fatwa put on his head?; 3/28/2008 6:35 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: AI, take a swig of beer or something and calm down. "Extreme" is not always used as a pejorative. For example, I can refer to the Islam Militant as violent extremists, and the recent Wilders' film a civilized, audio-visual form of extremism. The former kill-for-religion is anti-Western, the latter is civilized and brave.

The Declaration of Independence was extremely extreme in its time. But it was good extremism, laying to ruin the idea of Divine Right. Islam Militants are another form of extremism, but bad extremism. My apologies for lack of clarity, but please gimme a break with the knee-jerk Limbaugh-osophy.

That I said the Bible is a beautiful work of literature (in the literary sense) caused you to object not long ago. I'd call the Quran or Koran (or however the hell one wants to spell it) a violent incantation extolling murderous extremism, while the Old and New Testaments are wonderful explorations of metaphor, analogies, and humanity (dare I say the embodiment of the, ahem, Human Condition).

That Limbaugh tone is going to alienate rather than win over people for our crowd. The only people who listen to Limbaugh are those that are already going to Heaven.

And that Wilders received a Fatwa makes me like him even more. If I ever got a Fatwa, I'd send away and ask that I get some fatwa diploma, frame the fucker, and put it well above my degrees of higher education.; 3/28/2008 8:03 PM
Tecumseh said...: Sorry, I don't see what my reply got to do with the Rushbo. And, even if somehow it had, why would this invalidate the point I was making? (I don't listen to Limbaugh on the radio -- I don't listen to radio, period, since there are just too many damn commercials -- but I do skim now and then through transcripts of his show, and I don't see what wrong with his tone -- that's his schtick.) At any rate, to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, I don't mind extremism when it's done in the pursuit of freedom. But I do note that in nowadays' parlance, "extremism" and "extremist" almost invariably have a negative (even pejorative) connotation. Which is fine with me -- it's free speech, after all -- but let's at least make clear the meaning of words when using them.; 3/28/2008 8:27 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: the Old and New Testaments are wonderful explorations of metaphor, analogies, and humanity

The Old Testament of Christianity, which is the Tanakh of the Jews and as such a common book of religious reference, prescribes death by stoning for a long series of offenses, including:
Adultery (including an engaged woman having sex with a man other than her fiancé) (Deuteronomy 22:23-24)
Having sex with animals ("bestiality")
Engaging in idolatry or seducing others to do so
Homosexual relations
Breaking the Sabbath
Cursing God
If an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall surely be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall go unpunished. (Exodus 21-28)
In addition, Deuteronomy (21,21) specifies that the parents of "a rebellious son" (בן סורר ומורה) may bring him to the market square and ask the townspeople to stone him to death.
For touching Mount Sinai Exodus 19:13

The "head-hackers" really do not need the Koran to spread their humanity...; 3/29/2008 1:15 AM
Tecumseh said...: Pepe: First of all, those precepts are not in the New Testament, and, in fact, are not in the spirit of the Gospels. And second, even from a purely Old Testament interpretation, I very much doubt any of those ancient precepts have been used or even invoked in the past, oh, two thousand years. So, isn't this beating on a long-dead horse in order to make a strained moral-equivalence (and red herring) argument? On the other hand, the suras in the Koran that the movie talks about are being invoked all over the place by head-hackers bent on hacking people's necks, right now, in the 21st century.

I don't really expect you to see the difference -- it's probably too subtle -- but perhaps it's worth a try thinking about it for a few seconds.; 3/29/2008 8:12 AM
Pepe le Pew said...: Ai the statement was "the old testament is a wonderful exploration of humanity" (and this is what I dispute).; 3/29/2008 9:13 AM
Arelcao Akleos said...: The Old Testament is an exploration of humanity, both in its wonderful and awful characteristics. It is myth, history, soap opera, blood feud, law, chronicle, poem, rant, and reasoned argument, in pieces disjoint and jumbled. It is full of muck and dung, and heart and mind, and in sum brutally honest. Whatever it is, it is NOT "The Message" commanding blind obedience. Which, as AI pointed out, has resulted in 2,000 years of remarkably low religous violence from its Believers [in fact, probably even less than resulted from the history of Buddhism in the last 2,000 years]
The New Testament has very little of this, but a persistent message calling us to rise above the muck and dung. In sum, honestly Idealistic but less brutally honest about this earth. It also refuses to command blind obedience.

The Quran, compared to the Old Testament, is joint and unjumbled. It also throws out the history and the reasoned argument, and the heart and mind, leaving us to wallow in muck, dung, chronicle, and Law. It is as far from brutal honesty as you can get. It, in fact, recognizes the concept of Honesty only insofar as it spends time discussing the uses and purposes of Lies in the grand task of bashing the Infidel. It spends more time, in discussion of what we might call "honesty" in questions such as the apportioning of loot and captives [after one is tired of all the slaughtering], and how to treat sex slaves versus wives, etc... and this, of course, in the Holy Quran, the Message itself, by the Most Noble Prophet, Peace be Upon Him, the Most Perfect of Muslims, Mohammed. Not just in the sordid details of his life and actions in the Sunnahs/Hadithas.
Compared to the New Testament, Islam's Law is fit only for those who wallow in human life reduced to blood and muck and dung.
And it makes Blind Obedience the cardinal virtue, the one absolute imperative imposed by God on men.
That insistence on Submission, being a slave to the commands of God, coupled with a Message that call for blood and muck and dung until all earth is under Submission, is precisely why the history of Islam is one of jointed, unjumbled, and endless,religious warfare upon all outside its House.
But, hey, Pepe, life is too short for history, and reasoned argument, eh?; 3/29/2008 12:20 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: But, hey, Pepe, life is too short for history, and reasoned argument, eh?
But it is never too short for rants and non-sequiturs it seems. Your point (as always) boils down to pointing out that islam is so much worse. It is built on the same logic that invites those that question american-style democracy as a model, to look at how much better it is than (pick the bottom of the litter). Well, woop dee doo, christian religious fanaticism is topped in its inhumanity by islam. Life could be worse ? Very comforting.; 3/29/2008 12:29 PM
Tecumseh said...: Sadly, Pepe, your eyes can read, but your mind cannot comprehend. AA made a tightly reasoned argument, and it just flew by you. Same old, same old.; 3/29/2008 1:39 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: Pepe said: Ai the statement was "the old testament is a wonderful exploration of humanity" (and this is what I dispute).

You think Humanity is always positive, Pepe? Think deeper than the political. C'mon, you French are supposed to be more sophisticated. Even Jacques Barzun understands Humanity involves it all. But he was from a different time, when learning the Classics was the core of a true Liberal Education. So much for that, as you demonstrate.; 3/29/2008 2:14 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: One more note, Pepe, and this is just related to you from Michel Houellebecq's Platform (that's the English-translated title): In this work, your countryman Houellebecq discusses the violent nature of Islam and also remarks on the reason why Imams thunderously and murderously oppose secular pleasures of the flesh: it has more to do with it luring potential converts away.

How do you convince someone that 72 virgins in Paradise is something worthy of martyrdom when places like Bangkok — arguably a Rabelaision Heaven on Earth — exist?

Now keep with me, here, because there's yet another point your compatriot (now in exile in Ireland) makes in Platform. Speaking through an Egyptian character (an intellectual) in the book, Houllebecq also says that the brilliance of Catholicism is its superficial guise of monotheism when, in reality, it retains all types of polytheism: the trinity, saints, angels, the — ahem — virgin Mary, and all the other stuff that can be prayed to in addition to god.

If one wants to take up religion, polytheism is a much better way to go about it, and this is something completely lacking in the Quran. The name "Islam" itself translates into "Submission." That's a fact, Pepe. A Monotheism demanding Absolute Submission: this is not good for Western anything, certainly not the humanities, or the sciences (a field in which you've invested time and energy).

But don't take my America-style democracy (more accurately, a Republican-Democracy) word for it. Check out your own countryman's ideas, and read a novel by Michel Houellebecq.; 3/29/2008 2:50 PM

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