Innocence of Muslims and the ethics of film

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So here's the "film" that's been causing lots of controversy and vendetta ever since the movie previewed on youtube. According to Reuters, the film depicts Prophet Muhammad as "a fool, a philanderer and a religious fake" and NBC News reports that the Prophet was depicted as a "homosexual". In this film, we see Egyptian Muslims setting fire to the homes of Egyptian Muslims. The result? Similar acts of violence directed at Western embassies in various Muslim countries.

So my question is: To what extent can cinema probe religious topics without coming across as insulting to the various ethnic groups? Can the movie's making be justified on non-sectarian grounds alone?

Your thoughts?



Have you seen clips, it's one of the worst films ever in every way possible(acting, re dubbed script, effects), people never learn, if the 'protestors' had left it alone and media had not reported about this film it would have vanished into oblivion, but thanks to all the uproar this film has got all the worldwide publicity it would never have got in the first place.

It's very clear this film has been edited to cause trouble by someone who has a twisted and wrong view of Islam, especially now we know the actors and most of the cast were conned, there is plenty of stuff out there to show that it does look like they are telling the truth about been conned by the film maker.

They thought they were making a film about Egypt all those years ago and it was nothing to do with Islam/Muslims in the slightest, the awful horrible film maker changed the script and dubbed all the stuff that is causing trouble in during post production/editing.

What I find amusing, according to the film maker, it cost him $5 million to make... yeah and I'm Ridley Scott.

It was clearly made to insult and don't even think the film maker cares from what I've read about him.



All that Muslims did was prove that they were prostrate properly. There is no excuse for there actions. Mohammad was a pedophile, he was. And what do these f*ckers do about one low budget video, kill. All they need is a reason to yell. If they wanna burn our flags, we can cut the foreign aid. Let them all kill each other because they are savages. Not all but the streets are full of them. They have over reactions and aren't civilized yet. Insanity
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Yeah, there's no body mutilation in it



Should the film be made? No. It's pointless and tasteless and insulting.

Should the film be allowed to be made? Yes. That's the price of free speech.

Is there some serious cognitive dissonance in reacting to a film that stereotypes your culture as violent by resorting to violence? Yes.

If I'm a peace-loving Muslim, I'm way angrier at the response than the film, because that's doing far more damage to the religion's reputation and the stereotypes surrounding it.



If I'm a peace-loving Muslim, I'm way angrier at the response than the film, because that's doing far more damage to the religion's reputation and the stereotypes surrounding it.
^ This indeed.

Don't forget the trouble makers and 'extremists' are a deluded minority out of billions of Muslims in the world(just like every other religion/belief system). Some people can't seem to grasp this unfortunately.


The film maker should be done for misleading the cast and crew of his film and, I hope I'm wrong, for putting some of their lives in danger now - see Theo van Gogh and the short called Submission.



Yeah, that's the big fear at this point, I think. They say they were duped, so hopefully they won't be targets, but the guy who made it is absolutely in danger. As stupid as it seems he's been, he definitely needs to be taken into custody and protected. Instead, I'm seeing news outlets identify him by name! They're just painting a big target on the guy. But as you point out, Nausicaa, people have literally been murdered for even more thoughtful films (which is probably all of them, given what I've seen) than this.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
The clips from the video above show the film to be atrocious. I have to admit that I haven't really researched the actual film itself, but if those clips are in the finished film, then it makes even the cheapest rubber-suited monster film look like a documentary. I really have no desire to defend such garbage, and in fact, it seems to have only been made to produce a violent reaction in fundamentalist Muslims. Looking at it from that perspective, if the only reason for a "film" is to produce violence and death on innocents, then is the filmmaker actually responsible for a crime? I don't know enough of the back story, and I don't believe other works of art cause massive amounts of bloodshed, but those other works are art, and they've only seemed to delude select troubled people (Charles Manson, for example and his Beatles obsession). I'm not so sure that anything about this movie is art. It uses the tools of art to produce a completely predictable reaction and seems to be the reason it was made in the first place. It seems to be an attempt to escalate Muslim-Christian hatred for each other in some twisted fueling of the flames of ignorance and hatred. I suppose that would make it propaganda, and I've defended Leni Riefenstahl's films on here because they were artistic in the extreme and could be watched without seemingly inciting violence.

Another thing to consider is that there is no way that any of the terrorists involved in recent attacks have seen this movie. It's just that they hear about it and react in a fudamentalist, violent way. The same thing happens here involving so-called sacrilegious films where they are protested and pariahed. The naysayers never see the films but say what you will about "Christianty" causing death and violence throughout the centuries, Christian fundamentalists don't seem to go into violent rampages over films. They may get violent in other areas, but once again, I would hope and think that the majority would come out and shun all violence and murdering, but instead we keep going to war to show that our fundamental beliefs are better than others' fundamental beliefs.

I realize that this is rambling, but I just watched the Iranian film A Separation last night. It's very humanistic and paints an even-handed portrait of life in modern Iran, plus it's an intense personal drama presented almost in the manner of a thriller. Yet, this film ran into some problems with government officials because everything is supposed to be strictly black-and-white and not in shades of gray. The writer/director has moved to Europe to live and make future films. In this case, the people who didn't care for the film didn't get violent and even allowed it to pass the censors and be released in Iran. It eventually won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. There is a mountain of difference between that video above and A Separation, and if more people would involve themselves wiith the latter, the world would be a better place. But hey, death, violence, religious wars, terrorism and stupidity sell, so we're stuck in the reality which we have made for ourselves.
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