Indeed, it's an hard call.
The bolder approach seem faster, but the cost may be unacceptable.
Inaction has also a cost, as people suffer and die because of fundementalism.
(Yes, it is a typo and yes, I decided to leave it there).

(My earlier comment about the necessity of hurting islamic feelings should be read in light of what I said on page 3 (which still applies) (though it now appears Jones was not that involved with this film, and the film may not have been that involved with events in Libya, so not everything I said on this page necessarily still applies).

Sorry FO, didn't forget you. But a more complicated question than it sounds. Well, a simple question which resides on the vertices of several complex problems. Been thinking about this for a few years with no clear answer. Not the doorstop thing specifically. I keep my Qu'ran on a bookshelf. But how to deal with islam. What is the place for criticism of islam. And what constitutes productive blasphemy.

Thematically, I'm in favor of any blasphemy at any time for any reason. Tactically, it's a harder call...

Who doesn't love God-Man!? ^_^

http://boingboing.net/2012/09/19/tom-the-dancing-bug-the-god.html

The point about breaking the taboo is actually a good one, even if it comes at the cost of people getting killed... oO

The clip in youtube is quite low quality. However I enjoyed it immensely, because it breaks yet another taboo.

It is regretable that there was loss of life because of fundamentalist extremists acting barbarically. The good news is that eventually, in a few weeks they will settle down to their lives of despairing quiet poverty. They believe that their poverty is makhtoub, or written by Allah, so they plod along accepting fatalistically their crappy lot in life without taking any measures to improve it.

Just like in the case the muhammad cartoons they will quiet down and yearly contests in draw mohammed day will take place, I expect that make a mohammed clip will be made also in yearly contests. The mullahs and immams cannot censore the whole world and remove freedom of expression from the face of the earth.

Young muslim children will grow in a world where drawing muhammad of making movies about his brigand life will be easily accessible online. They will grow to accept it and join the fun.
The sooner these medieval taboos are broken the better.

By the way drawing muhammad was quite common a few centuries back and there are many such surviving paintings. Ottoman art engaged heavily in this until about 1600. The ban is more recent. And quite ridiculous. Muhammad may not even have existed and if he did, he is cenrtainly just a man of his time, no better or worse morally than the other desert brigands and warriors of his time.

The youtube clip is a fair description of muhammads life and actions as described in the Sirah (concocted biography of muhammad) and the Hadiths (the concocted deeds of muhammad), minus the pious excuses and justifications for his atrocious and immoral acts.
Everything in this clip is true, and can be easily verified by reading the sirah and the hadiths.

A courageous clip, suffering only from amatourish and low budget production and acting. It makes up for it in accuracy of description, though.

I hope many more such clips will be made to break the taboo on discussing muhammad as a man of his time, instead of glorifying and excusing and worse, following his 7th century, Dark Ages deeds and habits.

Abdul

@Nox: Agreed.
What do you think about the idea of using the Koran, say, as doorstop?

Also, the overwhelming majority of the Muslim I know (just like the Christians) are very nice people.
And according to these, uh, "moderates", they DO speak against the crazies, but their appeals don't make much audience.

I do think that moderates create an environment where fundamentalism is more socially acceptable, and therefore it may be useful for to challenge and hopefully weaken their ideas to burn the ground around the fundies.

It would seem that one of the men suspected of being behind the production of "The Innocence of Muslims" is now being questioned by legal authorities in the U.S. Accessing the internet or using an alias would have violated the terms of his probation after his conviction for bank fraud. So there is the possibility that he might be nailed, not because of the film's content (which is protected, of course, under the free speech provisions of the U.S. constitution), but because he posted the trailer on YouTube. It remains to be seen if they will be able to prove that it was him.

At some point muslims are going to have to grow the f*ck up and grow more resilient feelings. I don't like the undercurrent of xenophobia and racism that runs through most of the criticism of islam in the west (not to mention the way our selective criticisms of islam seem to always coincide with countries we want to justify military action in). But the list of things that sends muslims into seizures is too long to cater to. Some of them will overreact to anything they consider an insult to their prophet.

Before that can be broken, the prophet will need to be insulted. The Qu'ran will need to be burned. Muslims will need to learn how to be offended with dignity. Muslims will need to learn that being offended by everything does not give them the right to demand the world be shaped to their delicate sensibilities.

That is the real reason Terry Jones sucks so much. Because his criticism of islam is weak and inarticulate. His Qu'ran stunt, and his involvement with the film amount to no more than saying "Muhammed was ugly" or "Allah is the devil". What is needed is not christian flagwaving, but for reason to be brought to bear against the tenets of islam. What is needed is a reduction in concern for whether muslims will be offended, not cheap insults intended to offend muslims.

I don't imagine Jones has really thought about the results of his actions (nor that he in any way shares my goals, or wants to see islam dissipate for at all the same reasons I do). But in practice, what he is doing is contributing to muslims' ability to feel persecuted. Worthwhile insults of islam will contribute to muslims' ability to stop feeling persecuted.

Islamophobia is mostly a reaction to an imaginary version of islam that exists only in the imaginations of certain factions of christians and jews. But the version of islam that exists in the world is something that does call for some phobia. And being offended by everything is its most common tactic for suppressing criticism.

"As for legal action, I think what this guy is doing is awfully close to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. "

He's not even close.

Just going to leave this here. It's NSFW, but the Onion satires it quite well.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/?ref=auto

"Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and continued on with their day."

Custy-

">...we should have pulled all Western influence out of the Middle East decades ago and left them to stew in their own theocratic juices."

Yup, and we would have if not for the crude stew juice.

Yoav makes a valid point. Kind of hard to teach our kids that we live in a society where violence is not the answer, when we cave-in every single time there's a threat of violence. Personally I think we should have pulled all Western influence out of the Middle East decades ago and left them to stew in their own theocratic juices.

While it pains me to defend Terry Jones from anything I read it look like this particular film was produced by a different bunch of a*sholes and his involvement in it is minor at most. Not that it matter to the issue at hand, yes the people who made this particular movie are a bunch of racist sh*t stains but that still doesn't justify the reaction of killing some random people who had nothing to do with it (or the actual producers). The outrage is clearly manufactured, apparently an islamist politician in Egypt have discovered the movie that have been on youtube for months and by the time the riots started have gathered the impressive number of 6000 views (a video of a cat playing the piano get that many views in 3 seconds) and thought he can make some political capital by stirring outrage. And it's not like the offensivness of the video makes a difference, just recently a British station canceled a screening of a documentary on the history of islam for fear of muslims getting mad, and while I haven't seen that documentary anything I heard of it was that it was a serious, generally positive film but as far as the kind of person burning shit in Cairo at the moment is concerned any view of the koran and Mohammed that isn't, the koran is the divine word of allah and was dictated to Mohammed (who was the most perfect person to ever live, in the history of forever) by the angel Jibril, is an insult that should be addressed with violence.

Addendum to my comment: I'm not trying to justify the whining, self-indulgent arrogance of a bunch of Muslims who think that they have a right to never have anything negative or humorous said about their religion. I think they're a pathetic bunch of pricks too.

Don't be so mean, Ursa. Satan's brother in law is a guy named Steve who lives in New Jersey. He *is* a lawyer, but the worst thing he's done is chasing a few ambulances. He's nowhere near being in the same category as this wingnut. ;)

As for legal action, I think what this guy is doing is awfully close to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. However, as a practical matter, this guy would probably like nothing more then to be arrested so he can play the martyr. We shouldn't give him the satisfaction or the attention.

I think there's now a question of intent. As in, now he knows that his actions will cause a reaction which will gain him fame, he's trying to keep himself and his agenda in the news by triggering events he knows will end in deaths. Under US law, he's not responsible. Under European law, he would be. I don't know about international law. Morally, though? Guilty as hell.

"Since history is done once as tragedy and again as farce, and apparently a third time as a farcical tragedy."

This explains so f*cking much.

"Does this change anyone's perspective as to his moral culpability?"

Not mine. But I was kind of in the middle on this one to start with. I mean, he had to know the likely outcome the first time. This is the same case. All the key elements are the same. Though I think we were up to farce by the first incident.

Last one got him national publicity. So there's a sequel. Isn't there always a god damn sequel? Moral culpability would seem to be the same in both cases. Still an unhelpful aggressive insult. Still a pointless insult to muslims by someone who knows nothing about islam. Still jingoism disguised as political speech. Still disingenuous publicity seeking. Still an aggravating agent. Still a place that is already aggravated by an unwanted american presence. Still not the agent who committed the second action.

Still think Jones' actions should be met with aggressive shunning, should be loudly condemned, and should be legally ignored.

Still think Jones is utterly irrelevant next to the principles he is hiding behind and the potential precedents which could be set by actual interference. But as you said on page 3, we shouldn't shrink from assigning moral culpability when something that shouldn't be said is said to fairly predictable and horrific result.

LOL.

No. I still think he's about as upright and moral as Satan's brother-in-law.

Since history is done once as tragedy and again as farce, and apparently a third time as a farcical tragedy, Pastor Jones, at it again (this time with a video he produced), again leads to riots that claim lives (this time at the US Embassy in Libya). Does this change anyone's perspective as to his moral culpability?

Drax, If Santorum had anything to do with it, they'd hand out millions of Qurans -- laced with anthrax.

Ty, you clearly don't understand the best way to win friends and influence people. All we have to do is continue our goodwill campaign of burning Qurans and bombing wedding parties and eventually the Afghanis will see that we mean them no harm.

Since the president is a secret muslim I'm sure he'll order it. Although that might be enough to get the religious right firmly behind Rick Santorum. What if they offered them a choice between a bible or a koran? or maybe a kama sutra? or a free subscription to Playboy?

And thus we appear to validate the Islamic world's fear that we want to Christianize them.

Damn, we're dumb sometimes.

I suspect that the reason the U.S. military isn't handing out copies of the Quran in Afghanistan is simply that it wouldn't fly well with the public here. It smacks of promoting Islam.

Add to that the fact that the U.S. military command structure is dominated by evangelical Christians, and it's definitely a no-fly.

I'm actually sort of surprised they aren't already doing that as a PR thing. Winning the hearts and minds and all. It seems like a pretty stupid oversight.

Here's a twist that never even occurred to me.

".. Every article I read keeps repeating that the riots are caused by the burning of the books. This just isn’t so. It may have triggered the riots but the feelings of animosity towards the western powers runs much deeper than that. It is beyond the ken of yours truly as to how the news and Americans in general can overlook the stunningly obvious which is we have invaded Afghanistan, occupied their land with a bunch of murderous barbarians (us,) bombed their weddings, bombed the ensuing funerals, bombed their houses, bombed their civilians, women and children more often than not, kicked in their doors during the middle of the night, executed them, abused them, and humiliated them for the last decade, and this after the Russian invasion. Yet the news media tells us that the riots are about the burning of the Koran."

"One obvious conclusion is that this is another attempt to frame the Afghans as unreasonable fanatics. This is ludicrous beyond belief yet many Americans will buy into this for after all the news media is only after the truth, is unbiased as well as fair. And who are the real fanatics? The other day I was looking for Tahini sauce at a local yokel market, couldn’t find it, and asked an employee if they carried it. I was told they used to have it but that they cleared all that “kind of stuff out.” This person then regarded me with a continence that was a mixture of hurt and childish anger. After all, those dirty A-rabs is a-killin’ our lovely rosy cheeked cherubic troops. What a laugh. Every time one or two Americans get their asses blown off it’s big news yet the thousands upon thousands of Afghans murdered by our “heroes” goes largely unnoticed unless they get caught pissing on the bodies of dead Afghans. And even then the main concern is the pissing and not the fact that these few “good men” just murdered the dead Afghans who I stress were just fighting an invasion of foreign troops just as most Americans would if they were in the Afghan’s place.

Again I ask -- who are the real fanatics? Here in America people are upset because the science of Darwin is being taught in schools seen as a blasphemy against a mythical god by a bunch of superstitious fools who believe in the devil and angels and how many of them can fit on a pinhead, appropriate for a bunch of superstitious pinheads I would say. What about the Americans who go to services where they roll and wither in the dirt speaking in tongues?

Americans are fanatical about the sanctity of America itself completely intolerant of anything different, suspicious of furriners who don’t share their world view, eat what they eat, or dress the way they dress.

Americans are so fanatical that they think spreading the American way of life to every corner of the planet is their god given prerogative yet it is the Afghans who are fanatical.

-Rob Payne, Halcyon Days

Good point Nope. I kind of read the "mistake" as being along the lines of "we didn't even realize it was a Koran until it was too late." But maybe I'm giving the millitary too much credit.

That is an excellent point LMNOP, although never rule out stupidity when it comes to the military. They could also have given them away to other Muslims.