That thing going on half across the world

I'm sure you've heard of the recent attacks on the US Embassy in Libya which killed our ambassador and a few others. Attacks similar to these have continued to spread across the Middle East, and it seems there are new deaths, damages, and outrage daily.

What caused all this? A short, sub-par, extremely ridiculous, film that made claims about Muhammad was made, posted to the internet, the Muslims saw it, were offended, and revolted... in a nutshell.

I have not seen this film, nor do I think I want to. Usually in cases like these, I like to seek out the source and make my own judgements, but I heard a small audio clip from it, and it was enough. The audio was terrible, and it was very clear that the person being filmed was not filmed in one sitting. Meaning, things were taken out of context, here and there, clipped together, and produced. Think of it like that reminder service phone call with the automated voice: "This is SLUCare with a reminder about your upcoming appointment. {Jamie} has an appointment on {Monday, January first} with {Doctor So-and-so.}

Anyways, the lady in the audio clip said something like "I have never heard of someone so {blah blah blah} as Muhammad." The words in there, I can't quite remember, but they had something to do with womanizing, sexual abuse, and a third thing.

Pretty radical, offensive claims. Believe what you will about the Muslim world, those are still extreme, and very serious, things to say about someone's religion. As they said on NPR, you could relate it to if someone came out with a movie claiming the Virgin Mary was not in fact a virgin but was a whore. So that's what sparked this entire uproar.

Now, for my own personal reasons a long time ago, I decided to seek out the part in the Qur'an where it says you could use violence against others. After hearing this from so many people, I decided to seek out the source (like I talked about doing earlier) and see if there was any truth to it. Turns out there is. The Qur'an does tell followers that when someone is threatening you because of your belief in Allah, you are "allowed" to "use force" against them. (That's about it, the rest of what you hear is most likely exaggerated.)

I do have a bit of a problem with that verse. Nowhere in the Bible has it ever told me to use violence against non-Christians. Yes, you can preach and you are to proclaim your faith proudly to the world, but not to the point of violence. So that's a big difference right there. Aside from that, though probably closely tied, is the entire culture of the Middle East; it's just a different world from ours.

Back to America. So this "film" was made by Americans, and I've read they were Coptic Christians. After a quick detour to Wikipedia, I have found out this is a group of Christians whose version of Christianity was born in Egypt.

So, we have an extreme group of Christians riling up an extreme group of Muslims. The Muslims are calling for the US to take action against the filmmakers (jail, trial, or something like that) and remove it from the internet, which brings into the argument free speech.

I understand the free speech side of it, yet I also don't think that anyone should be able to spout off to the world any matter of lies. If someone ever made statements like this about Mary, Jesus, or whoever, I would be outraged too. I don't think I would go attack an embassy, but I'm pretty confident there would be marches, people would take off work to participate, and all manner of protest to get someone to take the video down.

Catholic bishops have blasted the Copts associated with the film, many others outside of the Middle East have come out against them, and others have said they made it out of greed. Whatever their motivation was, I think it is all extremely sad. If they truly believe the things they said, I think that's unfortunate. If they did it for greed (isn't that one of the seven deadly sins?) then that's not very Christian-like either. Maybe they wanted to call to attention that Islam is a "violent" religion. If so, then they have proven their point to their audience. I'm sure there are many people who know nothing about either side of this issue who will look at the TV say "Wow, those people are setting things on fire. They must be horrible people."

But I think the makers of this film should be held accountable for their actions. Not only did they infuriate a nation of people, they single-handedly undermined a lot of progress made in the war on terror, including sacrifices made by our troops and many people others, and decimated our relations with the Middle East.