Edition One - February - Australian University Sport

PAGE
014
Your Say
The protests riled by the IOM was not only concerned with
the film for insulting Islam. It was also the continued
misunderstanding of Islam, the mishandling of diplomatic
relations with majority Islamic nations and the lack of
respect that we afford one of the dominant religions of the
world.
Resistance against commercialism from Christianity has
faultered. The resistance from Islam is still strong. Hence
an outright assault on Islam by a couple of crappy film
makers rubbed salt on some already deep wounds.
Nathan E Watts
After the riots of 2012 over the Innocence of Muslims
(IOM*)film I thought that I had better have a look at it.
To be frank, after sitting through 15 minutes of the IOM
I wanted to protest** too, not for religious offence but
because I wanted my 15 minutes back. Not since watching
Terminator Salvation have I wanted a time machine so
bad so that I could warn myself of the total waste that I
would endure from watching such diatribe. At least IOM
was short. Although shorter still would have been an
improvement.
So what was all the fuss about with IOM Do we not have
the right to make crappy films Or write poorly thought
out articles for that matter Of course we do. So how dare
people protest about it Just as I have the right to write,
everyone has the right to protest.
Of course the IOM was not produced in Australia, nor hosted
here. However, there are elements in our community that
does not respect religions, evenly openly vilifies them.
Permissible perhaps, however, Islam does seem to cop
more of it, and of a more personal nature. The accusations
within the film are a prime example. How often is similarly
deliberately disrespectful material produced against the
central idols of Catholicism, Protestants, Jehovah s. Yet,
the European based denominations seem to be off limits
to the same sort of accusations that were levelled in the
IOM against the Prophet Mohammed.
Make no mistake, the IOM was a crap ‘film’. Your time
would be better watching paint dry. For all the insults that
it slung it was not even funny, hence the insult. It seems to
be purely a hate film.
Australians have the right to protest the insult of their
religion (or non-religion) and it is more important to do
so to draw attention to Australia’s continued meddling in
the affairs of other nations. Or, at least tacit support for
meddling.
It would be good if the two issues were better separated.
Of course it would also help if Aethists, Agnostics, Muslim
and non-Muslim religions were better informed about
religious sensitivities, history and global politics, irrelevant
of whether a crap film had been made, because as both
IOM and Terminator 4 attest, crap films are regrettably
frequent.
*I have abbreviated the Innocence of Muslims to IOM not
from disrespect for Islam, rather for disrespect for the
production.
** Note, I wrote protest, not riot.
Many commentators viewed the strong reaction to the
film outside of Australia as extreme. Perhaps. One must
consider that many of the nations that endured the worst
reactions were nations that have a history of unstable
governments, lack of Police and/or rife Police/Government
corruption and generally discontent populations. And
many of the peoples of those nations have an issue with
the West.
Viewing the history of the Middle East, Central Asia and
Africa it is easy to see the efforts of Western corporations
aided by their respective Governments to make changes
to the way things are done. Often in the push to improve
market opportunities there is a push to change the
religious practices. Even in the West, when religion
became a hindrance to expanded commercialisation the
religious governance was supplanted by a commercially
favourable system (consider the end of the Sabbath, in
favour of Sunday trading).
Attempts to westernise often result in attempts to expunge
a religion. There are many peops that percieve the system
to be this way. A brief view of the UK’s involvement in
Afghanistan since the 1800’s is a simple example of how
people might come to this view. As is the intervention of
Britain and the USA in Iran for the past 150 years. Or the
change of the way of life in any New World country at the
behest of the European Colonial Powers.