The Arab Spring and "the War on Terror"

[snowychap]

What I do not approve of, are muslim attempts to restrict my freedom to say anything, read anything, write anything or watch anything I may wish... this marks the end of freedom and the start of tyranny.

Do you approve of non-muslim attempts?

Having read your other posts, I don't believe you do but the way in which you present your argument (the constant 'pig-fecking prophet' references and so on) suggests not a championing of free speech but an expedient use of it to verbalize the scorn and disdain with which you view people whose opinions differ from your own.

Edit: It probably doesn't help matters that you appear to have missed a couple of stories of US and UK curbs of free speech (to which Peter provided links).

[peterms]

Those who are concerned with freedom of information and expression would do well to take note of a remarkable attempt to give the UK state more power, deny us information about some more of its illegal activities, and subject us all to even more surveillance, all under the general excuse of "national security", the usual fear-mongering which governments have engaged in for many years.

The most recent assaults on our freedom are the Communications Data Bill and the Justice and Security Bill.

What's that? Do I hear the first cries of "If you're not guilty, you've got nothing to hide" and "Every government has to protect its secrets, and it's done in our best interests"?

[chrisp65]

I've taken the trouble to read every word .. and it is absolute rubbish. I will tell you why:

It contains not one single word of introspection, self analysis, or self criticism.

......

I wish to be quite unequivocal about this. I have not seen the famous film; it may not be very good, but I heartily approve of it;

........

In the modern age, our little planet cannot afford such forms of mass hysteria fuelled by the crass ignorance.

[LondonLax]

A pretty good Opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald today after violent protests in Sydney over the weekend.

The Incredible Muslim Hulk proves to be no friend of Islam either

Date September 17, 2012

Opinion: Waleed Aly

Hundreds take part in an anti-Islam film protest in Sydney in front of the US consulate in Sydney on Saturday.

WHERE do I start? Perhaps with the viral image that will come to define this episode: a child who'd be three or four hoisting a sign triumphantly above his head blaring ''Behead all those who insult the Prophet'' while a woman, presumably his mother, thinks this is cute enough to capture on her smartphone. Alternatively, I could begin with the observation that the trailer for the anti-Islamic film that ostensibly started this all, Innocence of Muslims, is now a blockbuster, with YouTube hits in the millions thanks largely to the protesters around the world who think nobody should see it.

This is the behaviour of a drunkenly humiliated people: swinging wildly with the hope of landing a blow, any blow, somewhere, anywhere.

No. Let's start with the fact that so few of the protesters who descended on Sydney's CBD this weekend seem actually to have seen the film that so gravely offends them. When asked by journalists, they bluntly admit this, one even adding that she refuses to watch something so offensive. It's almost impressive how cyclical this stupidity is. But it's also instructive. In fact, this is the key to making sense of something so gobsmackingly senseless. The protesters - at least the ones quoted in news reports - know nothing except how offended they are.

That, you see, is all that matters. This isn't about a film. It's about an excuse. We know because we've seen it all before, like when Pakistani protesters vandalised American fast food outlets and burnt effigies of President George W. Bush in response to the Danish cartoons.

We know because so much of the weekend's ranting was nakedly gratuitous: ''Our dead are in paradise, your dead are in hell''. Pardon? Which dead? Weren't we talking about a movie?

This is the behaviour of a drunkenly humiliated people: swinging wildly with the hope of landing a blow, any blow, somewhere, anywhere. There's nothing strategic or calculated about this. It doesn't matter that they are the film's most effective publicists. It doesn't matter that they protest using offensive slogans and signs, while protesting against people's right to offend. It doesn't matter that they object to insulting people on the basis of their religion, while declaring that Christians have no morals. This is baffling only until you realise these protesters are not truly protesting to make a point. The protest is the point.

It feels good. It feels powerful. This is why people yell pointlessly or punch walls when frustrated. It's not instrumental. It doesn't achieve anything directly. But it is catharsis. Outrage and aggression is an intoxicating prospect for the powerless.

Accordingly, it is not an option to leave an insult unanswered because that is a sign of weakness, rather than transcendence.

The irony is that it grants an extraordinary level of power to those doing the offending. It puts them constantly at the centre of your world. That's why, when Gallup polled 35 Muslim majority countries, it found that of all the gripes the Muslim world has against the West, among the most pervasive is the West's ''disrespect for Islam''.

And it is this disrespect that is the overarching grievance that subsumes others. Everything, global and local, can be thrown into this vortex: Swiss minaret bans, French niqab bans, military invasions, drone strikes, racist stereotyping, anti-immigrant politics, and yes, even films so ridiculously bad that, left to their own devices, they would simply lampoon themselves.

This is what gives Innocence of Muslims meaning: not its content, but its context. It's a symbol of contempt, which is why protests against it so quickly turn into an orgy of anti-Americanism. So, ''Obama, Obama, we love Osama'' they scream, mainly because it's the most offensive rhyme they can muster. Osama, too, is a symbol; the most repugnant one in their arsenal. How better to prove you exist than to say something outrageous?

That the Obama administration immediately condemned the film in the strongest terms doesn't register. Nor that the White House took the extraordinary (and ultimately unsuccessful) step of asking Google to pull the video. This is invisible to an audience of humiliated souls waiting desperately to be offended and conflate every grievance. Indeed, they need the offence. It gives them the chance to assert themselves so they can feel whole, righteous even. It's a shortcut to self-worth.

The trouble is that in our digital world, there is always something to oblige. Anyone can Google their prejudices, and there is always enraging news to share with others. Entire online communities gather around the sharing of offensive material and subsequent communal venting. Soon you have a subculture: a sub-community whose very cohesion is based almost exclusively on shared grievance. Then you have an identity that has nothing to say about itself; an identity that holds an entirely impoverished position: that to be defiantly angry is to be.

Frankly, Muslims should find that prospect nothing short of catastrophic. It renders Islamic identity entirely hollow. All pride, all opposition, no substance. ''Like the Incredible Hulk,'' observes Abdal Hakim Murad, a prominent British Islamic scholar, ''ineffectual until provoked.''

Sometimes you need a scandal to demonstrate an underlying disease. And that's the good news here. The vast bulk of Saturday's protesters were peaceful, and Muslim community organisations are lining up to condemn the outbreak of violence. But now a more serious conversation is necessary. One that's not about how we should be speaking out to defend our prophet and ourselves. One that's more about whether we can speak about anything else.

Waleed Aly hosts the Drive program on ABC Radio National and is a lecturer in politics at Monash University.

SMH

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Rushdie

I look forward to his memoir, but one important line is 'Rushdie argues that there is a need for blasphemy: "The writers of the French enlightenment had deliberately used blasphemy as a weapon, refusing to accept the power of the Church to set limiting points on thought." '

Although the current youtube video is hardly a thought-through challenge of the Islamic establishment, it is important that no one (within Islam, most importantly) fears to challenge them.

[peterms]

On the point about why so many Muslims feel hostile towards the US, this is interesting:

In 2004, Donald Rumsfeld directed the Defense Science Board Task Force to review the impact which the administration’s policies — specifically the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — were having on Terrorism and Islamic radicalism.

[Kwan]

Pulling out is always a safe option

The problem with pulling out is that one tends to leave behind a hell of a mess with the aftermath of your presence splattered across the landscape.

It's often left to someone else to do the cleaning up, too.

The problem is that we're already in there without any protection. There is no magical pill that protects all of us so we can either pull out or just let loose in there and 9 months later, we've produced something that we'll have to take care of for the rest of our lives.

[snowychap]

Pulling out is always a safe option

The problem with pulling out is that one tends to leave behind a hell of a mess with the aftermath of your presence splattered across the landscape.

It's often left to someone else to do the cleaning up, too.

The problem is that we're already in there without any protection. There is no magical pill that protects all of us so we can either pull out or just let loose in there and 9 months later, we've produced something that we'll have to take care of for the rest of our lives.

He he.

[Awol]

You can watch the film trailer

Not to be out done by les Americans, a satirical French magazine has published fresh Mohamed cartoons today - here.

I think this is turning into a freedom of speech issue now for many in the West but we may well be in for another round of hi-jinks after Friday prayers..

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

I hope every satirical magazine publishes cartoons of mohammed.

Islam needs to grow the **** up about this issue.

[Jon]

Good on Charlie Hebdo

[PompeyVillan]

I hope every satirical magazine publishes cartoons of mohammed.

Islam needs to grow the **** up about this issue.

I also veer towards this opinion, however I do often question whether Islam is intolerant and sensitive or whether Islamic countries are marginalised and fed slanted information from their news sources, which stokes the fire. As far as I'm aware Muslims in the UK have not attempted to burn down embassies etc.

There is of course a context to all of this, however I do feel that it is an intrinsically Islamic problem to some extent, because like it or not, there will continue to be people who mock and criticise religion, including Islam. And they won't be silenced because rioting in far off lands etc.

A Pakistani politician has put a bounty of $100,000 on the film makers lives and no action has been taken against him. Responding to insult with violence is accepted in some parts of the Muslim world and it shouldn't be.

[Awol]

I hope every satirical magazine publishes cartoons of mohammed.

Islam needs to grow the **** up about this issue.

A Pakistani politician has put a bounty of $100,000 on the film makers lives and no action has been taken against him. Responding to insult with violence is accepted in some parts of the Muslim world and it shouldn't be.

It gets better, he appealed to his "Taliban brothers and Al Qaeda brothers" to assist him. He also said that if the US will hand the film maker over to Pakistan the Minister is willing to kill him with his own hands..

Mental

[maqroll]

I hope every satirical magazine publishes cartoons of mohammed.

Islam needs to grow the **** up about this issue.

A Pakistani politician has put a bounty of $100,000 on the film makers lives and no action has been taken against him. Responding to insult with violence is accepted in some parts of the Muslim world and it shouldn't be.

It gets better, he appealed to his "Taliban brothers and Al Qaeda brothers" to assist him. He also said that if the US will hand the film maker over to Pakistan the Minister is willing to kill him with his own hands..

Mental

And we give them billions of dollars every year...the US are being played for **** chumps, and nobody in government has the balls or the brains to do anything about it.

[chrisp65]

Libya: Benghazi crowds drive out Islamist militants

September 22, 2012

Posted in News, September 2012, Week Commencing September 16 2012 | 18:43

Cheering protesters in Benghazi have stormed a base occupied by a militant Islamist group accused of complicity in the killing of the US ambassador to Libya, saying they were ‘reclaiming it for the nation’.

The direct action against Ansar al-Sharia, a group whose members were seen at the consulate building where the ambassador, Chris Stevens, died last week, followed a “Rally to Save Benghazi” by activists angry that the government and security forces had failed to take on militant groups.

There had been a similar but smaller protest in the capital, Tripoli, earlier. The crowd in Benghazi numbered 30,000, leading to fears of violence as the heavily-armed Ansar al-Sharia, or “Supporters of Sharia”, staged a counter-protest.

However, the Islamists were overwhelmingly outnumbered, and the protesters moved first to evict Ansar from a hospital for which they had been providing security.

Later in the evening, chanting “Libya, Libya” they moved on the main base further from the city centre, taking it over without resistance and setting fire to cars found inside. Police and members of the official army parked outside did nothing to intervene.

Militia and military leaders have been meeting members of the interim government and the newly-elected prime minister, Mustafa Abushagur, in Tripoli this week to discuss how to deal with Ansar al-Sharia, or at least the members said to have been involved in the consulate attack.

American officials believe some members may have been in contact with al-Qaeda, and Hillary Clinton called the incident a “terrorist attack” for the first time on Friday.

The capture of the base was celebrated elsewhere in the city by parades of cars touring the streets, honking their horns.

Source: The Telegraph by Richard Spencer

they're all the same them millions of nutters, not like us

[mjmooney]

Seven things you may have missed in the 'Rage':

Like everyone else, many Muslims find the 13 minute Islamophobic video "Innocence of Muslims" trashy and offensive. Protests have spread quickly, tapping into understandable and lasting grievances about neo-colonialist US and western foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as religious sensitivities about depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. But the news coverage often obscures some important points:

1. Early estimates put participation in anti-film protests at between 0.001 and 0.007% of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims – a tiny fraction of those who marched for democracy in the Arab spring.

2. The vast majority of protesters have been peaceful. The breaches of foreign embassies were almost all organised or fuelled by elements of the Salafist movement, a radical Islamist group that is most concerned with undermining more popular moderate Islamist groups.

3. Top Libyan and US officials are divided over whether the killing of the US ambassador to Libya was likely pre-planned to coincide with 9/11, and therefore not connected to the film.

4. Apart from attacks by radical militant groups in Libya and Afghanistan, a survey of news reports on 20 September suggested that actual protesters had killed a total of zero people. The deaths cited by media were largely protesters killed by police.

5. Pretty much every major leader, Muslim and western, has condemned the film, and pretty much every leader, Muslim and western, has condemned any violence that might be committed in response.

6. The pope visited Lebanon at the height of the tension, and Hezbollah leaders attended his sermon, refrained from protesting the film until he left, and called for religious tolerance. Yes, this happened.

7. After the attack in Benghazi, ordinary people turned out on the streets in Benghazi and Tripoli with signs, many of them in English, apologising and saying the violence did not represent them or their religion.

Add to that the number of really big news stories that were buried last week to make room for front page, angry Muslim "Clash" coverage. In Russia tens of thousands of protesters marched through Moscow to oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese and Spaniards turned out for anti-austerity protests; and more than a million Catalans marched for independence.

Muslim rage or Salafist strategy?

The "Innocence of Muslims" was picked up and peddled with subtitles by far-right Salafists – radical followers of an Islamic movement long supported by Saudi Arabia. The film was a cheaply made, YouTube failure until an Egyptian Salafist TV host, Sheikh Khaled Abdullah began promoting it to viewers on 8 September.

Most insulted Muslims ignored the film or protested peacefully, but the Salafists, with their signature black flags, were leading instigators of the more aggressive protests that breached embassies. Leaders of the Egyptian Salafist party attended the Cairo protest that broke into the US embassy.

Like the far-right in the US or Europe, the Salafist strategy is to drag public opinion rightwards by seizing on opportunities to fan radical anger and demonise ideological opponents. This approach resembles that of anti-Muslim US pastor Terry Jones (who first promoted the film in the west) and other western extremists. In both societies, however, the moderates far (far!) outnumber the extremists. A leading figure in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood (the more powerful and popular political opponent of Egypt’s Salafists) wrote to the New York Times saying: "We do not hold the American government or its citizens responsible for acts of the few that abuse the laws protecting freedom of expression".

Good reporting

A lonely band of journalists and scholars have approached the protests with an intent to truly understand the forces behind them. Among them, Hisham Matar, who powerfully describes the sadness in Benghazi after J Christopher Stevens' killing, and Barnaby Phillips, who explores how Islamic conservatives manipulated the film to their advantage. Anthropologist Sarah Kendzior cautions against treating the Muslim world as a homogenous unit. And Professor Stanley Fish tackles a tough question: why many Muslims are so sensitive to unflattering depictions of Islam.

Avaaz

[chrisp65]

a couple of interessting articles

not sure about the background to this site (Shabab Libya), but it does look scarily, er, level headed

[legov]

Seven things you may have missed in the 'Rage':

Like everyone else, many Muslims find the 13 minute Islamophobic video "Innocence of Muslims" trashy and offensive. Protests have spread quickly, tapping into understandable and lasting grievances about neo-colonialist US and western foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as religious sensitivities about depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. But the news coverage often obscures some important points:

1. Early estimates put participation in anti-film protests at between 0.001 and 0.007% of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims – a tiny fraction of those who marched for democracy in the Arab spring.

2. The vast majority of protesters have been peaceful. The breaches of foreign embassies were almost all organised or fuelled by elements of the Salafist movement, a radical Islamist group that is most concerned with undermining more popular moderate Islamist groups.

3. Top Libyan and US officials are divided over whether the killing of the US ambassador to Libya was likely pre-planned to coincide with 9/11, and therefore not connected to the film.

4. Apart from attacks by radical militant groups in Libya and Afghanistan, a survey of news reports on 20 September suggested that actual protesters had killed a total of zero people. The deaths cited by media were largely protesters killed by police.

5. Pretty much every major leader, Muslim and western, has condemned the film, and pretty much every leader, Muslim and western, has condemned any violence that might be committed in response.

6. The pope visited Lebanon at the height of the tension, and Hezbollah leaders attended his sermon, refrained from protesting the film until he left, and called for religious tolerance. Yes, this happened.

7. After the attack in Benghazi, ordinary people turned out on the streets in Benghazi and Tripoli with signs, many of them in English, apologising and saying the violence did not represent them or their religion.

Add to that the number of really big news stories that were buried last week to make room for front page, angry Muslim "Clash" coverage. In Russia tens of thousands of protesters marched through Moscow to oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese and Spaniards turned out for anti-austerity protests; and more than a million Catalans marched for independence.

Muslim rage or Salafist strategy?

The "Innocence of Muslims" was picked up and peddled with subtitles by far-right Salafists – radical followers of an Islamic movement long supported by Saudi Arabia. The film was a cheaply made, YouTube failure until an Egyptian Salafist TV host, Sheikh Khaled Abdullah began promoting it to viewers on 8 September.

Most insulted Muslims ignored the film or protested peacefully, but the Salafists, with their signature black flags, were leading instigators of the more aggressive protests that breached embassies. Leaders of the Egyptian Salafist party attended the Cairo protest that broke into the US embassy.

Like the far-right in the US or Europe, the Salafist strategy is to drag public opinion rightwards by seizing on opportunities to fan radical anger and demonise ideological opponents. This approach resembles that of anti-Muslim US pastor Terry Jones (who first promoted the film in the west) and other western extremists. In both societies, however, the moderates far (far!) outnumber the extremists. A leading figure in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood (the more powerful and popular political opponent of Egypt’s Salafists) wrote to the New York Times saying: "We do not hold the American government or its citizens responsible for acts of the few that abuse the laws protecting freedom of expression".

Good reporting

A lonely band of journalists and scholars have approached the protests with an intent to truly understand the forces behind them. Among them, Hisham Matar, who powerfully describes the sadness in Benghazi after J Christopher Stevens' killing, and Barnaby Phillips, who explores how Islamic conservatives manipulated the film to their advantage. Anthropologist Sarah Kendzior cautions against treating the Muslim world as a homogenous unit. And Professor Stanley Fish tackles a tough question: why many Muslims are so sensitive to unflattering depictions of Islam.

Avaaz

Interesting. From the news, one really gets the feeling that the protests and violence and widespread.

[snowychap]

[peterms]

Is that a very old recording, or do they seriously consider it to be "breaking news", when the rest of the world knew this some weeks ago?