"Fight over cinemas kills at least 12," from Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
HEAVY fighting apparently sparked by an Islamic militia's moves to close cinemas and video stores in the lawless Somali capital has killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 21.Clashes between gunmen loyal to Mogadishu's Islamic courts and local militia defending the densely populated Yaqshid district began yesterday and flared again today.
"The Islamic courts' militia are trying to close all entertainment centres of the district," one local resident Ahmed Dhuhulow said.
Three people died yesterday and another nine today in clashes that caused inhabitants to flee the area and shops to close, witnesses said....
Leaders of Mogadishu's influential Islamic courts oppose Western and Indian films which they say promote immorality in the mainly Muslim nation.
Killing 12 people at random isn't immoral?
Movie theatres are a favorite target of Muslims of the poorer sort, who may be unaware of the kinds of material their ruling classes possess for private delectation, and ban the products of Bollywood and Hollywood with equal outrage.
The most famous example of this is the burning down, with 600-700 people inside, of a cinema in Iran, during the days when Khomeini-maddened crowds were toppling the pillars and pylons of the Shah's establishment, inflamed as they were by those audiocassettes made in France by Khomeini, who from his French-police-protected exile in Neauphle-le-chateau, made the tapes which were then sent to Iran, recopied by the bazaris, and distributed far and wide by a nest of mullahs. And among those mad Muslim mobs, so similar to the maddened Muslim mobs that attacked American institutions including the embassy and consulate in Pakistan when one group of Muslims tried to seize the Mecca mosque and wrest it from the control of the Al-Saud, properly viewed as corrupt, and necessarily viewed, by those same Muslims, as "Infidels" because the worldview of Muslims always requires that everything, including indignation at greed or corruption, be phrased solely by reference to Islam, in terms that will arouse Muslims.
The short-sighted French, so oblivious to their own future interests (as teachers of property like to say, when they inflict archaic topics on helpless law students), had previously given refuge to Khomeini (whose horrific views had all been published, and were accessible to any Farsi-reader and surely there were such people in the employ of the French security services). But were those security services, or the French diplomatic corps, or the French government, any worse then than they are now, or than the security services, diplomats, and government officials of other Western countries, so slow to come to their senses.
There is nothing secret about what Islam teaches. Nothiing mysterious about the actual passages in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. Bin Laden is not a bad Muslim. Al-Zawahiri is not a bad Muslim. For that matter, the views of any intelligent Muslim cleric who knows his Islam will, in the attitudes toward Infidels, be hair-raising -- unless he simply chooses to ignore what Islam teaches, or to lie about, or fail to recognize for what they are, his own views.
Well done, Deuxieme Bureau! Well done, Couve de Murville, Jacques Chirac, Hubert Vedrine. Well done, Dominique de Villepin. And well done too, all those English and American diplomats who for decades kept telling us that Saudi Arabia was, is, cannot but be, our "staunch ally" and that we need not, in 1970, or 1973, or 1979, or 1989, or 1999, or now, go hellbent for leather on an energy program that, in its size and scope, will show that at long last people have come to their senses, and realize the OPEC oil revenues, or much of them, will inevitably fund the Jihad all over the world. It is not a question of this or that bank account being closed down. There are a thousand ways to transfer money. The Saudis and other Arabs know them all. The very amounts available to be transferred, to build mosques, to support mosques, to do the same with madrasas, to pay for propaganda and Western public-relations firms that serve any master that pays them, even a declared enemy of their own civilization, the Western hirelings of every kind -- professors, diplomats, ex-intellligence agents, journalists -- who will always have their hand out, ready to provide whatever plausible excuse is needed, and serves the current purporse -- have to be diminished. Saudi Arabian and other OPEC oil revenues have to both go down, or be seen to be on a downward slope, and every conceivable way of soaking up the discretionariy income of the Saudis and others -- seizure of assets abroad to pay for monitoring the very Muslims the Saudi money helps inflame, head-taxes on Saudis who wish to visit the West, whethe "students" or students, or simply the rich Arabs who need medical care, entertainment, brothels and fun fairs and non-stop shopping in the West, and will pay, should pay, far more than they do for the privilege even of stepping on Western land, considering what is in their mental baggage, and what harm they have done, are doing, and will -- if allowed -- do.
No more French, or other Infidel protection for those who, like Khomeini, whip up crowds through audiocassettes to burn down cinemas. And no more access to Infidel hospitals, or buying of property for future safe-houses, by those who, like the Saudi rulers, may not register cassettes calling for the destruction of such dens of iniquity as the local Cineplex (the grand picture-palaces of yore in America and England often had such names as Grenada or Alhambra, meant to evoke a world of exotic, and pleasing, fantasy -- forever changed as recovered civilizational memory has at long last allowed to dawn, here and there, a more realistic sense of what Islam is all about).
One does not have to approve of most movies in order to wish that cinemas not be burned down. They are at their worst dens of stupidity, not dens of iniquity. A tribute to Radix malorum pretending, as it so often does, to be something else. But then something comes along that's better. "City Lights" or "Some Like It Hot" or "Dr. Strangelove" or Doillon's "Ponette" for example, which takes me back to my imaginary days in maternelle, at Ecole Jules-Ferry on rue Gambetta, running around with that little cartable on my back, and then in class taking out my little cahier upon which I could write absolutely nothing, because I was then as unable to write as 50% or 60% or 80%, of the adult population of the Muslim world, despite the umma al-islamiyya al-a having received $10 trillion in revenues from oil and gas since 1973 alone.
And in my imaginary maternelle I was 4 years old. What's their excuse?
Re: "Islamic courts oppose Western and Indian films which they say promote immorality in the mainly Muslim nation."
Khomeini once stated that there is no humour in Islam. Apparently there is no irony in Somalia either. Seal the borders.
Killing people in order to ensure public morality is not "immoral" within the lexical universe of Islam. In fact, killing people in order to ensure public morality is entirely, absolutely, righteously moral -- within the lexical universe of Islam.
Appeals to the concept of morality -- other than at the end of a gun barrell -- will be utterly useless as the matter of our universe continues to collide with the anti-matter of theirs. The superiority of our morality cannot be explained, neither to Muslims nor to our own Leftist Deconstructionists who created and continue to nourish our dominant PC disease (and who will be quick to see, through the senseless conjunctivitis of their pathology, only a "moral relativism" in my argument here).
The superiority of our morality is simply a matter of faith, and we must be willing to fight to defend it and the decent men, women and children who who live and thrive in its shelter.
I dredged this post from the jihadwatch archives by a poster named "metaxy". I'm not sure I agree with everything metaxy says, but it bears reproducing in a thread about Muslims and cinema:
I found this article published in 1995 in the on-line cinematic arts journal Kinema. It concerns some Muslim reactions in Southeast Asia to a 1993 Disney movie called "Alladin".
The two authors of this piece reveal, apparently unwittingly, aspects of hypocrisy among Muslims and a rather sordid side of Islamic culture, even as they are trying to sensitively “explain” both the Muslim response to the global imposition of Western pop culture, as well as Western ignorance of Islamic culture (of course, ignorance of how good it is).
They introduce their piece (my comments in CAPS and brackets):
“Much been said about the reception of Walt Disney Incorporated's 1993 film Aladdin by Arab-American groups in the United States. However, little has been written concerning the reception of the film in other parts of the world, especially in those nations with significant Muslim populations”—specifically, “nations of Southeast Asia with large Muslim populations”, including Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore.
[THE AUTHORS TRY TO AFFECT NEUTRALITY CONCERNING MULTICULTURALISM:]
“our intention in this paper is not specifically to establish whether or not the film is, or should be regarded as, insulting to certain national or ethnic groups...”
[THEN THEY REVEAL THE BIAS INHERENT TO MULTICULTURALISM:]
“That the film could be regarded as offensive to Arabs and Muslims seems fairly easy to understand. Some critics have argued that a film that stereotyped African-Americans or Jews as Aladdin did Arabs never would have been released. And, as an Arab-American critic of the film pointed out, although Jasmine and Aladdin are positive Arab characters, they speak American English, as opposed to the heavily-accented English of the evil characters -- in fact, the character of Aladdin was modelled on the American actor Tom Cruise. This ethnic and nationalistic stereotyping is not a new phenomenon in Disney cartoons or in animation in general; as Jonathan Rosenbaum pointed out in 1980, this "submerged nationalistic propaganda," as he called it, can be seen as early as Pinocchio in 1940, in which the protagonist, Pinocchio, and the good fairy both have American accents, while the villainous characters have either Italian or English accents.
"We can go further, and point out that Aladdin is one more successful attempt by Disney to Westernize, and even Americanize, an artistic product of another culture. As we saw in the Gulf War, other cultures tend to be valued in the West in relation to their usefulness to the West; the Arabic fairy tale of Aladdin became raw material for the Disney machine, which produced not an authentic depiction of an Oriental culture and its products, but an American cartoon depicting the Arabic world and its people as both exotic and humorous. The emancipated genie, with his Goofy hat and other Disney World paraphernalia, is not only an advertisement for Walt Disney Incorporated, he also serves as an unintended symbol of the "Mickey Mousing" of the world and its various cultures.
"Just as the cultures of the world are being consumed by Disney, Western culture is being sold to the world. [THERE'S YOUR PC ZEITGEIST MENTALITY RIGHT THERE] A recent issue of Singapore's The Straits Times reported that WDI "is preparing the ground for a large-scale assault on the heart[s], minds and pockets of consumers in South-east Asia." Referring to the establishment of The Walt Disney Company (Singapore), Brandt Handley, the managing director of the new company, said:
The umbrella is up. Under its cover, all the other aspects of Disney's business -- theme park marketing and television, film and video distribution -- will enter the region. Consumer products were the trail-blazers. Like the guy going into the jungle with the machete, we clear a path for Disney's other divisions to set themselves up. That's the strategy we employ all over the world. The company seems to have found a willing "victim"; in 1993, Singaporeans alone spent S$15 (about US$10) per capita on Disney paraphernalia, exclusive of the money spent on film admissions themselves. [ARE THESE THIRD-WORLD ASIANS CHILDREN OR ANIMALS OR ROBOTS? HAVE THEY NO FREE WILL AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CHOICES THEY MAKE TO BUY, OR NOT TO BUY, DISNEY "PARAPHERNALIA"???]...
[NOW HERE'S WHERE THE AUTHORS CAN'T HELP BUT LET A LITTLE REALITY SEEP THROUGH THEIR PC FILTER:]
"Although it is not difficult to see why Disney's Aladdin is insulting to Arabs and Muslims in general, it seems unlikely that the film's offensiveness can be blamed on Jewish motion picture executives eager to indoctrinate young audiences with negative stereotypes of Arabs, as was suggested by some Arab-Americans.
"By mid-April 1993, Aladdin had grossed over $200 million in North America... Walt Disney Incorporated expected to gross another $250 million in the international market, and a large share of this gross certainly was expected from Asia. Asia did not disappoint Disney. [NO ONE POINTED A GUN TO THE HEADS OF ASIANS TO GO SEE THE MOVIE BY THE THOUSANDS]
"Aladdin ran into few problems in Singapore; the island's largely Chinese population apparently found little to be offended by in the film, and if the nation's Muslim population was offended, it certainly was not vocal in its opposition to the film. Across the straits in Malaysia, however, this was not quite the case... Malaysia was torn by conflicting attitudes concerning the film and its depiction of the world of Islam.
"...the Malaysian Muslim Youth Movement (Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia, or ABIM) urged the Malaysian government to ban the film as well as the soundtrack on cassettes and compact discs. The group included the soundtrack in its attack, as did Arab-American groups in North America, because of the alleged racism of the lyrics of the opening song of the film, in which an Arab character sings: "Oh, I come from a land, From a faraway place, Where the caravan camels roam. Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face. It's barbaric, but, hey, its home."
"According to ABIM's secretary-general, Anuar Tahir, "[Aladdin] is racist, [and] ridicules Arabs as well as Muslims in general. Malaysia, as a country which upholds moral values, should prevent the dissemination of such messages in our society. The film is not suitable for Malaysian audiences."
"[Nevertheless,] there was nothing like the mass demonstrations of outrage that [in Malaysia] accompanied, for example, the publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, outrage that resulted in government intervention to ban the book [AH YES, MALAYSIA, THAT "MODERATE" ISLAMIC NATION...]
[NOW HERE'S WHERE THE TWO PC AUTHORS AGAIN CANNOT HELP LETTING A LITTLE REALITY ABOUT ISLAMIC CULTURE SEEP THROUGH THEIR PC FILTER:]
"How can we account for this lack of media attention, and the apparent lack of public outcry [in Malaysia and among South Asian Muslims in general], regarding Aladdin?
"Aside from the fact that Disney movies and cartoons most certainly have far more fans in Malaysia and the rest of the Muslim world than does Salman Rushdie, there are a number of other factors involved.
"First, we must realize that although the Malays are Muslims, they are not Arabs. We don't mean to suggest that the Malays are insensitive to insults to their Arab brothers and sisters [HEAVENS NO, WE KNOW THAT ALL MUSLIMS LOVE EACH OTHER AND NEVER KILL EACH OTHER OVER TRIBAL, RACIAL, REGIONAL AND RELIGIOUS DISPUTES]...
"...but the reaction in Malaysia most likely would have been much more negative if the characters stereotyped offensively in the film had been more obviously Muslims, rather than specifically Arabs. [WATCH CAREFULLY HOW THE AUTHORS WILL CONTRADICT THEMSELVES ON THIS POINT, COMING UP SHORTLY...]
"...it seems clear that for most viewers, whether Occidental or Oriental, animation is not something to be taken seriously. [HOW DO THEY KNOW THAT? THEIR ARTICLE HAS FOOTNOTES TO MANY OF THEIR ASSERTIONS, BUT NONE TO THIS ONE ABOUT THE OPINION OF "MOST ORIENTAL VIEWERS" CONCERNING THE MEDIUM OF ANIMATION].
[OKAY HERE GOES: THE AUTHORS REPORT THAT] "...the film did indeed appeal to the majority of Malaysian viewers. Although it may seem odd to Westerners that a film that is fairly widely regarded as offensive to Arabs and, to a lesser extent, to Muslims in general, should appeal to a Muslim people, the film Aladdin in most respects is exactly what Malaysians love in a motion picture. It is melodramatic (or overly melodramatic, some would argue); it tells a love story about two attractive characters, a beautiful girl and a handsome young man, one rich and one poor; it contains many romantic songs; and it even has some mild violence thrown in for good measure. In other words, in most respects it is an animated version of the typical Malay movie. [OH OH, THEY'RE BEGINNING TO SOUND "RACIST"...]
[OKAY -- HERE IS THE DELICIOUS PIECE DE RESISTANCE:]
"And the depictions of Islamic law in the film -- for example the threatened punishment of the amputation of Jasmine's hand for inadvertently stealing an apple, or the beheading (that didn't actually occur) of Aladdin for stealing a loaf of bread (or for consorting with the princess Jasmine; it never is made quite clear) -- is rather tame compared to the punishments meted out in many Malaysian period films, in which characters routinely suffer amputations of various body parts, or are speared, beheaded, and/or burned alive, all in the name of Allah. Anyone familiar with Malaysian cinema should have no problem understanding why audiences, in general, chose to ignore calls to ban or boycott the film and instead treated themselves to an evening of song and romance."
I am still surprised that country hasn't practised self-genocide by now. I think one of the few normal Somalian people we have in the Netherlands is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Dressed normally for western measures as opposed to the traditional clothed Somalian women we have a-plenty here.
And amazing she has more backbone than many a male in this country.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is special, a veritable theophany -- though being an atheist (not to mention suitably humble) she would probably disagree.
From Mohammed and Mohammedanism published in 1910:
Lisa,
In terms of morality, Muslims could be doing one of two things:
1) sincerely believing they are upholding morality, but defining that morality in ways that we know to be regressive, inhumane, corrupt and evil, but which they see -- through the prism of their twisted culture -- as totally righteous
2) really knowing they are believing in and doing wicked evil deeds and revelling wickedly in it, taking ghoulish delight in it, like lucidly scurrilous demons.
I tend to think #1 is the case (with rare exceptions, e.g., like Saddam's sons).
Sharia law is 'SOoo WONDERFUL' doncha think!! It makes killing people MORAL. Look at the Islamic Hellholes in Africa & Middle East and you can see exactly what this Stone Age clap trap does to its fanatical followers.
No "entertainment". Is this what Islam teach?
How can many Muslim nations have the entertainment places in their countries?
I'm sure that they will get what they want. That mean "Tuff and hard Life" there.
Dr Pepper your essays are often welcomed, but every time you or anyone else mentions in a negative manner, multiculturalism and PC, I cringe.
And for good reason. At my age I have a long memory and knowledge of those who first exhibited umbrage (and still do) against politically correct language and multiculturalism.. and those that did and do are the allies of the Islamists today.. the skinheads, neo NAZI's and racists.
It worries me to see, for want of a better word, the Islamic aware also hoist those words and concepts on a petard.. what strange bedfellows I keep thinking, that even Zionists are allied with antisemites and racists, they just interpret the word differently and include and exclude different categories.
I'm vexxed and concerned about the future of my living heirs (of which I now have 15), because of the short sightedness of our species, which focus entirely on immediate issues, and are easily motivated by demigogues who, men who have their own agenda, but restate their agenda in palpable terms that have resonance and meaning with the masses of the herd.
Well meaning they may be, but damn few people, and especially so called leaders have the facility for long range thinking and most especially of unintended adverse consequences such as the pragmatic politics that result in embracing a werewolf in a fight against a vampire, or the denuding of the very soil upon which our lives depend, in the quest for quick profits, produced from wood, or selling our souls and our posterity for the profits and market share that comes from trade and petroleum.
A decade ago, Saudi Arabia, abetted by the Jizyah, we pay for their black crack, embarked on a radical scheme to subsidize agriculture, become food independent and subsidize the Arab and A rab, the wandering and domiciled bedouin.
They sank wells and the immense exploitation of the archaic water (10,000 years old) underlying the desert, caused a sinkage in the land,(they became alarmed and abandoned the project, now investing millions in desalinization of Red Sea water) the same is bound to happen as oil is pumped out of the wells, and oil wells seem to be located in zones contigenous to tectonic plates, could they be the lubrication which facilitates non tensional subduction?
And less one be come enamored of the mid east suffering massive earthquakes because of drilling and pumping (Iran and it's earthquakes comes to mind) bear in mind that such events are not local, for like pollution it is global, and an event in one region sets off a chain of events that impact other regions, just like those damn domino's.
Pump oil in Iran and it causes plates to stick and grind in Pakistan, and the jolt is felt eventually further along the fault line, until a volcano erupts in the Cascades, or forces let loose that cause, a horrendous eruption of a super volcano in not so far away, from us, Yellowstone.
We don't know for sure, but neither do we not know for sure.. nothing happens in isolation and there is always an ancient cause in a chain of events.
But we don't think far enough into the future to care, in any of the events of human endeavor, be they political or commercial.
Back to Iran and Khomeini, I made a study of that event at the time, notice that Khomeini was given refuge in France, that the man arrived there from Najaf penniless, and suddenly a million dollars and diplomatic pouch assistance was provided him.
His triumphant return to Iran was aboard a chartered French airliner, (pretty good for a penniless man), but here's where one finds understanding.
British Petroleum-Dutch Royal Shell, had a monopoly on Iranian oil, until Shah Pahlevi came to power, and then the oil interest monopoly shifted to U.S. oil firms, with the ouster of the Shah it was again the European oil interests that obtained a monopoly interest in oil that was pumped under Iranian supervision and ownership, by Iranian government employees.
With the ouster of the Shah, European oil interests regained their foothold, and American oil interests were ousted. In the wake of the revolution Marxist-Islamists revolutionaries flooded into Europe as political refugees, while pro Shah refugees flooded into America.
Pro Shah, but still Islamists. YOu can remove the man from Islam, but not the Islam from the man, save for a handful of enlightened beings cum apostates.
Since WHEN do killer-Zombies understand the concept of morality??????????????
These jihadist/killer-Zombie horrors exist for one reason ONLY: to prey upon other human beings and thereby strengthen Islam's stranglehold on humanity.
The attacks on movie theaters are a repeat of what the Taliban did in Afghanistan during their rise to power.