Another "you can't make this stuff up" moment from Aceh. "Aceh officers get into fisticuffs over 'un-Islamic' dance," from the Jakarta Post, August 8:
A fight broke out between members of the Banda Aceh public order agency and the province's sharia police unit Thursday, during a musical stage show held to celebrate their respective 58th and 4th anniversaries.[...]The fistfight began when sharia police operations commander Syafrudin said one of the dances did not reflect an Islamic atmosphere and should be stopped instantly, Marzuki said.
A quarrel ensued when several public order officers objected. Syafrudin and public order commander Tarmizi exchanged blows, before a scuffle broke out between members of the two units.
The event was then closed down.
"The fight would not have happened had the sharia police officer asked politely," Marzuki said.
No casualties were reported in the incident.[...]
The Aceh Islamic Sharia Office has four ordinances on the implementation of sharia in Aceh, one each on Islamic dress code, alcohol, gambling and immoral acts.
Was it the "Time Warp"?
It's just a jump to the left...
Didn't Kevin Bacon star in this movie? (Footloose?)
Isn't this the place that we donated all that money to after the tsunami?
That's the last time I donate to a muslim disaster fund (is that redundant?).
One more of those perennial problems: Islam and the Dance. Just like Islam and Music. Or Islam and Sculpture. Or Islam and Art. Or Islam And [Your Suggestion Here].
One may be put in mind of Sayyib Qutb, the Egyptian Musilm who spent a year or two in the United States in the late 1940s, and was horrified by many things, but above all other things, by a square dance he observed at a church social near Greeley, Colorado, in which men and women, or boys and girls, actually danced together.
There is a lot one could do with this to mock the tenets and attitudes of Islam, and one hopes that many will do so, and put up their efforts at YouTube.
For inspiration, they might consider what British propaganda warriors did during World War II, when they took footage of Hitler's serried and goosestepping ranks, and manipulated it to make it appear that the Fuehrer's finest were "doing the Lambeth Walk."
What, you ask, was the Lambeth Walk? It was a dance craze that began in Great Britain.
One YouTube contributor describes the matter thus:
"In early 1939 the Nazi Party declared the Lambeth Walk "Jewish mischief and animalistic hopping". In 1942 Charles A. Ridley made a short propaganda film, Lambeth Walk - Nazi Style, which edited existing footage of Hitler and Nazi soldiers (taken from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will) to make it appear as if they were marching and dancing to "The Lambeth Walk". The film so enraged Josef Goebbels that he ran out of the screening room kicking chairs and screaming profanities."
Now here is some of that film which so upset Goebbels:
In this Movietone version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCyDnj3S4bE&feature=related
or in this slightly different one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6vCIEG0Bxc
Someone, or some group of someones, must now go and do likewise -- must make Qaradawi, or Saudi clerics, or Ahmadinejad, or the entire leadership of Hamas, or the Secretary-General of the I.O.C., become as "enraged" as Goebbels, so that they singly or together can run "out of the screening room [or from the computer where, at YouTube, they have just seen a song-and-dance number they don't like] kickikng chairs and screaming profanities."
Shouldn't this be some film school graduate's fall project? Or some people who normally do commercials, but casting about for something much more fun to do, will give such an effort the old post-college try?
Real Muslims don't dance. Or think a lot, apparently.
Hugh
here's the beginnings of an idea, inspired by that marvellous Movietone parody piece.
Film of large assembly of Muslim males doing their prayer drill/ calisthenics.
Add soundtrack: the sort of bouncy music used for things like womens' exercise aerobics tapes.
Splice in imagery of the typical superfit busty female aerobics instructor in skintight and revealing costume, bouncing up and down, chanting instructions as if it were an aerobics session: you know 'up! down! bums in the air!' with exhortations, 'lower! lower! bang foreheads! harder! no farting!' etc.
Play at accelerated speed.