April 10, 2008

Schism

A Saudi blogger, Raed AlSaeed, has come up with a response to Geert Wilder's hate film, Fitna. Visually, Schism is divided into three parts: numerous American soldiers beating up a couple of Iraqi men (to the growing excitement of a warped American GI who was filming the scene from above), various clips from the movie Jesus Camp, and CNN coverage of Baghdad being bombed by the US Air Force at the start of the Iraq War in 2003. Interspersed are various quotations taken from the Bible (primarily the Old Testament) that, without context, make Judaism and Christianity seem particularly bloodthirsty.

However, Raed's purpose for making Schism is not to attack either Judaism or Christianity, but to show how and why a film like Fitna makes an intellectually dishonest argument. At the end of the movie, Raed wrote:

It is easy to take parts of any Holy book that are out of content [sic; he means "context"] and make it sound like the most inhuman book ever written. This is what Geert Wilders did to gather more supporters to his hateful ideology. To create schism.




HT: Rob Wagner: 13 Martyrs

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice try, good intentions but the guy missed his history lessons I guess! Where Mohammed waged 19 wars and raided caravans, Jesus let himself be taken prisoner and took humiliation without uttering an angry word! Slight difference!
But again his point that some people use others to commit crimes in the name of religion is made!

JDsg said...

Speaking of missing history lessons!!! It's all about context, which is the point of the video. Jesus (pbuh) didn't have to conduct wars because his society was governed by a strong foreign power (the Romans). It was a land governed by the rule of law (such as it was). Arabia had no such advantage; the law was what the various tribal shaykhs made it. Jesus (pbuh) went from a triumphal welcome into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to falling foul with the Jewish and Roman authorities within five days. Muhammad (pbuh) endured twenty-one years of numerous assassination attempts and wars being waged against him. Yet thousands of Arabs saw through the lies and propaganda and hate against Muhammad (pbuh) and the Muslim community and embraced Islam. When the Makkans broke their own treaty and the Muslims marched against them, the Makkans had the good sense to realize that Islam reigned supreme and they peacefully submitted. Slight difference indeed! If you think the filmmaker's point was that some people use others to commit crimes in the name of religion, then you don't understand the film.

Anonymous said...

The big difference is there is no price on Raed Al-Saeed's head for his version of christianity and no riots.

JDsg said...

As opposed to all the snores from the Muslim community concerning Fitna?