It is well-known that for centuries, the Anglo-European colonial powers have carried out an ongoing crusade in an attempt to dominate the resource-rich lands of the Muslim countries.” One front in this offensive, now spearheaded by the United States and the Zionist regime, is the denigration of Islam, the Holy Quran, our Holy Prophet (PBUH) and Muslims in general through the intentional dissemination of lies, slurs, misinformation and other propaganda. This campaign, which naturally has led to widespread anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, is fiercely denied by the Washington regime.”
Adding to a long list of rapes of the dignity, life and the rights of humanity by the Euro-American-Zionist bloc is the recent offensive, anti-Islamic U.S.-made propaganda film “The Innocence of Muslims”. Offending not only the Holy Prophet (S), Islam and Muslims but also casting doubts upon the Divine revelation of the Holy Quran, this crude film is the latest attempt by the enemies of Islam to discredit, demean and disgrace the True Religion of Allah.
Here is a partial list of some insulting anti-Islamic acts in Euro-American countries, all of which the West staunchly defends under the ruse of “freedom of expression”:
- 2012 – The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo publishes cartoons that insult Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
- 2012 – The September 24th issue of Newsweek features a photo of a crazed, rage-filled turban-bedecked protestor who “represents the mainstream of Islam”;
- 2011 and 2012 – “Reverend” Terry Jones burned copies of the Holy Quran in Gainesville, Florida, U.S.A.;
- 2008 – Fitna, a film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders charged that the Quran teaches hate, and Islam encourages acts of terrorism, anti-Semitism and violence against women;
- 2007 – Swedish artist Lars Vilks participated in an art exhibition themed “The Dog in Art” with a derogatory depiction of the Prophet(S);
- 2006 – German activist Manfred van H. received one year of probation for mailing toilet paper stamped with “The Holy Quran” to mosques and the media;
- 2005- Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed twelve derogatory cartoons of the Prophet (S);
- 2005- The Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet reported celebrity preacher Runar Søgaard’s lewd comments about the marriage of the Prophet (PBUH);
- 2004 – Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali created the 10minute film “Submission” about violence against women in Islamic societies;
- 2002 – Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Doug Marlette published a drawing showing Prophet (PBUH) driving a truck equipped with a weapon; “
- 2001 – Time Magazine printed an offensive illustration insulting both the Prophet (PBUH) and the Archangel Gabriel; and,
- 1996 – Three radio disc jockeys entered a Denver, Colorado U.S.A. mosque disrupting morning prayers with a live broadcast.”[the_ad id=”17141″]
A reflection of the moral cesspool from which it emerged, the 14-minute promo for the movie posted on You-Tube July 2, 2012 is filled with vicious and slanderous insults to Islam and the Prophet (PBUH) ranging from affronts to his (PBUH) noble ancestry to accusations of violent behavior. The clip suggests that the Holy Qur’an, instead of being a revelation from Allah, is a mixture of subversions from the Jewish Torah and the Christian New Testament.
Demonstrations condemning the film have taken place in a large number of countries throughout the Middle East and around the world including the UK, Belgium, France, and Australia. Conspicuously absent from the list is the United States. Washington makes decisions on protests and demonstrations. based on a simple criterion: Does the demonstration in question advance U.S. geopolitical goals and interests or not? If the answer is in the affirmative, then the demonstrators are fully defended by the Washington -regime and lauded for expressing their views, and if not, the demonstrators are condemned as a “mob”. “thugs” or “religious fanatics”.
An outpouring of Muslim frustration and anger, accumulated after many years of injustice and oppression by the West, and triggered by this vile film, has regrettably turned some protests – violent. According to most media outlets, demonstrators incited to violence by Islamic extremists attacked U.S. Embassies.. in several countries, resulting in at least 50 deaths. U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three staffers were killed in Benghazi on September 11 and three others at the American Embassy in Tunis were killed September-14. However, other sources indicate that the attack on the American Embassy in · Benghazi may have been in revenge for the June death of Libyan Al-Qaeda. leader Abu Yahya al-Libi, since Al-Qaeda chief Ayman Zawahiri had called for such an attack. Stevens was Washington’s envoy to the Libyan rebels in 2011 to “support a democratic transition”, that is, to oversee a regime change.
The Wall Street Journal, which must be viewed with the same skepticism as was Pravda at the height of power of the former reported that the film was produced by an Israeli-American named Sam Bacile. A real estate developer and Islamophobe, Bacile called Islam “a cancer” during a phone interview and claimed to have raised $5 million from Jewish donors to make the film. Knowledgeable cinematic sources question the $5 million figure, saying the amateurish film appears to be a low-budget production.[the_ad id=”17142″]
Countering the Wall Street Journal account is a CNN report stating that Israel denies Sam Bacile is a citizen, and may even be a non-existent person. Likewise, Klein stated that Sam Bacile was the producer’s pseudonym and he did not know the producer’s real name, Corroborating his statement are documents filed with the Screen Actors’ Guild that show the producer’s name as Abenob Nakoula Bassely, a Coptic Christian. In fact, it was Egyptian-American Coptic Christian Morris Sadek who first drew attention to the film in a post on an Arabic language blog. Mr. Sadek, who is also an anti-Islamic activist, sent a link to the 14-minute trailer in an email to journalists around the world promoting an September 11 event organized by “Reverend” Jones.
Determining who is really behind the film has proven difficult, since its permit, which contains this information, has been pulled from public examination by the FBI apparently at the request of the U.S. State Department due to national security concerns. This, along with the Wall Street Journal report, the CNN rebuttal, denials by Israel and the call by General Dempsey to Jones suggests possible involvement of the U.S. Government and collusion with the Zionist regime in the production of the inflammatory anti-Islamic flick. One commenter writes, With Russia openly accusing the West of using Al-Qaeda as their direct, militant proxies in Syria and beyond, this latest attempt to purposefully provoke and incite Muslims across the Arab World is an attempt by the West to reestablish the perception that the U.S. and Israel are at war with sectarian extremists, not partnered with them.”
Regardless who from among the Euro-American crusader powers is behind the film, we Muslims have every right to be enraged over such a blasphemous affront to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (S), and have a duty to decry this evil. Fortunately, Egypt has boldly taken the lead by issuing warrants for the arrest of Pastor Jones, Morris Sadek and six others allegedly involved in this plot on charges of defaming Islam and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
Dual Standards of western nations is nothing new or unknown to the world. It is a fact that how differently and strictly they deal with situations that harm their own’ beliefs but they will show utter disrespect for situations that hampers Muslim beliefs.
Under the umbrella of “Freedom of Speech and Press”, the west will allow any kind of content regardless of how disrespectful it is for Muslims or how much hatred and unrest that content could cause in Muslim world. But the content (can be video, drawing or images) will not be removed because doing so will curb their “Freedom of Speech”, for which west is so proud of.[the_ad id=”17150″]
But, same “West” will get so seriously involved and provoked if topless pictures of their princess are published somewhere because such acts are considered shocking, disrespectful, crossing the line, absolutely shameless and particularly indecent to the Royal Family. Same west will in fact take such a publisher to court in the respect of their monarchy to get the publisher fined and possibly the imprisonment too for the disgrace that he/she has caused for their Royal Family. And by the way, all this will never come under “Freedom of Speech and Press”.
Just to clarify, before we move forward, we are not advocating the publication of pictures. But rather we wanted to make a point that publication of such pictures is being challenged legally, despite all the slogans of “Freedom of Speech and Press” that are chanted by the west.
Talking specifically about the movie, which mocks islam and Holy Prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H). YouTube said that this video in question doesn’t violate its community guidelines and will not be removed from the website, despite the fact that White House had itself to request the Google, the parent company of YouTube, to reconsider whether the video had violated YouTube’s terms of service or not.
Just to add, YouTube’s Terms of Services or community guidelines, under which the website operates, are available on the web. We will pull a section from these guidelines for your review here: We don’t permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity). YouTube community guidelines further explain the term “Hate Speech” as following:
“Hate speech” refers to content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group. For instance, racist or sexist content may be considered hate speech. Sometimes there is a fine line between what is and what is not considered hate speech. For instance, it is generally okay to criticize a nation, but not okay to make insulting generalizations about people of a particular nationality.
So apparently, as it seems, over two dozen deaths and millions of Muslims protesting over the video clip is not considered as a “Hate Speech” and YouTube (or Google) isn’t really convinced that video is spreading hatred amongst the humanity.
However, the same company, i.e. YouTube, removed a series of 10 animated movies just earlier this year which it thought came under “Hate Speech” and guess what, these animated videos were about Holocaust Denial.[the_ad id=”17144″]
There are countless other examples available when YouTube removed video clips because it were hurting their own beliefs, despite they allow “Freedom of Speech”, meaning that anyone could say, draw or paint anything.
Just to add here, there are laws for Holocaust Denial in at least 20 countries (including Israel) where you could be charged for denying Holocaust. Even in United States, local state laws can be used to prosecute blasphemy and Holocaust Denial.
So anything against Holocaust will come under “Hate Speech”, or anything against the Royal Family will be rated as indecent but anything against Muslims will come under “Freedom of Speech and Press”.
What kind of a world we are living in, I leave it to you to decide. The argument put forward by the liberal-secularist is that freedom of speech necessarily includes the right to offend Islam and that Muslims should be mature enough to accept these insults.
The Muslim argues it is well understood that freedom of speech is not absolute and that exceptions are routinely made in the case of blasphemy. Why then do these exceptions not apply to Islam and its prophet?
The right to freedom of expression has been articulated both in the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. However, it is well understood that this concept is not absolute.
The covenant states that restrictions are imposed. in “respect of the rights or reputation of others” or “for the protection of national security or of public order”. Even within the United States, the most liberal in terms of freedom of expression due to the First Amendment of its constitution, defamation and censorship laws do exist.
In other words, there is a fine balance between the freedom of speech and the freedom to offend. Freedom of speech is curtailed if it dishonors unjustifiably or if it can cause harm to the wider public. The Muslim would argue that the West often fails to reach a just balance when dealing with Islamic issues.
There are many examples that highlight this inconsistency. The most obvious are the rights afforded by Western societies to those who deny the Holocaust.
Holocaust deniers, putting aside one’s personal revulsion at those who seek to cast doubt on this historic tragedy, are not given the right to express their opinion across 17 European nations where such activities are considered a crime.[the_ad id=”17151″]
The EU further advocates an optional maximum term of three years in jail to all member nations for denying or grossly trivializing crime Holocaust. In this case, the West in general has taken the position that denying the Holocaust is an abuse of speech, which is criminal or borders on criminal behaviour.
Muslims would question why there is such a restrictive stance on Holocaust denial while. blasphemy against the prophet is deemed a “human right”.
There are more contemporary examples. In the past week, an advertisement in Britain showing a pregnant nun eating ice-cream was banned for having “mocked Roman Catholic beliefs”. One could wonder whether the same judgment would have been made had it been Islamic beliefs in question. One could also question why a 19-year-old Muslim teenager in Britain was charged and convicted last week because he posted on Facebook a sentence about soldiers that was considered “derogatory, disrespectful and inflammatory”.
To add insult to injury, the French, who recently allowed their media to mock the prophet, ironically banned the democratic right to protest against these very cartoons.
To a Muslim this smacks of hypocrisy and duplicity. Muslims would argue that when it comes to freedom of speech, the West applies a of standards for Muslims that it uses to cater for its own cultural sensitivities. It shows the concept is not applied equally in Western jurisdictions.
The Islamic world must admit that its reaction to the-insulting video and cartoons was unacceptable and contrary to the prophet’s teachings. But there are also questions the West has to answer.
Western society has used freedom of speech as a moral bludgeon against Muslims, criticizing them as being uncivilized for their apparent inability to adhere to the same values as “free societies”. Yet the West has double standards when it comes to interpreting the same values it claims to uphold.
This inconsistent and perhaps biased application of this value only compounds the hurt Muslims feel when the prophet of Islam has mocked This perspective towards understanding the reaction of Muslims towards recent events has long been overlooked.