Guardian, UK Windbag: Libya: there is good reason to ban the hateful anti-Muhammad YouTube clips

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2012/sep/12/libya-anti-muhammad-youtube-clips?fb=native

Libya: there is good reason to ban the hateful anti-Muhammad YouTube clips

The material I have viewed, said to be linked to the US embassy attack, is purely and simply an incitement to religious hatred

 

The US consulate in Benghazi, where the ambassador and three other staff have died after a rocket attack. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

I have just watched a YouTube video of clips from a film which, it is claimed, provoked the attack on the American embassy in Libya. It is impossible to completely authenticate them at this stage, or exclude the possibility the clips could have been doctored in some way by the uploaders. However, we do know that the film has been linked to riots in Egypt and the attack in Benghazi in which four embassy staff, including the ambassador, were killed. It's a really nasty piece of lying propaganda: something which deserves to be called hate speech, since hatred is its wellspring and the propagation of hatred is its goal.

It is – obviously – blasphemous to Muslims. Less obviously, it offends against the central values of liberal democracy. The justification of free speech put forward by John Stuart Mill is that the remedy for bad speech is better speech. But this presupposes an interest in truth, and perhaps some agreed means of deciding on it. It's a system that breaks down when confronted with determined and malevolent liars.

The film portrays Muhammad as a pathetic fraud, a child molester. He is an unwanted bastard at birth, and only gains his self-confidence after an older woman summons the cringing young man to her tent and pushes his head under her skirts where he nuzzles her crotch. When he emerges, he has seen visions.

The dialogue reminds me of a Jack Chick comic. In one scene Muhammad tells a noble Jewish elder, "Pay the extortion or go to Palestine". The elder spits at his feet and walks off.

The mother of one of Muhammad's wives weeps and calls him "a child molester". He is shown running his hands over a silently protesting pubescent girl. Then he pushes her on to her back, kneels between her legs, and says, "For you, I am cancelling the adoption. Islamic nation forbids the adoption for Zeinab. That is the next verse in the Qur'an."

Cut to an old woman, saying she is 120 years old "and in all my young life, I have never seen such a murderous thug as Muhammad … he sells the children as slaves after he and his men have used them". The camera cuts back to show her feet are tied with ropes to a camel; as it moves forwards, she is hoisted into the air. The watching Muslims LAUGH – in great capital letters, pantomime villain style. The production values of the video as a whole are those of a backyard performance of Ben Hur. In the great battle scene, the Muslim hordes sweeping across the desert are represented by six camel riders.

"Whoever refuses to follow Islam have only two choices: pay extortion – or die!"

Later, the prophet is shown pronouncing judgment: "Pull off his arms, and then his legs. And then his head. And do it in front of his beautiful wife, Sophia." In the event though, the victim is tied to a stake and allowed to make a speech begging God to give his descendants the land of Palestine before being stabbed with a sword. The lovely Sophia is then dragged off to the prophet's bed.

This is only 13 minutes. It's hard to imagine the full two hours. The way I have told it may provoke incredulous giggles, but there is an element of intended nastiness in it that dries up laughter.

Some people will want to defend the film as critical of an idea, or of a belief. But I don't think that will do. No Muslim could think of Muhammad as he is portrayed in the film, and very few can suppose that Islam commands them to behave the way the Muslims in the film do. The beliefs criticised are entirely imaginary. If any other group but Muslims were the target this would be obvious at once.

This film is purely and simply an incitement to religious hatred. It stokes hatred in both of its intended audiences – Christians and Jews in the US, and Muslims in the wider world. If jihadi videos are banned in this country, and their distributors prosecuted, the same should be true of this film and for the same reasons.