Getting Used to It

Submitted by Sigmund Derman (United States), Sep 25, 2012 at 13:07

Essentially I agree with Dr. Pipes' point. I would say that mocking could be hate speech if it was intended to express hatred and if it was otherwise gratuitous. That's why I mentioned on another thread of this forum that such things as videos could actually be used to start a useful dialogue. In the case of the "Innocence" video, it was not gratuitous. It was a protest against the Muslim mistreatment of Christians in Egypt. Maybe it was not well done, but in an of itself it was a completely non-violent protest. Would it have been better if the Coptic Christian who produced it had blown up a Mosque instead?

To me, the part that was not well done was that it did not clearly make the connection between the Muslim persecution of Christians presumably shown at the beginning and the rest of the movie (I admit I just saw about 15 minutes of it on Youtube, not the whole thing). The connection could simply be the statement "Why are the Muslims doing this?" Then the answer could be "Perhaps the bad things that some people say about the origins of Islam are really true. From the way the Muslims are acting toward us, this is what Mohammed must have been like...."

At least that is one way to frame it as a diaglogue. If it had been done that way, there would still be the same violent demonstrations. But perhaps a more Muslims would realize that actions by Islamic extremists were the real cause of such movies.

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