Jihad against the phantom menace hits Sinai

The jihad against a non-existent “film” produced by non-existent “Jews” continues to claim lives, with the most recent attack Sept. 23 launched by militants in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Israeli troops guarding the border, killing one and wounding another. AFP informs us that an outfit calling itself Ansar Bait al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem) took credit for the attack, calling it a “Disciplinary Invasion Against those who Dared Against the Beloved Prophet.” The statement posted on Islamist websites read: “As the defence of the honour of the Messenger of Allah is one of our duties and responsibilities, your brothers…carried their weapons and became determined to discipline the Jews for their heinous acts.” Hey, read the small print, willya Ansar Bait al-Maqdis? “The Jews” had nothing to do with this one—the non-existent “film” (really just a “trailer” on YouTube) was produced by a Coptic Christian who cynically assumed the fabricated identity of an Israeli-American, and falsely claimed to have Jewish financial backers. Talk about “Anti-Semitism without Jews.”

Jihadist yahoos are also targeting the “actors” in the “film” with death threats—despite the fact that they were obviously duped (the original script made no reference to Islam or Mohammed; their voices were stripped out and replaced with a dubbed script for the inflammatory “trailer”). One of the “actors,” Cindy Lee Garcia, is actually suing the producer, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, and also seeking damages from YouTube and Google. (LAT, Sept. 21; TMZ, Sept. 19)

In Pakistan, a government-called Youm-e-Ishq-e-Rasool (Love of Prophet Muhammad Day) to condemn the non-existent “film” was observed throughout the country after Friday prayers on Sept. 21. But it got out control in several cities, with rioting, looting and 20 killed. Two police officers were among the dead in Karachi, according to Pakistan’s Express-Tribune.

Pakistan’s government has thankfully reprimanded a cabinet minister, Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, for his offer of a reward for killing the “producer” of the “film.” Bilour, the railways minister, offered a $100,000 bounty for the death of the non-existent “Sam Bacile,” apparently not having gotten word that this is a fabricated identity. “I announce today that this blasphemer, who has abused the holy prophet—if somebody will kill him, I will give that person a prize of $100,000,” he said, especially inviting members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda to carry out the “noble deed.” (Al-Arabiya, Sept. 23)

A particularly perverse irony to this sad affair is that it comes just as Salman Rushdie has released a memoir of his years in hiding from the fatwa issued against him by Ayatollah Khomeini for passages deemed blasphemous in his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses. Rushdie’s website tells us that the memoir is called Joseph Anton after the alias he took while living incognito—the first names of two of his literary heros, Conrad and Chekhov.  We can only imagine that Rushdie is aghast at the inevitable comparison of his work and this cowardly, conniving, malevolent piece of garbage that everyone insists on calling a “film” without quotation marks even though it isn’t. Further evidence of Marx’s famous dictum that history repeats itself—”the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” 

  1. Anti-Islam film-maker jailed
    Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. From AFP, Nov. 8:

    A filmmaker whose anti-Islam video sparked violence across the globe was jailed by a court in the United States on Wednesday. Mark Basseley Youssef was sentenced to a year in prison for probation violations on a previous offence…

    Mark Basseley Youssef will serve the sentence in federal prison after he admitted four allegations of using false identities, violating the terms of his probation for a bank fraud conviction in 2010.
                 
    The 55-year-old was identified as the main man behind “Innocence of Muslims,” which triggered a wave of protests in September, and was initially blamed for an attack which killed the US ambassador to Libya.
                 
    In February 2009, a federal indictment accused Youssef and others of fraudulently obtaining the identities and Social Security numbers of customers at several Wells Fargo branches in California and withdrawing $860 from them.
                 
    He was arrested in September for eight probation violations. At a hearing last month he denied all counts, but on Wednesday he admitted to four, in return for the other four being set aside.
                 
    US. District Judge Christina A. Snyder said Youssef, who has already spent five weeks in custody, must spend 12 months behind bars, followed by four years of supervised release.
                 
    Youssef was previously listed as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, and known as Sam Bacile when the protests about the video emerged.

    Is there a concept of karma in Coptic Christianity? File under “Instant”…

    1. Salman Rushdie would benefit from a trip to Kandahar
      Good lord, you have too high an opinion of Rushdie. The man was an advocate of the Aghan war and a joyous retailer of the clash of civilisation tripe that his Huntingtonian friends peddle. He does not like it when Muslim death squads come to pay him a social call, but like all keyboard warriors who’ve never seen a frontline trench is happy to drop explosive munitions on Afghan villages. They don’t come more despicable than guys like him who claim victimhood whilst victimising others.

      If the corpulent sepoy wants to wage neocolonial war, stick a rifle in his doughnut caressing hand and parachute him into the Hindu Kush. I am sure the Taliban will be very eager to see him.  

      Choose the Oriental buddies that you wheel out as the jewels of the East more carefully Bill. Half these guys are just dark skinned wingnuts little different than their white counterparts. That said, I would like to read this crook’s latest memoir. Do you have a copy of Anton Chevok to advise me on the wisdom of so doing? Most such works are a sensational waste of trees. But occasionally a bad thinker churns out a good book. 

      As for the antics of the Coptic film maker, it’s nothing which a spell in a tiny shared cell
      with Major Hassan Nidal cannot cure. It’s the most Christian thing to do for him. 

       

      1. Rushdie to judgment
        Did we praise Rushdie’s political judgment? No, we merely noted that his books have literary merit, in vivid contradistinction to the “Innocence of Muslims” scam. Surely even you do not take issue with that... Jeez.

        1. I will expose your amorous adventures
          Crikey, are you not the same fella who was throwing flowers at the Corpulent Sepoy’s feet here. You are too young for an attack of dementia, so what gives? Orientalism, that’s what. The guy’s bare chested photo practically adorns your bedroom. Look, there’s nothing wrong with the love that dare not speak its name. Man, I dig that song. 

          I am not competent to judge Rushdie’s fictional efforts. Never read ’em. Never will. I have my eyes set on bigger practitioners of the typewriter. 

          On the question of rushing to judgement though, I did see a cool doc by Mark Lane of the same name. A conspiracy theory about JFK and all that jazz. Lane is a quality rhetorician and gave even the smooth William F Buckley a run for his money when they met on Firing Line. Def worth looking up that show on YouTube even if you are skeptical about the whole biz. What can I say, I’m a conspiracy nut. 

          1. Actually, I tend more towards the Subcommander Marcos type
            Yes, Rushdie wrote a thought-provoking essay about the need for an Islamic reformation. If he had cheered on Western military crusades in the piece, I’d have called him out on it. He didn’t. In fact, he implicitly, at least, criticized the Iraq adventure.

            I have repeatedly noted the tragedy that (with the rare exceptions that you also found fault with), those with a critique of political Islam have little critique of Western imperialism, and vice versa.

            I’m not much for fiction myself, but my highbrow friends tell me Rushdie’s has merit. And I like his expository writing. Sorry.

            Glad you got the Mark Lane pun. Very good.

            1. You Are A Cuban Exile
              The tribe of Allah has really got your knickers in a twist huh? Don’t tell me that a leggy Fatima ran off with your moolah back to Eye-ran. That’s tough mate. Thing is, Orients who badmouth Islam obsessively are to Muslim countries what the exiles in Miami are to Cuba. I oppose them for the same reason I oppose Red baiting. Not because I like to shower with Castro. But ’cause it provides idelogical cover for sinister people, and a foreigner’s complaints have no effect on Cubans anyway. I leave it to the islanders to strongarm Fidel. 

              I diss the Mohammedans too once every blue moon, but I try not to overdo it. It’s like telling a man that his mother is the town bicycle on which everyone rides. May be true, but knives will fly. 

               

              1. OK, you are “useful idiot”
                In the Lenin sense.

                My beef is not with the “tribe of Allah,” but that of Abraham—that is, all the patriarchical monotheistic book-thumpers, whether they call their god Allah, Jehova or Hashem. In fact, not even that, but fundamentalism and orthodoxy generally—as I have pointed out, not even the Buddhists are immune.

                I shot down the Cuba-Islamism analogy long ago. Or rather, Aleida Guevara did.

                What part of “ruthless struggle against reaction in all its guises” did you not understand?

                1. Lenin was a Muslim
                  The Che story was amusing. Looks like someone got off the ecumenical script. Not surprised tho because there’s a whole industry of claiming historical figures for Islam. I used to believe them too back in the day. Even so, I give my blessings to the Latin America – Iran nexus. Chavez and Castro need diplomatic and commercial ties with resource gluttoned theocrats to head off the Northern hegemone and vice versa. 

                  A useful idiot? You say that almost as if it were a bad thing. I tug at the beards of the Shariah boys and laugh at their frocks too, but just not habitually. Emphasis matters in politics. I don’t like false parity of the kind where you pretend that all sides are equally culpable like the way Jon Stewart must balance every critique with the Tea Party with a critique of leftwing extremists. Gimme a break. 

                  As for ruthless struggle, are you in your cups? The only ruthless struggle you conduct is for parking space at KFC. Or are you a Taco Bell man? Come off it, we are too decadent for heroics. A generation ago, the martial spirit was still potent. Your ethno-clan was tilling the barren soil of Palestine and mine was kicking Soviet ass in Tora Bora. It was dulce et decorum as the patriots sang. But today? Fat chance. I bet you type these jeremiads with a fistful of chicken mcnuggets. 

                  1. Free your mind instead
                    KFC? Taco Bell? chicken mcnuggets? parking space? You obviously know nothing about me. I’d hoped that you’d have gleaned from my blog by this point that I ride a bicycle, not an SUV, I don’t even have a driver’s license, and I don’t eat corporate pseudo-food. Making some kneejerk assumptions about Ugly Americanism, are we?

                    1. Your scam is busted
                      Holy cow, the gringo is a back-to-nature yoga and soya enthusiast. Boy, you’ve let me down big time. Going by the swashbuckling tone of your ruminations I rather expected a meat chompin’, beer swillin’, chain smokin’, muscle rippin’, bride stealin’, gun bearin’, mountain dwellin’ guerrila. What kind of scam are you running Bill?

                      You are right though Mr Weinberg. I don’t know a lick about you. So why don’t you be a good sport and point me in the direction of more quality numbers like that gastropiece? That was a goody. 

                      You’ve been warned already: I’m new to this space. And till you school me in the lay of the land I reserve the right to spew as many lies and as much nonsense as I want. Do you hear! 

                    2. I completely support your right…
                      …to spew nonsense.

                      But having a right doesn’t mean you have to exercise it.

                    3. Empty bellies cannot type
                      Cool mate. I have to go and rustle up a hot meal for my cheating spouse. We’ll chat later.