Tagarchief: Thijl Sunier

By Thijl Sunier Just over a week ago, after a period of relative silence, we could witness the start of another mediated Islam-hype with heated debates, demonstrations and (verbal and physical) violence. The apparent cause this time was the trailer on YouTube of an obscure movie titled “Innocence of Muslims” about the prophet Mohammed. The movie, in which Mohammed is depicted as a violent child molester, a rapist, a con-man and a homosexual, is the product of an obscure anti-Islam activist in the United States. The movie was designed to provoke Muslims deliberately by insulting Mohammed, much in the same way as the mad priest in Florida who burnt the Quran a couple of years ago. After the very-hard-to-find trailer was released, there was a small demonstration in Cairo in which the movie was mentioned along with other grievances against the US. It became a global issue only after an attack on the American embassy in Benghazi in Libya in which the ambassador was killed. Not very surprisingly this aroused strong reactions and a lot of media attention around the world, whereupon the protest spread to other countries. American magazines published grotesque cover images of angry mobs and raging Muslims. The whole circus of Islam critiques was mobilized to express their deep worries about the ‘ever increasing influence of radical Islam across the globe’. Lees verder →