{"id":4190,"date":"2012-09-15T12:56:10","date_gmt":"2012-09-15T17:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=4190"},"modified":"2012-09-15T12:58:28","modified_gmt":"2012-09-15T17:58:28","slug":"mystery-embarrassment-and-rage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2012\/09\/15\/mystery-embarrassment-and-rage\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystery, embarrassment and rage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am teaching a couple of sections of &#8220;Introduction to the Study of Global Religions&#8221; this semester, and, as it turns out, last week was quite important for globalization and religion. \u00a0Unfortunately, we were so busy in class with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Studying-Religion-Introduction-Through-Cases\/dp\/0073386596\" target=\"_blank\">discussing<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Critical-Terms-Religious-Studies-Taylor\/dp\/0226791572\" target=\"_blank\">readings<\/a> that we did not get to unpack the extremely confusing events centered around protests to an American-made video about the Prophet Muhammad.<\/p>\n<p>So, here is an attempt to engage those issues. \u00a0For really good summaries of global issues like this, I always turn to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-middle-east-19606155\" target=\"_blank\">BBC&#8217;s website<\/a>. \u00a0Muslims see the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/Library\/Islam\/Origins\/Founders.html\" target=\"_blank\">Prophet Muhammad<\/a>\u00a0as\u00a0<em>the<\/em>\u00a0model for living a good life, and God&#8217;s chosen recipient for the revelation of the Qur&#8217;an. \u00a0I think it&#8217;s important to start with those basic facts before delving into analysis.<\/p>\n<p>With the facts in mind, what is &#8220;thick&#8221; about these global events? \u00a0My mind goes to the roots of the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=mjoa3QazVy8\" target=\"_blank\">highly offensive video<\/a>, which are\u00a0are quite mysterious. \u00a0It was filmed in a shroud of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/09\/13\/world\/middleeast\/origins-of-provocative-video-shrouded.html?hpw\" target=\"_blank\">secrecy and deception<\/a>. \u00a0The film seems to have ties to extremist of certain American <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2012\/09\/14\/innocence-of-muslims-film-filmmaker-sam-bacile-permit-christian-charity_n_1883792.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment\" target=\"_blank\">Christian groups<\/a>, as well as a member of a Los Angeles area <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/nation\/169840796.html?refer=y\" target=\"_blank\">Coptic Christian community<\/a>. \u00a0A\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/5943427\/\" target=\"_blank\">soft porn director<\/a>\u00a0seems to have been misled in being hired to film the video. \u00a0The actors starring in the film also <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.cnn.com\/2012-09-12\/world\/world_anti-islam-film_1_movie-islamic-film\" target=\"_blank\">report being duped<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-style: initial;border-color: initial;cursor: default;border-width: 0px\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thewrap.com\/sites\/default\/files\/muslim%20main.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/>I think the film itself is embarrassingly bad: cheap production, bad acting, with much of its dialogue strangely dubbed over the voices of the actors. \u00a0How could anyone take something this ridiculous (and disgusting, and just plain stupid) so seriously? \u00a0Somehow, the enigmatic nature of the film, its content, and its history played really well in getting angry people all over the world even angrier. \u00a0The embarrassingly bad film was made to embarrass the sentiments of its viewers.<\/p>\n<p>I think this film spoke the language of embarrassed, angry people\u00a0(who act in the anonymity of mobs)\u00a0because it was made by embarrassed, angry people\u00a0(who hide behind duplicitous anonymity).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am teaching a couple of sections of &#8220;Introduction to the Study of Global Religions&#8221; this semester, and, as it turns out, last week was quite important for globalization and religion. \u00a0Unfortunately, we were so busy in class with discussing readings that we did not get to unpack the extremely confusing events centered around protests [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":473,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/473"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4190"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4199,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4190\/revisions\/4199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}