Posted on 11/02/2009 11:56:57 AM PST by Psion
Edited on 11/02/2009 11:15:16 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Prophet Mohammad the new Darth Vader?
An epic film about Islam's Prophet Mohammad backed by the producer of "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Matrix" is being planned with the aim of "bridging cultures."
Filming of the $150-million English-language movie is set to start in 2011 with American Barrie Osborne as its producer, Qatari media company Alnoor Holdings said on Sunday.
(Excerpt) Read more at thelastcrusade.org ...
A bridge to the 11th century, or earlier.
Where is the funding coming from?
Who will have a fatwa before it’s over?
Who will be burned in effigy?
Who will be killed as an apostate?
How many cars will be burned in France?
How many muslims will be shot trying to
burn cars in America?
So the producer has already caved. Figures.
In India, even when girls - and boys - were “married” at a young age, they never lived together, or practically even saw each other, until puberty. Not saying that 14 year olds should marry - but young girls were not traditionally married to grown men; children were officially “married” but then lived at home with parents until of age. Gandhi and his wife were married when they were both 16, don’t know if they had some sort of familial ceremony when younger.
Please do not compare Islamic practices with Hindu practices.
I hope this movie bombs pathetically. I mean, no one wants to see it!
A film all about the pedophile, rapists, torturer, demon possesed person, and he won’t be in it? Sounds like liberal logic to me.
Oh, I think it is an issue. Marriage and sex with children may have been a cultural norm in certain times and places but murder is murder and theft is theft where ever and whenever you go. When the founder of a religion uses murder and theft to spread his "message" no written doctrine can supersede that.
A Christian sect could go astray and twist the written doctrine but they can't point to Jesus and say "look, He killed non-believers and looted their cities. How can it be wrong?" Buddhists can't point to the Buddha's actions to justify murder and theft.
But no matter what any Imam says about Islam being peaceful any Muslim can shoot his argument down with ease by saying "the prophet Mohamed killed non-believers and stole their treasure in the name of Allah." How can any Muslim credibly argue with another Muslim that the founder, the holy prophet, was in error, was a sinner, in the way he spread Islam?
Mohamed's actions are THE issue and set the course for 1,700 years of barbarism that continues to this day.
Murder and theft in themselves have not been universally bad in the view of all cultures at all times. These often were (or are) evils only if inflicted on outsiders to the group, there being no conception of universal ethics.
Sometimes its not easy for we modern western-influenced people to understand the moral atmosphere even in the “west”, prior to Christianity. In many ways the old pagan world is, to us, inscrutably alien.
Its just taken for granted now. Christianity made a profound difference, even to the irreligious.
If you want to make a try at grasping the nature of pre-Christian morality, have a good look at Homer. His heroes are in fact murderers and thieves, and so are his gods. Homer does not disparage anyone for immorality, but for foolishness and weakness.
Islam overlaid Mohammeds teachings over a pagan culture, that was just as unethical (or subjectively ethical) as any pagans anywhere. In ancient Arabia, raiding warfare, blood feuds and banditry were honorable, as honorable as ancient Rome’s annual organized harassment of its neighbors every summer.
There was much less of an ethical shift than there was when Christianity took over from classical civilization.
And Mohamed, by his own actions, did nothing to change that paradigm of barbarism. He set the example that can’t be replaced or surpassed.
Mohammed did make a change. He organized and controlled the barbarism, while preserving it.
He made all this ancient Arabian barbarism into a rigid system, and added the constraints of law. This is why Islam as interpreted in the strictest manner is legalistic and compassionless. Its also why its so hard to transcend the barbarism.
Unlike Christ, he did not create an Ethics.
Or you could look at the Code of Hammurabi, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Confucianism and a host of other codes, religions and philosophies that go back as far or pre-date Homer that quite clearly lay out a strict moral and ethical code of conduct. Or you could simply look to the Jewish canon which pre-dates Christ by a year or two at least.
I understand, from my readings in Indian history, that laws had to be passed by the Raj (and forced on some of the Princely States), concerning the age of marriage and the age of consent. This seems to have been a particular issue with respect to Royal or Princely marriages.
Which is just a nice way of saying that the essence of Islam is barbarism or Islam is barbarism codified. It also lays the cause of that squarely at Mohamed's feet which was my point.
I am using Homer as a “window into the mind”, not a set of precepts, a description, not a prescription.
Hinduism mutated a great deal. I don’t think you will find an ethics as such in the classics. They are very close to Homer. They are stories with Gods in them, not really teachings.
Buddhism did generate a universal ethics, but it made no impression on Mediterranean civilization (unless you want to credit it with an influence on Jesus, which requires fundamentally irreligious assumptions).
And ditto the Tao. None of these pre-date Homer.
Hammurabi’s code, ancient as it is, expresses what amount to tribal customs, that are also strictly functional. Codes of conduct are universal; Islam itself really amounts to a comprehensive code of conduct. Rome had similar laws; that did not lead them to a religious concept of compassion. Laws can exist without an underlying ethic.
Then again, for all we know the local "poets" who big Mo' had assassinated back then sang of his big and juicy moral crimes in a "culturally sensitive" way.
Well, at least until he had them killed.
I have no idea what you mean by that. Were there or were there not codes of morals and ethics throughout the world pre-dating Islam? Homer's "mindset" hardly accounts for the majority of cultural or religious thinking in the world before Christ.
Laws can exist without an underlying ethic.
Oh? How does that work? What purpose would laws have without an underlying code of ethics?
That turkey isn't likely to make back 15% of its cost.
You hollywood geniuses DO know that pirating new films is most prevalent in muslim countries, right?
Now we know exactly where the “Islamic Bomb” will be delivered!
Unfortunately India’s ancient Vedic tradition had been messed with by hundreds of years of Muslim atrocity and invasion by the time the British decided to take their share of booty.
The Vedas, including the Upanishads, Manu Samhita, Puranas and other ancient Vedic texts including the Ramayana and Mahabharat do indeed codify very clearcut moral codes. The Yoga Shastras have the clear Yamas and Niyamas as well. The Manu Samhita details different rights, duties and responsibilities for different castes and orders of life. The Puranas have many teaching stories illustrating such moral and spiritual codes.
All these of course pre-date Christianity by several thousands of years.
The Code of Hammurabi appears to be all that you say it isn't and more.
[B]y far the most remarkable of the Hammurabi records is his code of laws, the earliest-known example of a ruler proclaiming publicly to his people an entire body of laws, arranged in orderly groups, so that all men might read and know what was required of them.(Sounds universal)
Yet even with this earliest set of laws, as with most things Babylonian, we find ourselves dealing with the end of things rather than the beginnings. Hammurabi's code was not really the earliest. The preceding sets of laws have disappeared, but we have found several traces of them, and Hammurabi's own code clearly implies their existence. He is but reorganizing a legal system long established.
(Sounds a lot more sophisticated than tribal customs.)
Almost all trace of tribal custom has already disappeared from the law of the Code.
(This treatise even says so in no uncertain terms.)
The Code deals with a class of persons devoted to the service of a god, as vestals or hierodules. The vestals were vowed to chastity, lived together in a great nunnery, were forbidden to open or enter a tavern, and together with other votaries had many privileges.
(It even covers every aspect of spiritual or religious law and conduct.)
It is hard to believe that a code that covers every aspect of secular and religious behavior based on centuries of previous written laws and court decisions prescribing exact punishments for violations as well as for incorrectly applying the law could be said to have no basis in ethics or morals.
As far as I can see most peoples around the world very much had a pre-ethical mindset in pre-Christian times, with just a few exceptions - the later Hindus, the Buddhists, to a degree the ancient Persians, etc.
Otherwise the Gods were worshipped and sacrificed to for purely utilitarian reasons, for the sake of personal and communal well-being in this world. There was no concept of salvation, or of good and evil as universal and objective and not particular or subjective concepts. One sacrificed and followed the rituals such that the rains would fall and the crops would grow as desired, for good fortune and for the confounding of ones enemies.
Laws that are intended merely to establish order and prevent conflict do not require an ethical foundation. A ruler can decree such laws merely as a convenience to himself for instance, such that he is freed from the need to judge, or to permit delegation of authority.
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