INDONESIA: FILM CHALLENGES PARADISE FOR SUICIDE BOMBERS

Denpasar, 22 Jan. (AKI) - The jihadist's concept of martyrdom - that carrying out a suicide attack is a shortcut to heaven - is the subject of an Indonesian film to be released on Thursday. Entitled "Long Road to Heaven," the film dramatises the events surrounding the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people. The film is being released as the three terrorists condemned to death for their role in the attack - Imam Samudra, Amrozi, and Mukhlas - are awaiting a verdict to their appeal. The film includes three local actors who are playing the parts of the three bombers.

Besides providing a look at what could have driven the three bombers to organise the terror attacks, the film examines the tragedy through the eyes of a local taxi driver, an American woman going to Bali after having lost her husband in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the Twin Towers and an Australian journalist writing about the attack. Among the 202 killed in the 2002 Bali bombings, 88 were Australian.

The producer of the film, Nia Dinata, has denied claims by critics that the film takes advantage of the tragedy, making money out of the attacks.

"As an Indonesian I really feel the sadness, you know, the tears, the questions," said Dinanta in an interview on State-run Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio. "I can feel that question even in myself, you know, why? And also, I can feel their sadness. It's just natural for a filmmaker to have that kind of reaction. When they react to something, sometimes they make movie out of it, right?"

The attack in Bali, like two others in Jakarta and another one in Bali in the following years, has been blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional terrorist group fighting to unite countries in Southeast Asia to create an Islamic state.

From a letter from 2banana about Muhammad and Jesus:

The 72 Virgin thing is not in the Koran, it is in the Hadith - the sayings and practices of Muhammad. It is the 2nd most holy book in islam.

In the Book of Sunan (volume IV, chapters on "The Features of Paradise as described by the Messenger of Allah," Chapter 21: "About the Smallest Reward for the People of Paradise," Hadith 2687). Muhammad says: 'The smallest reward for the people of Paradise is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine, and ruby, as wide as the distance from Al-Jabiyyah [a Damascus suburb] to Sana'a.'"

Now, are the women really virgins?

"The chastity of the black-eyed was not violated by man nor jinn (verse 74 of Surah Al-Rahman (55))"

BUT - What if you are surrounded by all those women but can't do it. Don't worry. TIRMZI, vol. 2 states on page 138:

"A man in paradise shall be given virility equal to that of one hundred men."

A jinn is like a fairy that causes trouble.

Mohammed went into "trances" and fits (like epileptic fits) when he was given the "word of God" and would shout out what he was told. These would be written down by his followers. This is the makeup of the Koran.

When Mohammed was just walking and talking and acting like "normal", his words and deeds were written down by his followers and this went into the Hadith. Now, acting "normal" for Mohammed was taking 12+ wives (including a 6 year old), taking slaves, executing infidels, conducting raids for treasure, etc.

Now, this is where it gets complicated.

A large part of the words he spoke in trances were "taken back" by Mohammed. He determined them to be the work of the devil (thus they are called the "Satanic Verses" and these are the same verses that Mr. Salman Rushdie got in trouble for writing about).

Now, how Mohammed determined which verses were from God and which were from Satan I do not know.

Also, there were literally dozens of widely different versions of the Koran and Hadith floating around for several hundred years after Mohammed death until a Fatwah was decreed to destroy all but one version. Now, even Mohammed could remember what he was told by God (that is written in the Hadith).

Also according to the Hadith, Mohammed turned people into monkeys, you can determine a child's sex depending on whether the male or female has an orgasm first (that came directly from the Angle Gabriel), dogs and cats are evil and should be killed, that the devil lives in your nose at night (and how to get rid of him in the morning), chess is forbidden, muslims have one intestine while infidels have seven, don’t pray looking up or your eyes will be snatched away, that one wing of a fly is poison but the other is the cure, that drinking camel urine is good for you and I could go on.

And that Mohammed himself didn't even know if he was going to heaven.

And for some non-PC info, Mohammed was described as a white man.

Now, if you can bear it, to compare to the Gospels of New Testament.

Jesus was someone who lived a very humble life and was killed for basically saying he was a King and Son of God (blasphemy) by the powers in charge (Roman and Jewish). The government wanted Jesus destroyed and wanted his growing movement destroyed (as it threatened their power). If, after 3 days, the followers of Jesus proclaimed he has risen from the dead, (just as he predicted), and is truly our Savior, the High Officials would have wanted to destroy such a "myth." They could have easily done this by producing the dead body of Jesus and saying "Your Messiah is still dead and so is your movement" or producing many eye witnesses of the dead Jesus. But they couldn't.

The letters that make up the New Testament were written by the eye witnesses of the events of Jesus. They were written in just one generation when many other eye witnesses were still alive. They were written without collusion from other Apostles. Even if any of the Apostles wanted to "add" to the "myth" of Jesus, they would have done so in a very disjointed and easily detectable fashion. Yet, the main Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) that describe the life of Jesus are amazingly in harmony with one another and the small differences are consistent with what we would see today if four people witnessed a major event and wrote about the event apart from each other. The Gospels can be traced back to their sources and are basically unchanged from their originals.

The stories of Jesus still make sense to us today. It may be because they are true, it may be because they are based in love or it may be because they were written to tell the people of the Word of God.

I double dog dare you to logically and methodically sit down and compare the words and deeds and teachings of Jesus to Mohammed.

Still in print, and Mr. Rushdie is still subject of a $2.8 million contract courtesy of the Iranian goverment, with support from Cat Stevens.

From what I read in the summary on Wikipedia, the book itself seems a far cry from anything overtly anti-Islamic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_(novel)

* September 26, 1988: The novel is published in the U.K.
* October 5, 1988: India bans the novel's importation.
* November 21, 1988: Grand sheik of Egypt's Al-Azhar calls on Islamic organizations in Britain to take legal action to prevent the novel's distribution
* November 24, 1988: The novel is banned in South Africa and Pakistan; bans follow within weeks in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Somalia, Bangladesh, Sudan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Qatar.
* December 1988-January 1989: British Muslims hold book burnings in Bolton and Bradford; Islamic Defense Council demands that Penguin Books apologise, withdraw the novel, destroy any extant copies, and never reprint it.
* February 12, 1989: Six people are killed and 100 injured during anti-Rushdie protests in Islamabad, Pakistan.
* February 13, 1989: One person is killed and 60 injured in anti-Rushdie riots in Srinagar, India.
* February 14, 1989: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issues a fatwa calling on all Muslims to execute all those involved in the publication of the novel; the 15 Khordad Foundation, an Iranian religious foundation or bonyad, offers a monetary reward for the murder of Rushdie.
* February 16, 1989: Rushdie enters the protection program of the British government and issues a statement regretting the offense the novel has caused; Khomeini responds by reiterating: "It is incumbent on every Muslim to employ everything he has, his life and his wealth, to send [Rushdie] to hell."
* February 17, 1989: Iranian leader Ali Khamenei says Rushdie could be pardoned if he apologises [4].
* February 18, 1989: Rushdie apologizes just as Khamenei has suggested; initially, Irna (the official Iranian news agency) says Rushdie's statement "is generally seen as sufficient enough to warrant his pardon".[5]
* February 22, 1989: The novel is published in the U.S.A.; two major bookstore chains, under threat, remove the novel from one-third of the nation's bookstores.
* February 24, 1989: Iranian businessman offers a $3 million bounty for the death of Rushdie.
* February 24, 1989: Twelve people die in anti-Rushdie rioting in Bombay, India.
* February 28, 1989: Two bookstores in Berkeley, California, are firebombed for selling the novel.
* March 7, 1989: Britain breaks diplomatic relations with Iran.
* March 1989: The Organization of the Islamic Conference calls on its 46 member governments to prohibit the novel. The Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar sets the punishment for possession of the book as three years in prison and a fine of $2,500; in Malaysia, three years in prison and a fine of $7,400; in Indonesia, a month in prison or a fine. The only nation with a predominantly Muslim population where the novel remains legal is Turkey. Several nations with large Muslim minorities, including Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Tanzania, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, also impose penalties for possessing the novel.
* May 1989: Popular musician Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) gives indirect support for the fatwa and states during a British television documentary, according to the New York Times, that if Rushdie shows up at his door, he "might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like... I'd try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is." Yusuf Islam later denies giving any support to the fatwa. [6] For more on this topic see Cat Stevens: Rushdie Controversy
* June 3, 1989: Khomeini dies.
* 1990: Rushdie publishes an essay on Khomeini's death, "In Good Faith", to appease his critics and issues an apology in which he seems to reaffirm his respect for Islam; however, Iranian clerics do not retract the fatwa.
* 1990: Five bombings target bookstores in England.
* July 1991: Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel's Japanese translator, is stabbed to death; and Ettore Capriolo, its Italian translator, is seriously wounded.
* July 2, 1993: Thirty-seven people die when their hotel in Sivas, Turkey is burnt down by locals protesting against Aziz Nesin, Rushdie's Turkish translator.
* October 1993: The novel's Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, is shot and seriously injured.
* 1993: The 15 Khordad Foundation in Iran raises the reward for Rushdie's murder to $300,000.
* 1997: The bounty is doubled, to $600,000.
* 1998: Iranian government publicly declares that it will not carry out the death sentence against Rushdie. This is announced as part of a wider agreement to normalize relations between Iran and the United Kingdom. Rushdie subsequently declares that he will stop living in hiding, and that he regrets attempts to appease his critics by making statements to the effect that he is a practicing Muslim. Rushdie affirms that he is not, in fact, religious. Despite the death of Khomeini and the Iranian government's official declaration, the fatwa remains in force, according to certain members of the Islamic fundamentalist media:

"The responsibility for carrying out the fatwa is not the exclusive responsibility of Iran. It is the religious duty of all Muslims – those who have the ability or the means – to carry it out. It does not require any reward. In fact, those who carry out this edict in hopes of a monetary reward are acting against Islamic injunctions."

* 1999: An Iranian foundation places a $2.8 million bounty on Rushdie's life.
* February 16, 2003: Iran's Revolutionary Guards reiterate the call for the assassination of Rushdie. As reported by the Sunday Herald, "Ayatollah Hassan Saneii, head of the semi-official Khordad Foundation that has placed a $2.8 million bounty on Rushdie's head, was quoted by the Jomhuri Islami newspaper as saying that his foundation would now pay $3 million to anyone who kills Rushdie."[7]

* March 2004: 16 years after the first English edition Hungarian translation is published, translator's name not specified for security reasons.
* Early 2005: Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie is reaffirmed by Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the fatwa on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it
* February 14, 2006: Iran’s official state news agency reports on the anniversary of the decree that the government-run Martyrs Foundation has announced, "The fatwa by Imam Khomeini in regard to the apostate Salman Rushdie will be in effect forever", and that one of Iran’s state bonyad, or foundations, has offered a $2.8 million bounty on his life.

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