Someone should tell Muslims they weren't raging

Newsweek prompted a wave of indignation and mockery from the left a few months back when it published a cover with the caption MUSLIM RAGE in the wake of riots over the YouTube-posted trailer for "The Innocence of Muslims".  The responses I saw offered no specifics, apparently considering the offensive absurdity of the notion of "Muslim rage" so self-evident that it required no explanation, but as far as I could tell the core of the complaint was that not every Muslim on the planet was outraged—so this overly-generalized caption was clear evidence of Newsweek's anti-Muslim bias* (just as the use of the blanket phrase "Los Angeles Riots" back in 1992, despite the relative peace in areas like Echo Park and Brentwood, established once and for all the media's anti-Angelenoism).

In any case, someone really needs to get the word out to the Egyptian court that just handed down this ruling:

An Egyptian court ordered YouTube to be blocked for a month after the website disseminated video footage deemed offensive to Islam and the Prophet Mohammed, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported, citing Administrative Court Judge Hassouna Tawfik. [...] YouTube, “did not respect the belief of the millions in Egypt and it overlooked the state of rage that prevailed amongst Muslims,” it said, citing court documents.

Maybe a bad translation?

YouTube had "insisted on broadcasting the film insulting Islam and the Prophet, disrespecting the beliefs of millions of Egyptians and disregarding the anger of all Muslims" the court said, according to MENA.

Huh.  Well, once the Egyptian judiciary is informed about how ridiculous this whole "Muslim rage" notion is I'm sure they'll not only retract their offensively Islamaphobic sentiments, but will also overturn the death sentences they've imposed on seven Egyptians involved in the production of the film.  One of the capital crimes for which those people were convicted, by the way: "Using religion to promote extremist ideas."

ADDING: The Egyptian court also transgressed against the permissible narrative when it suggested any meaningful connection between the film trailer and the so-called "rage"; the mere suggestion that these outbursts of violence and anger are caused by seemingly obvious triggers like Koran-burning or crappy-film-trailer-distributing provokes scorn from many on the left, who blithely ignore statements like the one(s) above, Muslims who say outright that "We cannot accept any insult to our prophet...it's a red line" or "We did the protest to show to the infidels that we are unhappy about their action in burning our holy Koran in America," etc.  In ideology as in theology, reality is rarely an impediment to belief.

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* Newsweek wasn't alone in this ugly bias, though; the well-known Muslim bashers at the Daily Times of Pakistan ran a story titled "New blasphemous caricatures fuel Muslim anger."

Comments

[Cloud]

the mere suggestion that these outbursts of violence and anger are caused by seemingly obvious triggers like Koran-burning or crappy-film-trailer-distributing provokes scorn from many on the left

True. I myself am guilty of this; though on the whole, the bias in America is certainly the other way -- Muslim rage is supposed to be entirely due to their fanatical faith and inherent irrationality, and not at all due to their political subjugation.

[John Caruso]

Agreed, and that's one of the reasons why there's resistance to admitting that in cases like this the anger really is irrational: because doing so feels like opening a door to the many people out there who want to use the irrational anger of raving fundamentalists to dismiss the genuine grievances of the entire populations of Muslim countries who have a very rational desire not to be bombed and occupied. But it's a mistake to meet black and white thinking with black and white thinking.

[Cloud]

Indeed. As usual, Orwell thought it out also:

Whenever A and B are in opposition to one another, anyone who attacks or criticises A is accused of aiding and abetting B. And it is often true, objectively and on a short-term analysis, that he is making things easier for B.

... The trouble is that if you lie to people, their reaction is all the more violent when the truth leaks out, as it is apt to do in the end.

... The whole argument that one mustn’t speak plainly because it “plays into the hands of” this or that sinister influence is dishonest, in the sense that people only use it when it suits them. ... Beneath this argument there always lies the intention to do propaganda for some single sectional interest, and to browbeat critics into silence by telling them that they are “objectively” reactionary. It is a tempting manœuvre, and I have used it myself more than once, but it is dishonest. I think one is less likely to use it if one remembers that the advantages of a lie are always short-lived. So often it seems a positive duty to suppress or colour the facts! And yet genuine progress can only happen through increasing enlightenment, which means the continuous destruction of myths.

— Tribune, 23 November 1945

[John Caruso]

Beautiful; thanks for the quote and link. It's always remarkable to me how he not only saw it all so plain but said it so well.