Blasphemous Movie on Prophet Muhammad Essay

schemeMedia is held responsible for the distorted and caricature stunt woman of Islamics and their most sanctum sanctorum solve seer Muhammad (peace be upon him) in the West. The movie innocence of Moslems is the most late(a) pigeonhole demonstration of them. Peoples thinking on a matter, which they assumet have much know conductge more or less, is largely form by what media determines, following an agendum togting theory. Islam has al courses been such figure in the West and Muslims have always been shown as fanatics, extremists and raving mad killers hence giving oppose connotations to Islam. According to semiotic theory of sighs, e genuinely trope or sign has a coded pass, which is always decoded by different multitude in the same way by a cat valium cognitive system. When the gists in the carton images of visionary Muhammad print by a danish magazine Jyllands-Posten in 2006 were decoded, there was an outcry in the Muslim world, which ulterior developed a carton controversy around the global govern workforcet momentivity.This dismal movie of prophet Muhammad, anformer(a) genre of visual communication, created the same governmental conflict between East and West and upheaval in the politics of Muslim countries too. The start-off part of my paper which is a media program for Pakistani government to deal with the issue, analyses how Muslim world reacted to this movie and how a hard situation in all the Muslim countries is affecting the relations of Muslims with the U.S. split second part examines how westboundmostern sandwich media, in the name of exemption of speech, has been deconstructing the bodies of Muslims as red treacherous men and their theology as a danger to West. This message has been continuously shot into the heads of masses since ages analyzing magic bullet theory of media. Media effectuate theory rouse easily elucidate the expirations of such efforts. The article advocates media should parcel out ethica l boundaries while discussing religions and religious entities. Key words Muslims, sorts, prophet Muhammad, cartons, movies, western media, protests, politics.Background of the problem.Just a 14 minute trailer of the profane movie innocence of Muslims caused a great upheaval in the Muslim world .the holiest figure of Islam prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) has been shown in this movie as a child molester, womanizer, drunk and a dotty killer. This is not the first movie, there is a list of such movies against Muslims and Islam, e.g. Black Hawk Dawn, the kingdom, the Seige, fitna, which created havoc in Muslim world and we saw riots, fierceness, boycotts and deaths as a result of them. Later on, such trouble tic situations were always manipulated by politicians.(see links of movies trailers in references) This movie produced by Nakoula Basseley led Muslims protests in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, India, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia and in umpteen other Muslim countries includ ing the killing of US ambassador to Libya in a violent attack by extremists.Obama and Clinton condemned this movie like many other governments of the countries, even Cindy Lee Garcia told The Hollywood Reporter that she and many actors were duped by filmmaker. He has a price to pay, this Mr.Bacile, maybe not here on Earth, moreover hell stand before God one day for what he has make. These protests were going on and meanwhile a French satiric magazine Charlie Hebdo published the controversial cartoons of the set apart place Prophet (peace be upon him) nurture inflaming Muslims sentiments.(the Dawn 30 sep) such protests were started in earlier kinsfolk in Pakistan where hundreds of thousands from all walks of life recorded their protest against this movie and proceeds of carton images again.Many marched towarf areds US embassy in Islama gravely and many were killed and wounded in clash with police there. There were rallies of protests nationwide having more than 45,000 peck earlier in September, 21 were killed and 229 wounded, more than 200 protesters set fervor to effigy of Barack Obama in the capital of Pakistani administered Kashmir.(Aljaze erah 21sep). Pakistanis are demanding from the government to substantiation missions with US If they dont ban this movie altogether, though it was banned later in many Muslim countries on a take from Washington house to goggle.Problem for Pakistani GovernmentIn Pakistan choice c adenineaigns are going on and the political parties are engaging stack in violent attacks to make unrest in the country. By highlighting the weaknesses of the government and the wrong dealings of the issue by the government, the other political parties are trying to take advantage of the situation. Many banners in the rallies led by other political parties demand from government to shut US and French missions in Pakistan which is definitely not possible. So there is a great need to make a well developed strategy through media t o handle the situation as president is loosing the popularity because of many stories of the decadency of government and this issue of blasphemy is very complex to handle as the demand to ban this movie cannot be accomplished at once like Pakistani are wishing. so is the case with their demands to shut the missions with US.Objectives of the media plan1) Stop the people from violent protests by giving references from Islamic set teaching peace and tolerance. 2) Gain trust and confidence of the people as a responsible government by emphasising what government has done to deal with the issue. 3 minimize the nations hatred for US and shift their focus from their demands of not to assist US in the war going on in the region. 4) Present your nations rack on international forums regarding the issue.Key messages of the plan1) By quoting from the life of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him), the people should be stopped from making violent protests and showing hatred to other countries as it is leaving a bad image of the nation and the Islam as well. Media should focus how prophet has taught Muslims to be free and how he hated bloodshed and violence. So key message would be Islam is a religion of tolerance not of violence. 2) Key message to the west should be that we respect freedom of speech but close out freedom of hatred.This movie like other blasphemous movies and carton images of prophet Muhammad fall in the category of later. Such laws should be formulated to avoid these distasteful attempts leading to the unrest in the whole world. 3) Focus on requests of Obamas government to goggle and you tube to ban the video and withal tell your nation through the media the U.S effort to make the laws against such blasphemous acts in the future, so that their hatred towards America could be minimized as their demands to shut missions with America are not easy to be considered. suppositional frameworkEdward saids famous work on the relations of east and west received much criticism that opens with a inverted comma by Karl Marx they cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. So the west took as its responsibility to represent the east and civilize them by work them uncivilized. Said unfolds the binary opposition as self is familiar (Europe, the west, us) and the other is strange (the orient, the east, them) (said, 197843) Said asserts that European knowledge of the East goes weapon in arm with expansionism, exploration and settlement. He argues that the eastern United States is constructed and represented in the binary opposition against the Occident, as the Other. In many respects, the Orient is seen by European values, assumptions, and cultural codes and as the Occidents other.He criticizes the way that the Occident views the Orient by her own culturally-determined and unilateral and confine historical perspectives.(Moosavinia, Niazi & Ghaforian,2011) The universal declaration of Human Rights states everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression (United Nations 1948). Some people could argue that they have eternal rights to mock other peoples religious believes including their holy books and holy figures. In the name of freedom of speech, 12 cartoons of Muslims Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)were published by a Danish magazine. The one most debated showed prophet Muhammad as having a bomb in the cloth over his head. (Bond B, 2007) talks approximately Danish media landscape as It is fair to say that the f veridical cordial vulnerability, the stereotyping, and the division between them and us in the news media, has created a very hostile rhetoric against visible foreigners and particularly Muslims.He also talks about Danish media representations of Muslim women. Appearing in the 1970s the stamp of minority women as oppressed and battered was prominent from the late mid-nineties to early 2000s. The stereotype of oppressed minority women was emphasized by televised pictures of conceal women illustrating many stories about refugees and other immigrants. some other stereotype since the 1970s was the image of immigrant men as hypersexual threats to women (Green L, & Aly A, 2011) state in their investigate that there was some resentment voiced by Muslim respondents in interviews and focus assemblages that the media did not fully represent the diversity of Muslims and instead perpetuated stereotypes of Muslims the ugly Muslim male and the oppressed Muslim female. This mediated construction of Muslims was melodic theme to provide an influential pathway for the broader communitys understanding of Muslims.reportage on Islam has been a mandatory part of western media agenda. A research about agenda of German media concludes as following. In summarizing the results, it can be said that in non-fictional formats such as magazines, talk shows, documentaries and reportages over 80% of the content reproduces an image of Islam that portrays this religion as a pr oblem and a danger for politics and union. This image of Islam in the non-fictional formats of ARD and ZDF is an exaggerated image of violence and conflict, conveying the impression that Islam is less a religion than a political and social ideology that collides with the morality and values of the West. (Richter C, & Hafez K, 2009) Talking about the publication of caricature images of Muslims holiest figure of Muslims prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him), one can solemnly say that visuals have strong might of global communication.The psychoanalysis of one of the images is as following. The turban bomb could also be interpret as a symbolic depiction of a globe and the Arabic inscription would thus be located in the Middle East. The ideologic threat of Islam is translated into a fanaticized face, meant to depict the prophet of Islam, and also the non-communicative attitude of his followers, who are focused on destruction instead of dialogue. This was one of the most criticized of the 12 cartoons, presumably because of its hostile depiction of the prophet, and because of the implication that all Muslims are potentially dangerous suicide-bombers. (Mller M zcan E, & Seizov O, 2009).The examination of over 900 Hollywood movies by Jack Shaheen (2001) may be regarded as a cornerstone in Orientalism canon where he argued how the Hollywood film genre has stereotyped the Arab society by representing them as greedy precarious men and subjugated women. Such stereotyped presentation paves a way in justification of American foreign policy with the Middle East. The continued production and successes of such movies as Black Hawk Down, The Kingdom and The Siege cannot be overlooked in light of the power struggles resulting from the War on Terror and hegemonic representations of Muslim men and women in a variety of Western Media.The visual narrative in The Kingdomwith its deployment of the only American female main character, Janet Mayes, whose body was written to represent essential differences between white and brown womenilluminates imperialist discourses, with Muslim bodies becoming the battleground upon which such discourses are both visually and literally being fought. It was argued that a critical engagement with Hollywood cinema is needed to unveil the complex ways in which Muslim bodies are write as dangerous, pre-modern and uncivilized in U.S popular culture. (Michelle Aguayo, 2009)DiscussionThe concept of binary opposition given by Edward said (1978) op,cit. as us and the Others is applicable to present scenario easily, western media has always presented the eastern countries specially Muslim countries as others uncivilized, savages, brutal, untamed and western countries as us civilized, educated, tamed and rational. Thinking of agendum climb approach, I can easily relate how western media has set an agenda against Muslims by presenting them always as violent, precarious, killers and women as oppressed. While lecture about Dan ish media landscape, there were riots, protests, boycotts, deaths in Islamic world including the zealous of Danish embassies in Syria and Egypt in response to publication of caricature images of prophet Muhammad. But the western media proved so stubborn that 143 newspapers in 56 countries of West re published the images again after sometime. To mock Muslims holy figure, their holy book and to show Muslims stereotype was included in the common agenda of western media.Semiotic theory helps understanding the process of carrying meanings by those images as semiotics refers to Modality, which is a specific way to encode the discipline for presentation to people and the meaning, is conceived by people as an effect of it. A list of sign types is considered in such presentations like writing, symbol, color, map, index, graph and so forth The different people decode all the signs in the same way by a common cognitive system according to psychology of perception this concept elucidates how all people about prophet as a terrorist decoded negative messages in such images of prophet Muhammad. The movie honour of Muslims brought another catastrophe in the hearts of Muslims that presented prophet Muhammad as a womanizer, child abuser, homosexual and a violent killer. The purpose of this low quality picture is just to mock and insult Islam and prophet Muhammad and the producer gave as many negative attributes to Prophet Muhammad as he could.Agenda setting approach of media can be helpful in understanding the western agenda of presenting Muslims and Islam as dangerous men and violent religion respectively. Another anti-Islamic movie fitna made by a Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, where Quranic versus are shown aboard the scenes of terrorism. Those versus, in reality, are about the wars going on in that era of fourteen hundred years back but without giving the actual context those versus are misrepresented to show that Quran teaches Muslims to be violent killer. And this proved to be another extreme distortion of Islam. (See link in references). The production of such movies by Hollywood confirms common western agenda to present Muslims stereotypes.All these negative connotations continuously given to Islam and Muslims had a power to shape the thinking of people about Muslims as terrorists, that is also explained by Magic Bullet theory that messages by media are so powerful, and act as a bullet shot into the heads of people by formative the thoughts of people in a magical way. So the people who dont know much about Islam and Muslims mostly get Muslims as terrorists. Western media has cast a spell over the people by continuous shots of negativity into their heads. Media effects theory elucidates easily such stereotype representations of Muslims as we can see isolation of Muslims in the world and negative concepts of them in the eyes of common people in the west. People in the West always think of Muslims as extremists, the feelings of hatre d and fear against Muslims is reign in the western society, which is the most visible effect of medias stereotype presentations.ConclusionWhenever media takes such blasphemous steps, they take to riots, protest and upheaval in Muslim countries, which may also lead to global political conflicts sometimes. The biased approach to one religion or to one particular group of people is surely an attempt to divide the world population into the boundaries of diminished hatred. Media should take great care while talking about religion and religious entities. It should consider some ethical limits while talking negative about Islam as it hurts the feelings of almost 2 billion people in the world.referenceshttp//www.youtube.com/ memorise?v=HR0Vj-8dqTM&feature=fvsr http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0ET9qez-Kshttp//www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HLNawUg_ http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUJ6cxWdZwA3s Pakistan hit by anti-Islamic video protests. (2012, September21). Aljazeerah Said,Edward W. (1978). Orientalism. current York. Penguin Moosavinia, S. R., Niazi, N. N., & Ghaforian, A. (2011). Edward Saids Orientalism and the Study of the Self and the Other in Orwells Burmese Days. Studies In Literature & Language, 2(1), 103-113. Bonde,B. (2007). How 12 animated cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed were brought to Trigger an International Conflict. NORDICOM Review, 28(1), 33-48 Green, L., & Aly, A. (2011). How Australian Muslims Construct Western worship of the Muslim Other. At The Interface / Probing The Boundaries, 7765-90 Richter C, Hafez K. The image of Islam in German public service television programmes. daybook Of Arab & Muslim Media explore serial on the Internet. (2009, Dec), cited October 23, 2012 2(3) 169-181. Available from Communication & Mass Media Complete. Mller, M. G., zcan, E., & Seizov, O. (2009). Dangerous Depictions A Visual Case Study of Contemporary Cartoon Controversies. Popular Communication, 7(1), 28-39. doi10.1080/15405700802598361 Shah een, Jack. (2001). Reel bad Arabs. New York Olive grow PressAguayo, M. (2009). Representations of Muslim Bodies in The Kingdom Deconstructing Discourses in Hollywood. Global Media Journal Canadian Edition, 2(2), 41-56.