Blasphemy! Pornography!

I'VE been about. Worked in Muslim countries. Christian countries. Bits of countries where the people believe in the spirit of things - trees, the local hill, a river - and I've watched amused at their, to me, strange rituals; getting up at the dead of night to attend 4 a.m. mass, carrying around a small oblong of carpet, building a tin roof over a pile of rocks in the middle of a village - but really all that is no concern of mine. A man's belief is his business and his alone. Nothing to do with me or anybody else which is why I'll never ever fathom how differences in religion manage to cause so much mayhem and grief.

The latest bit of grief happened in the Libyan city of Benghazi where a crowd set about the US embassy resulting in the death of four of its staff.

The Benghazi crowd was protesting over a US independent movie called 'The Innocence of Muslims', a film which many Muslims regard as blasphemous to Islam and to the Prophet Muhammad in particular but, tell me, what happened to the 'sticks and stones may hurt my bones but names never hurt me' principle? And don't those Benghazi rioters (and now murderers) realize that they can be regarded as even more bigoted and intolerant than the original supposed blasphemers?

Fellow scribbler Jun Ledesma jumped on this particular bandwagon right away labelling the 'Innocence of Muslims' as 'a pile of dung' and comparing it with such mainstream movies as 'The Last Temptation of Christ' and 'The Da Vinci Code' which Jun likened to 'sacrilegious, blasphemous and nothing but pornographic s**t'.

Well Jun, I'll agree that the da Vinci Code was bad by any standard - the phrase extremely silly comes to mind - but sacrilegious and pornographic? I'd have to assume that your choice of movie viewing is severely limited.

I'd also agree that the movie can hardly be called art but then these days what movie is? Movies are made to make money, Da Vinci in particular to cash in on the hugely popular Dan Brown novel of the same name. And which I've not read, recognizing that it falls into the 'secrets exposed' genre whether it concerns taking the lid of the Masons, the supposed whereabouts of the Holy Grail or whether Noddy and Big Ears were involved in an unnatural relationship. All grist to the gullible public - like 'The Innocence of Muslims' but surely there must be better stuff to read or watch? Stuff that doesn't provoke mayhem and grief?