The Muslim Immunity to Irony

As though the well-publicized, disturbingly violent reactions of Muslims around the world to mere verbal and iconic criticism of Islam as a violent religion were not proof enough, I have another example of Muslim immunity to irony.

In a previous entry I mentioned that I had posted a film adaptation of my story The Judgement of God at Secular Planet Cinema. While it received some positive feedback, presumably from the nonreligious, it also soon became a favorite of some Muslim viewers who mistook my anti-religious film as a pro-Islam film simply because I used an extremely superficial assumption that Islam is true within the story in order to criticize Christianity more directly. In the film, I portrayed Allah in the most negative light imaginable: he was irrational, angry, cruel, vengeful, hypocritical, and dishonest. An educated western viewer was expected to realize that everything he said and did could also be attributed to Yahweh and Jesus, thus attacking Christianity as equally demented. Despite my having never picked up the Qur’an at the time of the story's authorship, my film met with unanimous approval from the Muslims who watched the film. I have since learned that Islamic scriptures are no less violent, intolerant, and hypocritical, simply more tedious and disorganized. The Muslims completely failed to realize that their religion was being mocked when I placed the violent words in Allah's own mouth and the violent deed in Allah's own hands, depicting him as an absolute monster! As remarkable as this was, it was not the end of the irony.

The film was originally posted at the company website of the software package I used to create the film. While it received some positive feedback, it was eventually removed by the administrators, depsite the fact that violated absolutely no terms of the service agreement, at the prompting of another nonreligious user who objected to it on grounds that it was intolerant. This person specifically cited my portrayl of Allah as an evil, idiotic tyrant in his complaint. That Muslims themselves complimented me and even praised Allah for my work is purely delicious irony. Nevertheless, this is an excellent example of moderates attempting to impede the progress of secularism by demanding, despite their own disbelief, that ancient myth and superstition be totally beyond question and criticism.

I eventually removed the film because, despite the irony, the acclaim of Muslims was not the desired reaction in writing the story.