WRT: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/21051

Majid:
I watched the Theo Van Gogh film on the internet, and, like many
discerning viewers, found it troubling. Formally and visually it is
nicely done, as one would expect in a work from the descendant and
bearer of the one of greatest names in European art. Even the
flashing of the Qur’anic verses on the flesh was filmed
artistically, though the very idea, as reported in the press,
offended many Muslims.

Kisan:
Here the feigned praise sets an introduction. Before the vehement
condemnation a bit of saccarine praise to set a bit of balance to
this piece. First, this man had a bit of pedigree, coming from a
famous family. Visually the piece can be offered token appreciation
also.

Majid:
For me, the objectionable element was the content in its abstract
obtuseness. The narrator’s voice intoned the paraphrases of the
Qur’anic verses I know so well in a manner that formulated a
message that all Muslim women purportedly believe, conform, and live
their lives in that particular social arrangement, in that
particular version of the literal sense of the Qur’an, and in that
particular state of suffocation of their humanity. “This is
Islam, folks, what can you say!” The film’s deliberate
decontextualization from any real world situation may have been an
attempt to flaunt it as an artistic expression, but I could not buy
it as such.

Kisan:
Without being able to contradict the substance of this film as it is
very much substantial we get distortion as follows:
We know some like Majid live a half way house watered down version
of Islam idealising away in their imaginations it's more disgusting
elements. This context of their existence in their own Islam-lite
world is possible only because of the lack of implementation of
sharia in the modern world in which they live.
However millions not fortunate enough to be away from the Islamic
paradises live this life. It is ORTHODOX ISLAM.
The film failed to show Farida Majid, hair blowing in the wind
like a shampoo commercial, the liberated yet believing Muslima that
refutes the hundreds of millions of burqa clad females that are
painted as part of an unreal world of abstractness.
Majid, living in secular America (well actually supposed to be
evangelical fundamentalist later, but we know reality doesn't
conform to the rhetoric), disproves this literal Islam and shows how
a liberated Islam exists.

Majid:
In the wide, wide Muslim world of diverse cultures and traditions, I
know too well that any Muslim girl’s life could possibly be as
bad, not so bad, worse, far worse, or not resembling anything at all
of the sort depicted in the film.

Kisan:
This is distortion. It is classical scriptural Islam of the Quran
and Hadith and Sharia and not any wide wide world of diverse
cultures and traditions that is the supposedly divine authority
which sanctions subjugation and abuse of women. Muhammed himself set
the precedent and this was codified as Islam. With his multiple
marriages, enslaving of women right-hand possessions, dissolving of
their marriages etc.

Majid:
Stereotyping is a form of propagandizing devise that must not be
mistaken as a proffered idea intended to initiate dialogue or for
progress or betterment of humanity. Rather, its intention is
regressive, using intentional face-to-face insults under cover of
“free speech” in assaultive racist expressions.

Kisan:
Muhammed set up sharia which is a stereotyping of behaviour. Majid
in this article mentions Goghs name again and again and again.
However Hirsi Ali who is the actual source of the films material
isn't mentioned once. She is a women who has lived the abuse of
women a la sharia style (and not the pick and chose version of
apologists like Majid) and has worked with many many women who have
been abused.
Majid insead of substantive critique offers only the recourse of
rascals in the calling of the motive of racism.
The black African woman Hirsi Ali is the source of this films
material. But this doesn't work well with the red herring apologia
of Majid so she isn't mentioned at all and the white male Van Goghs
name fills this article ad nauseum to mislead and support this weak
article.

Majid:
Theo van Gogh’s film, even now with its addendum of crime and
controversy, would do nothing to make the newly hijabized Muslim
women’s life any easier. It was not made with the goodness of the
heart intended towards enabling more Muslim girls feel the sunlight
bathing their faces and enjoy the wind rustling through their hair
as they walk freely under the open sky. It is a spiteful depiction
of a ‘perception’ of Islam’s treatment of women, abstractly
composing a composite, an aggregate made up of some unlived
guesswork of a life with an artificial enactment of scraps of
evidences from scriptural text.

Kisan:
Majid fails to counter a single "scrap" of the evidence. Instead
impugning motive repeatedly substitutes for evidence based analysis.
This makes Majids piece just a big personal attack on motive with
name calling.

Majid:
However, in my opinion, Van Gogh’s rabid right-wing activities
combined with his Islamophobia reflected in this film is not what
got him murdered in that brutal fashion in the hands of an Islamist
fanatic. That is too easy a conclusion. The Islamists, I have marked
after a prolonged period of observation, quite relish the presence
of outright Islamophobia in the West. They feed off it. Where would
they be without it? It is their life-line �" the 2000 volt
electricity-carrying cable that upkeeps their nefarious utilities.
Islamists love the racist Islamophobia of the neo-con Imperialists.
Look how they have succeeded in being equal partners in the
destruction of Fallujah! And the destruction of the rest of Iraq for
that matter, which, despite being under a Stalinist type of modern-
day Dictator, used to be a secular modern Muslim country in the Arab
world where women enjoyed, in education and health care areas, a
reasonably acceptable gender-equal status.

Kisan:
More name calling. Van Gogh was merely the director, again let us
remember the unnamed author of the films content HIRSI ALI.
The racist attacks of Majid are evidenced by the omission of
mentioning Hirsi Ali and focusing all of the vitriole, character
attacks and impugnment of evil motive onto Van Gogh.
The man who had his head sawn off by the Islamic jihadi now gets
his legacy butchered by the Islamic apologist Majid.

Then the nonsense of partnership of those combatting Islamic jihadis
(from their apologist). This Orwellian inversion of reality is
standard fare from the Leftist/Islamist tag team.

Majid:
And he thought he was simply criticizing the “goat-fuckers”, how
they treat their women being a supporting detail, possibly a minor
one compared to the more important issue of stopping the immigration
of these dirty Muslims into a pure Christian Holland!

Kisan:
From the believing Muslima Majid we get mislead into believing Gogh
believed in protecting a "pure Christian" Holland from dirty Muslims.
Unlike the religious believer Majid Van Gogh was an atheist and
secularist.
He offended religions with equal fervour.
About Mel Gibsons Passion of the Christ he said:
"I just went to see 'The Passion of the Christ,' a film as bad as an
LSD trip which shows once again that also in the sewers of
Christianity collective daftness just leads to mud."
So Majid's misleading character assasination of a murdered man can
be understood as an propaganda and lies and distortions to whip up
sympathy for her beloved faith.

Majid:
I do like David Aronovitz's article (the Guardian, Nov. 16, 2004)
that sees similarities between the Jews being branded as the "Christ-
killer" and the current rush in Europe and America for Muslims being
branded as the "killer" of all things that "WE LOVE & ENJOY" such as
freedom and democracy. Tough claim after the election victory of the
right wing Evangelicals in the United States who are anything but
religious pluralists, and in whose hands the hard-earned women’s
rights are in serious jeopardy!

Kisan:
More lies. The US is the arena of womens rights where Majid has
shifted from a semi-Islamic paradise. Let Majid move to an Islamic
paradise or Socialist paradise if she feels her rights in serious
jeopardy in the US.
The cult of anti-US leftists and half way house Islam
practitioners that she is a member of could well vote with their
feet and move to Cuba or any place better than the supposedly
fundamentalist US if they were sincere.
How about Saudi Arabia? She could try living her version of Islam
there and see how much tolerance she is afforded for the
contextualisation of Islam that she practises with liberty afforded
by the US system that is attacked relentlessly by the neo-Marxist
elites of the third world who mostly run to live in comfort in the
West and become part-time cyber revolutionaries.