“Who will survive 2012?” asks a website promoting Roland Emmerich’s new end-of-the-world film set three years from now. The answer: Muslims — or at least their cherished holy places:
For his latest disaster movie, 2012, the 53-year-old director had wanted to demolish the Kaaba, the iconic cube-shaped structure in the Grand Mosque in Mecca. …
But after some consideration, he decided it might not be such a smart idea, after all.
“I wanted to do that, I have to admit,” Emmerich told SciFiWire.com. “But my co-writer Harald [Kloser] said I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right.”
Emmerich’s frank admissions echo those of British artist Grayson Perry, who has stated that he trashes Christianity but avoids Islam “because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.” Yet while their candor about not wishing to become the next Theo van Gogh may be rare, examples of creative types pussyfooting around Muslims are not. A 2008 IW essay explores this phenomenon in the art world. Cases from film and television are just as common. Among them:
- For the 2002 movie The Sum of All Fears, Arab Muslim terrorists from Tom Clancy’s novel were turned into white neo-fascists, thus satisfying the demands of CAIR.
- The 2005 season of the Fox drama 24, featuring a Muslim family as a sleeper cell, ran a disclaimer with Kiefer Sutherland offering assurances that the plotline is not meant to besmirch American Muslims. CAIR’s fingerprints are here as well.
- Comedy Central censored an image of the Islamic prophet in a 2006 episode of South Park. Yet the same episode depicts “Jesus defecating on the American flag.”
- In 2008 British comedian Ben Elton argued that a “scared” BBC “will let vicar gags pass but they would not let imam gags pass.” He even reported that he had been warned against using the rather innocuous phrase “Muhammad came to the mountain.”
Recently HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm had star Larry David urinate on a picture of Jesus. Jamie Glazov asks whether we might ever see him similarly profane books and symbols sacred to Muslims. And, if not, “what meaning and lesson do we draw from this?”
The answer is no; the lesson is that political correctness and fear are turning Hollywood into Dhimmiwood, where eager capitulations by Roland Emmerich and company will only embolden Islamists and soften us up for disasters far worse than computerized explosions.
