Fear of Fatwa: Roland Emmerich Chickens Out
November 04, 2009
In Roland Emmerich’s baroque apocalypse-fantasy, 2012, you’ll see lots of famous and iconic landmarks (the White House, the Sistine Chapel, Christ the Redeemer, etc.) being destroyed, but one significant monument wont get touched. Emmerich had initially planned to include the annihilation of the Kaaba -- the cuboidal building in Mecca that’s the center of Islamic prayer -- but got cold feet for fear of reprisal from fundamentalists. Wuss!
In an interview with Patrick Lee of Sci-Fi Wire, Emmerich explains:
“Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit, but my co-writer Harald said: I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right. We have to all ... in the Western world ... think about this. You can actually let Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is. So it’s just something which I kind of didn’t [think] was [an] important element, anyway, in the film, so I kind of left it out.”
This strikes me as fairly cowardly for a director who, in the same interview, baldly states that he’s “against organized religion.” The confession also comes just days after Qatari media company Al Noor Holdings announced its plans to produce a $150 million dollar, English-language feature about the Prophet Mohammed. Islamic tradition dictates that neither Prophet Mohammed nor direct members of his family can be depicted in any way, yet Al Noor is nevertheless forging ahead with its equally fatwa-worthy plan in the hope of establishing a more positive portrayal of Islam around the world. Their example makes Emmerich look all the more craven.
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Posted by anonymous on Sat Nov 14, 2009 at 10.07 am
Interesting. He hates “organized religion” but for some reason makes sure that those who practice Islam survive the end of the world in his movie “2012”
His irrational hatred of Christianity and Catholicism in particular, winds up with him making the largest pro-Islamic propaganda film in the history of mankind - despite him hating “organized religion” - the message of the movie is clear: If you wish to survive the end of the world, you got to join Islam.
Very nice. Way to go.
Irrational bigotry always leads to irrational consequences.