Ehsan Jami, member of the city council of Leidschendam-Voorburg on behalf of the Dutch Labour Party(PvdA) and one of the two founders of the Central Committee for Ex-Muslims
Islamophobia is as old as St. John of Damascus and the Venerable Bede, so it is not surprising that it should also have a youtube extension. One of the latest contributions has not been Piped in by an ardent jihad watcher nor obsessed by a horribly-witted and spent spinnermeister that robs truth to pay politics. Move over Ibn Warraq, hang on Ayaan Ali Hirsi, there is a new apostate on the video block going Dutch on Muslims. His name is Ehsan Jami and he has recently released an “Interview with Muhammad.” So if you would like to hear what someone who has rejected Islam would like the Prophet Muhammad to say on camera after more than fourteen centuries, here is a chance. An earlier prophet, Solomon the Wise, complained that there is nothing new under the sun. Applied to this film I would have to say it is Mo of the same.
Like Satanic Verses, this fifteen-minute video is probably meant as satire, perhaps more designed as catharsis for the filmmaker than a call to action for Muslims worldwide. It features three talking heads, the interviewer, the face mask protecting the sanctity (for lack of a better term) of Muhammad’s head-on Wahhabi image and the actor actually speaking the lines. Bible Belt Christians sometimes belt out an old pew-burner about what would happen if Jesus came back today. So WWMD and get ready to lol.
How revealing is the interview? We learn from the actor behind the mask that Muhammad plays poker with Jesus regularly, but the interviewer lets us all down by not asking if these two prophets listen to Country Western music. Muhammad prefers to be addressed simply as Mo (putting the hammered to rest, I guess). Although he was not educated, he was street-wise. When asked why he married the wealthy but far older Khadija, Mo admits it was nice to marry a bank. Not using modesty unbecoming to a prophet with “Quranic privileges,” Mo confirms to the interviewer that he was indeed capable of having sex in one night with all “twenty” wives, one at a time of course.
Three times the interviewer draws his question right out of al-Bukhari, allowing the camera to scan over the Arabic text and imaging the English translation on the screen. But Mo handled the tough questions far better than Sarah Palin would. About that marriage with Aisha at age 6 and consummation at age 9, well it was a tribal society at the time and we are told how lonely Mo was after the death of Khadija. The interviewer might had noted that the same thing happened to Groucho Marx, so what’s the big deal here. About marrying several wives, Mo’s advice fourteen centuries later is “Don’t try that at home.” I guess this leaves shi’a muta’ marriage off the hook, but then Iranian clerics have been saying ayatollah so all along. And about killing the Jews, well they are a stubborn people and an “eternal problem,” as even good pogrom-minded Christians would surely admit. That marrying a Jewess after knocking off her parents was a business deal.
The most explosive question was saved for the last. What about that killing apostates rule? Being an acknowledged former believer himself, the interviewer clearly had quite a bit at stake in this one. But Mo has mellowed, it seems. Let the apostates burn in hell and leave them alone here on earth: this is the new progressive tafsir. And Muslims should not marry young pre-teen girls nor have multiple wives. “God gave people brains, didn’t he?” the actor notes with no angel Gabriel looking over his shoulder. Now here the interviewer might have asked about scientific research on that part of the brain that seems to be wired for sex, but missed his chance.
So what can be said about this film interview? Apart from being boring and predictable, is there anything else that need be said? To be fair, I will simply quote the most memorable line in the entire interview, when Mo suggests to Mr Jami, “Don’t overestimate your little low-budget film.” Now that seems the most prophetic truth in the whole film.
Luke R. E. Publican