Petition Has Katy Perry Dark Horse Video Altered Because It ‘portrays blasphemy’

by | February 27, 2014

Over 60,000 people have signed an online petition to remove the Katy Perry Song, Dark Horse from YouTube. See the BBC’s screen capture below.

BBCKatyPerryVideo

The BBC Capture of the “blasphemous” Part of the Original Katy Perry Video

The reason for the offence, according to Shazad Iqbal, who started the petition, is that:

The video is considered as highly controversial to its viewers as a result of its portrayal of blasphemy.

 

At 01:15 into the video Dark Horse; a man is shown being burned, whilst wearing a pendant (also burned) forming the word ‘Allah’, which is the arabic word for God.

 

Such goes to show, that blasphemy is clearly conveyed in the video, since Katy Perry (who appears to be representing an opposition of God) engulfs the believer and the word God in flames.

Well, as Salman Rushdie says, “Nobody has the right to not be offended”, but according to the petition site, the word “Allah” has been removed from the video. I took a look at the video on YouTube and this scene goes by so quickly, I don’t know how anyone could have noticed, but it appears the pendant has been removed (see screen capture below).

KatyPerryVideo

The “blasphemy” is removed after YouTube received complaints

I’m offended at the inaccurate portrayal of Ancient (or maybe Ptolemaic?) Egyptians but of course religion is something we dare not offend.

More at BBC News – Katy Perry Dark Horse video ‘portrays blasphemy’.

27 thoughts on “Petition Has Katy Perry Dark Horse Video Altered Because It ‘portrays blasphemy’

    1. Bubba Kincaid

      Yeah, because killing them by the millions is pleasing them too, and it’s fun and we can make fun excuses like it’s not our fault because they are doing it to themselves and have fun watching their reactions when we say it.

      Reply
  1. Bubba Kincaid

    In my opinion despite all the baited and hooked catcalling and opprobrium, what’s really going on here is that calling out negatively reinforcing stereotypes just doesn’t get the media attention it used to anymore, especially at a time when it most should be, so that everyone is somehow forced to revert to old archetypes of disapproval to get any attention. Sad situation really.

    Reply
    1. KC

      The thing about “calling out negatively reinforcing stereotypes” is that “calling [them] out” invariably gives those “stereotypes” far more extensive coverage than they might otherwise have and perpetuates them far more than they would have otherwise been.

      Go down the list: Satanic Verses, the Danish Cartoons, Charlie Hedbo, The Innocence of Muslims, and now this would have all gone down in history as insignificant or nominally significant works if it wasn’t for the over the top, censorious and, in some cases, violent reactions of Muslims. I’d submit that western perception of Muslims would be far better today if these ‘slights’ had been ignored.

      Reply
      1. Bubba Kincaid

        How you can even fathom to simply ignore the even longer list of grievous illegal acts of state terrorism perpetrated constantly on them, acts which everyone happily ignored as conspiracy theory, and then once again laugh and shrug it off when those long lists turn out to be completely 100% true and officially validated is really really really quite beyond me.

        And then try to purport to uphold some kind of more rational ideal of morality and come here and call yourself an atheist at the same time? It’s a disgrace and complete lunacy.

        Just goes to show that there should have been a global reconciliation effort, a la truth and reconciliation, after the fall of the soviet union. But no. There wasn’t was there. Just more brazen hypocrisy.

        Reply
        1. KC

          Well for one thing I don’t reductionist and one sided characterization of Western-Islamic relations as being a “long… list of grievous illegal acts of state terrorism perpetrated constantly on them, acts which everyone happily ignored as conspiracy theory”.

          But more importantly there is literally no connection whatsoever between the reaction to what Katy Perry does in a silly pop video, and the alleged “illegal acts of state terrorism perpetrated constantly on [Muslims]”. None whatsoever.

          Reply
        2. Bubba Kincaid

          How about this, how about you spend one half of one percent of the amount of time you spend going after some inconsequential part of the youtube complaintosphere, on protecting and denouncing the wholesale slaughter of innocent people and then maybe you’ll be slightly more convincing and I won’t consider you nothing more than a hopeless shill, and maybe even deem you worthy of appropriating the title of atheist and rational and skeptic. Until then, despite whether you care or not what I think, I’m not impressed nor convinced. At all.

          Reply
          1. Bubba Kincaid

            And frankly I’m more disgusted by some of the things I read here, including quite thinly veiled puerile jingoism stemming from what I’m sure is nothing more than a bunch of hardons for military hardware, than some 60,000 name youtube complaintosphere petition against some pop culture bullcrap worth crap.

          2. KC

            Good for you. And I’ll continue to think of you as a mealy-mouthed apologist for the bad behaviour of those who want to criminalize “blasphemy”. You are so predictable. Almost everything you post here is “how can you talk about X when Y is going on in the world”. Just because Y is a more important issue doesn’t make X unworthy of discussion.

            And again–I don’t accept your reductionist characterization of Western-Islamic relations as the “wholesale slaughter of innocent people”. The world is a much more complex place than that.

          3. Bubba Kincaid

            And I don’t accept that you’ve lifted a finger to add your voice to the denunciation of the obvious and well documented slaughter of innocent people, other than as disingenuous cover for more slaughter of more innocent people, and frankly I consider you and your ilk a disservice to atheism and a contributor to the squandering of what could have been a perfect opportunity for atheism to distinguish itself as a higher, more rational morality well above the fray. But no, here you are, complaining about a katy perry petition.

            Congratulations.

          4. Bubba Kincaid

            And frankly, I consider you marginally better than the evangelical christian exports currently massively promoting the murder of homosexuals in africa, and that only because at least you choose to falsely label yourself as an atheist. Good choice, but we don’t need your help. thanks.

          5. KC

            And you’ve never “lifted a finger to add your voice to the denunciation of the obvious and well documented” attempts by Islamic fanatics to impose medieval blasphemy prohibitions on western and eastern states alike. In fact whenever anyone else attempts to lift such a finger you change the subject and refuse to even acknowledge that it is problematic.

            Good for you.

          6. KC

            Not to mention I HAVE lifted a finger on many many occasions to denounce foreign aggression. I just don’t feel the need to change the subject and derail discussions of every other issue to ride that particular hobby horse.

          7. Bubba Kincaid

            Listen here, boy, there is at the U of Toronto OISE library, two 15 foot walls and no less than 3, 12 foot double sided full book shelves of middle eastern feminist organizations publications starting from well before you were born, half of one scrap of paper from which says more than you will ever say in your entire lifetime. Before you start talking to me about reductionism and complexity, and before you think you are fooling anybody but the dupes unfortunate enough to be your immediate acquaintences, or accomplishing anything successful with your pathetic attempts at scam artistry, and before you start thinking you are doing anything but shilling for sophisticated war machine propagandists, free of charge, why don’t you run along and do a little research for me and come back with a report on what’s become of those organizations since the shit hit the fan over there and you decided to freely prostitute yourself for the cause of protecting well documented western backed totalitarian regimes and their spinoff sometimes on sometimes off sidekicks, just so you could have drone footage to jerk off to at night, and pseudo-intellectualize the next day? Ok?

          8. KC

            Ooooooooh. U of T. I’m shaking in my boots. Because I never stepped foot in a University Library during my 8 years there. Congratulations. All those words and you still haven’t explained why you feel the need to change the subject. Do you do this on everything? Request to rezone a local property commercial? Can’t talk about that because Western aggression. The new “Fair Elections Act”? Can’t talk about that because Western aggression. Global warming? Can’t talk about that because Western aggression. Local school board wants to hand out bibles? Can’t talk about that because Western aggresion. Laaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

          9. Bubba Kincaid

            Yeah and I’m sure the 2.5 million syrians living in refugee camps right now are absolutely ecstatic that you’re helping defend them from the katy perry petitions and hoping that you could get a grant from maybe DARPA to create a bot to scour the net for any katy perry antagonists that might pop up and maybe surreptitiously divert them to write petitions against the draconian britney spears regime.

          10. KC

            You didnt answer my question… Do you do this with every issue? Do you even have a point? I’m not sure what it is.

          11. Bubba Kincaid

            They’ll be turning to atheism any day now thanks to your steadfast efforts, and if they don’t become atheists, then they will certainly be taking note and thanking you for your diligent and shrewd discernment.

          12. Bubba Kincaid

            The obviously powerful sense of discernment that has taken note that femen, the nude paris feminist group, is hosted smack dab in the center of the largest and most staunchly muslim neighbourhood of Paris.

          13. KC

            What does this have to do with feminists or “recruiting” people to atheism? I’m talking about the freedom to blaspheme here.

  2. Corwin

    Not long ago we heard about microaggressions, but depicting the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it immolation of a man who just happened to be decorated with the Islamic Holy Squiggle was more like a femtoaggression against Muslims. Agreeing to censor the Squiggle was a wrongheaded and excessively deferential decision, of course – the kind of nonsense you’d expect from the makers of that sort of video. A music video about an ancient Egyptian femme fatale sorceress would probably appeal to me if it were well done, but that Dark Horse is really a Lame Horse that ought to be put out to pasture as quickly as possible.

    Reply
    1. KC

      “as more like a femtoaggression against Muslims”

      And probably a completely unintended one at that. It probably never so much as dawned on the makers of this video that this would cause “offense” yet judging by the comments on some articles I’ve seen in some minds it was clearly by design. That doesn’t really make sense when you see how quickly they capitulated to the demands of the mob. When you “intentionally” lob a bomb you usually dig some trenches and expect to endure some fire. Rarely do you throw a grenade and immediately come out white flag waving.

      Reply
      1. Corwin

        I’m sure you’re right. The video-makers probably just included the Squiggle because they thought it looked interesting and knew that it, like Egypt, was sort of Middle Eastern. Most aggressions below the level of, say, centiaggressions are probably unintentional, though, so there’s nothing exceptional about this particular case.

        Reply
        1. Ultra

          You are thinking too broadly, every aggression is a quantum level event, it only exists when observed by a self-righteous detection apparatus. Offense is defined by a quantum-aggression which both is, and is not. One merely needs to define the victim-wave-function correctly.

          Reply
  3. Veronica Abbass

    Bubba Kincaid

    It looks like you have a lot to contribute to the discussions on Canadian Atheist. If you are interested in writing for Canadian Atheist, please contact me at veronica(at)canadianatheist.com

    Reply
  4. Erin Coldrick

    Jeebus, I find the reference to eating your heart out like Jeffery Dahmer more offensive than some pendant that flashes by so quickly that you can barely register it.
    People are so eager to be offended, especially the religious… can’t offend them. Rubbish!

    Reply

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