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Category: Culture
Posted: Sunday, January 27, 2008
FINAL STAR WARS BEARS MESSAGE FOR AMERICA
Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian
May 16, 2005
The republic is crumbling under attack from alien forces. Democracy is threatened as the leader plays on the people's paranoia. Amid the confusion it is suddenly unclear whether the state is in more danger from insurgents, or from the leader himself.
It sounds more like a Michael Moore polemic than a Star Wars movie. But George Lucas, speaking as his latest epic was given its world premiere at Cannes yesterday, confirmed that Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, could be read as a parable about American politics. When he conceived his series of films in the 1970s, he says, he was thinking about Vietnam and Nixon, investigating "democracy, and how a senate could give itself over, could surrender itself to a dictator". He found historical echoes down the ages. "I looked at ancient Rome, and how, having got rid of kings, the Senate ended up with Caesar's nephew as emperor ... how democracy turns itself into a dictatorship. I also looked at revolutionary France ... and Hitler. "It tends to follow similar patterns. Threats from outside leading to the need for more control; democracy not being able to function properly because of internal squabbling."
"I hope that situation never arises in our country," he said. "Maybe the film will awaken people to this danger." Asked whether Star Wars Episode III openly alluded to the Iraq war, he said: "When I wrote it Iraq didn't exist. We were funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction. We were going after Iran. But the parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we are doing in Iraq are unbelievable."
Lucas yesterday received, amid enormous hoopla, one of the highest honours Cannes can bestow: the Trophy of the Festival, which he was awarded on the world's largest ocean liner, the Queen Mary 2. To view the full article,
http://film.guardian.co.uk/cannes2005/story/0,15927,1484795,00.html
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1. According to the Sunan of Abu Dawud, the Prophet said, “I prohibit killing four creatures in this earth: ants, bees, hoopoes and sparrow-hawks.” 2. See Nora Belfedal, “Honey: the Antibiotic of the Future, part 3: Healing ‘Bee Venom.’” Islamonline, November 15, 2001. 3. See Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger: the Veneration of the Prophet is Islamic Piety (UNC Press, 1985), p. 285. 4. Ibid., p. 102-104. The latter idea is attributed to the twentieth-century Indian poet Nabibakhsh Baloch. 5. See, for example, the section on medicine in Sahih Bukhari. Among other things, the Prophet Muhammad prescribed honey for abdominal trouble. 6. See Belfedal, “Healing Bee Venom.” 1. Found in Imam Malik’s Muwatta'
and Imam Ahmad’s Musnad 1. Both these ahadith, and the quote from Imam Nawawi, are taken from Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misr’s Reliance of the Traveller; in Arabic with facing English text, commentary and appendices edited and translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller,
Revised edition, 1994. Beltville, Md: Amana Publications in the section on Commanding the Right and Forbidding the Wrong and the section on Holding One’s Tongue. 2. Moustafa Styer’s translation, except I have replaced his translation the technical term fuqara as poor, with the word ‘devout’, for the sake of clarity in the context of this article.
The term ‘poor’ does not denote actual financial destitution, rather, it means one who has abandoned attachments to worldly things and become rich in their attachment to Allah.
This state cannot be achieved except through sincere devotion.
See Moustafa Styer “Reflections of the Beloved”. 3. The legal rulings of Islamic law are generally
that a thing is considered obligatory,
recommended, neutral, disliked, or prohibited. 1. Consumers Union Education Series. (1995).
Captive Kids: Commercial Pressures on Kids at School.
Yonkers: Author. 1. Quoted in Keller, Nuh Ha Mim; translator and editor.
The Reliance of the Traveller:
The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law cUmdat al-Salik
by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri. 1994.
Beltsville, MD. Amana Publications. Page 41.
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