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April 1, 2006

Hardcore Islam

April Fool's Day brings us a tacky spam apparently designed to ignite Muslim anger rather than humor. The message, sent late Friday night to a variety of Islamic groups, announces the upcoming release of "four Muslim themed adult films." A PDF attachment to the fake press release depicts what are described as "video covers & posters" used for promotion of the allegedly pornographic movies. (I've uploaded a copy of the attachment here.)

While the 'Yaa Allah" message may produce a chuckle from some western, non-Muslim readers, that's apparently not who was targeted by the email. Seems likely this is an effort to whip up a reaction similar to last September's furor over the Mohammed cartoons.

The titles of the four films, said to be produced by an unnamed independent studio in California, are "Hardcore Islam," "Spring Break In Mecca," "Islam Rated XXX," and "Medina Ghetto Hoochie Mama."

The email claims that sexual repression and violence are linked. It quotes a Martin P. Klaus, the (imaginary) producer and director of the films, as saying that "sexually active men have much better, and more positive, things to do than hack off heads, blow people up, and generally try to (expletive) things up. If Muslim men would take off the dresses and bomb belts, rip the veils and panties off their women, then take a little dip in the Zamzam, the world would be a more peaceful place.”

The author of the email didn't identify himself, and the return address on the message was an account at an anonymous email service. But the email headers show it was sent from a computer named "jprodan" using a Pacific Bell DSL line in the Los Angeles area. The message was routed through a mail server operated by etrafficers.com, a mortgage leads site that has been listed on the SPEWS blacklist.

Based on that header information, I'd have to conclude that Joe Prodan, who runs Polaris Lending Group in Irvine, CA, is probably involved.

Posted by brian at April 1, 2006 12:32 PM