Sean Stone, the son of Hollywood director Oliver Stone, made news last year when he said he had converted to Islam while working on a film in Iran and then later turned wishy-washy on his conversion
Now the 28-year old actor and director is voicing his opinions on the Qoran (“a very sensible book”), 9/11 (“an inside job”), Hezbollah (“don’t consider them to be terrorists”) and Iranians (a “very civilized people”).
The younger Stone shared his views in an interview last week with RT, the Russian government’s English-language television station.
“The Qoran is a very sensible book. If you read it, frankly it makes a whole lot of sense regarding their interpretation of Jesus, who they look to as a prophet. And obviously the Abrahamic lineage from Abraham to Moses are all very much respected in the Qoran,” Stone said.
His reference to Muslims as “they” suggested he does not consider himself to be a Muslim himself.
Stone said the 9/11 attack of 2001 “was probably an inside job of some kind. It was not simply a rag-tag group of terrorists led by [Osama] bin Laden who conducted this operation.”
Speaking to an interviewer who expressed sympathy for his opinions, Stone called the US war on terror in response to the attacks “a decade of constant fear mongering and aggression.”
He commented: “Despite the fact that there’s more awareness on it, why is it that we do continue to see this propaganda about the boogeyman terrorists whether they be Muslim or Russian or North Korean or what not? What is that system? It’s a cycle of fear. It’s a cycle that has to be broken internally.”
Oliver Stone has in the past railed against what he called Israel’s “powerful lobby in Washington” and it appears his son sympathizes with his views. Sean Stone referred to Israelis as “European settlers” who don’t feel “comfortable in what is historically Palestine.”
The younger Stone said many Middle Easterners object to Israel’s existence because they view it “as a crusader state, a crusader kingdom.”
“So when they see all these European, Russian Jews, coming to Israel, they’re saying. ‘Look at these European settlers. They’re not Jews from this region, they have no ties to the land’,” he said.
Israel’s Jewish population is almost evenly split between those of European origin (Ashke-nazim) and those of Middle Eastern origin (Sephardim).
Stone said, “Now, I’m not a proponent of attacking Israel or trying to dissolve it at this point, but I’m simply saying that that is why there’s so much antagonism to Israel.”
In February 2012, the younger Stone was quoted by the Iranian media as saying he had converted to Shia Islam while working on a film in Iran. Back in the United States the next week, Stone said he didn’t “feel like I have become a Muslim.”
He said he has “accepted Mohammed,” but he also made clear he hadn’t rejected any other religion.
He appeared to accept a view not uncommon in California and other sectors of America that all religions are equal and that one can be a member of all faiths.
“I happen to agree with what Mahatma Gandhi said. He said ‘I’m Hindu, a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim and a Buddhist,’” Stone told CNN last year in an interview.
Stone referred to himself as a Muslim, calling Islam “an extension of the Judeo-Christian heritage. Mohammed is a prophet in that same line going back to Abraham.”
In another interview last year, this one on Fox News, Stone said he did not believe he was converting when he was worshipping the same God today as before. “I’ve always believed in the same Judeo-Christian God,” he explained. “And it’s a misunderstanding of Islam to say Allah is a different God.” So, he didn’t feel he had converted but rather “accepted” a new religion.
But in the interview with CNN, Stone also said confusingly that he did not “feel like I have become a MuslimÖ. I don’t feel Muslim any more than I am Christian or Jewish.” Stone’s mother is Christian and his film director father is Jewish.
Stone said he believes he now worships the same god as he always has.
“I reaffirmed my faith in that one God,” he said. “And I think my purpose in this sense is to help explain Islam to Americans and to the West.”
Stone told CNN that he believes that what he did was to state his belief in Islam publicly, but not to renounce his former faith. He said his decision stemmed from a desire to educate people about Islam, to “let them see it is not a religion of fanaticism.”
Stone said, “I do defend the nation state, their national right to have nuclear power. And, if that means a nuclear bomb as well, I defend that right,” Stone said, without apparently knowing that the Islamic Republic acknowledges it has no right to nuclear weapons under the Non-Proliferation Treaty it has signed.
When asked by Fox News if he was okay with Iran having nuclear weapons, he said, “I am.”
Stone told CNN his main concern above all else was to prevent war. “My issue, really, is I don’t want to see our country go to war and, you know, if it’s going to be over the potential threat that Iran is to Israel, I would say that’s a complete lie…. If Israel gets the green light and attacks Iran preemptively, the way that we preemptively attacked Iraq, that’s what I’m most concerned about.”
He told Fox News that when speaking with people in Iran, he would suggest that they cut out “this ‘Down with America’ nonsense.”
In 2011, Stone told Fox News that Ahmadi-nejad “is a little bit misunderstood because there are many factions in that country and he said some sensational things.”
On Hezbollah, which Iran funds and trains, Stone says it’s “debatable” the group is terrorist.
“As they operate within Lebanese borders, I don’t consider them to be terrorists. I see them as defenders of Lebanese sovereignty because Lebanon has been invaded numerous times by Israel,” Stone said. He was speaking long before Hezbollah sent troops into Syria to defend President Hafez al-Assad.
Stone compared suicide bombers to US military drone strikes on terrorists, saying, “The whole concept of terrorism is quite insane at this point where we have drones and missiles being launched and killing hundreds of thousands of people in that region, across the Middle East, across North Africa, since this war on terrorism occurred.”
“Because we killed them with our missiles, we don’t consider ourselves terrorists. We only consider those who blow themselves up terrorists. And obviously you cannot create that qualification. That’s a 1984 Orwellian double-speak term,” Stone said.
“So, the idea of Iran as this great terrorist enemy is not true. They’re very civilized people, they have a 3,000-year history,” the actor said.
“They are not looking to destroy themselves in the process of a war against … Israel unless there’s a good motivation to do so,” he said.
Stone will be appearing in an Iranian film soon to be released about the US Navy’s 1989 shootdown of an Iranian passenger jet flying over the Persian Gulf.
