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Review:
Movie Review of Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet
(1997)
PBS presented this documentary film on Dec 26 2002 along with a special
2-hour "Frontline" afterwards, which presented the problem of
radical Islam and violence.
This documentary, however, presents in a straightforward manner the story
of the prophet Muhammad (Mohammed) in the 6th and 7th Centuries. Mohammed had
lived as a rather ordinary man in his tribal society near Mecca, Arabia
when he had a vision or encounter around his 40th birthday. Subsequently he
would we his teachings into his culture, which badly needed a system of
ethics to deal with all of the social problems of a tribal culture. The
history, including the period in Medina
and return to Mecca,
is well presented. Islam is presented as a religion with at first had a
civilizing effect on its society.
The "Frontline" program presented Islam in the modern world, as
it is practiced in a number of countries. Some, for example Malaysia, are
relatively progressive but use Islamic law for civil or family matters. The
problem of radical Islam is presented particularly in Nigeria,
where a cleric is warning his followers, "the purpose of the law is not
to punish you but to make it unacceptable to deviate from what is acceptable
behavior for the community." One can see the layers of philosophy that
lead to radicalism. The religion is presented as one of rules, works, ritual,
and strict adherence to authority, all of which does in a certain social
context lead to a kind of stability and community "justice." But
with no allowance for Grace, there is not the opportunity to allow for
individualism as a philosophical construct. Literal obedience becomes the
exercise of faith. Leaders can misuse this for political ends (as with any
religion), and some leaders may try to justify violence against non-believers
as part of the religion, a highly questionable conclusion as far as
reasonable translation fo the Qu'ran
(Koran) is concerned. In one scene, the harsh penalties are enumerated: for
homosexuality it is death. Yet, at one time, the religion had served as a
vehicle for stability and social equality and justice.
Another PBS British-made documentary on August 2003, Spartans (180 min), provides a interesting account of how an ancient civilization—the
Greek city-state Sparta—set
up social institutions that seem to support the modern debate on family
values. For Sparta
was indeed a utopian society centered on some perfectionistic,
collective idea of utopian, meritocratic glory, perhaps in a way that
anticipates Nazism. Boys were taken from their mothers at age seven and went
through years of trials and forced pain to carry out an ideal of survival of
the fittest. Men who “made it” were given land and slaves at age 30, but
still had to live according to a strict social code that emphasized communitarianism and a curious idea of citizenship as a
contract balancing rights and obligations. Young adult men mentored boys and
developed homosexual relationships that were considered an important stage,
to the extent that men then had to undergo bizarre rituals to prepare for
mandatory marriage and baby-making. Women also had their system of
meritocracy to produce superior babies. Yet, it is clear that the whole
system prevented the development of freedom and individuality as we know it,
for that does require family. See also 300
(link below).
The National Geographic/PBS film Inside Mecca (60
Minutes, 2003, WB Home video), documents the Hajj, the pilgrimage that all
Muslims make once per lifetime if able. Here a divorced woman from Texas who converted to
Islam, a black man from South
Africa, and a family man from Kuola Lumpur,
Malaysia make
the journey. The eight day ritual, culminating in walking around the Kaaba seven times, goes through many steps. The event is
to be egalitarian, with men wearing two-piece white garments and doing no
grooming until the last day, when they shave (and may have heads shaved).
Modern infrastructure has been built up around many of the paths (as for the
stoning rituals). Muslims believe that the rituals purify them, and the
social context seems to be acceptance of a subordinate station in life for
some.
Islam: Empire
of Faith (PBS/Devilier Donegan, 2000, dir. Robert Gardner, 166 min, narrated by
Ben Kingsley) is a documentary tracing the history of Islam from the time of
the prophet Mohammed through the rule and campaigns of Ottoman emperor
Suleiman in the 1400s. Islam brought its domain into the world’s highest
standard of living in the late First Millennium, from Baghdad all the way over to Cordoba, Spain
while the rest of Europe floundered in
feudalism during the Dark Ages. The Crusades contributed to its downfall,
although the film slights these (emphasizing the problems posed by Saladin in
Jerusalem)
and it could have spent more time on how tolerant Islam really was during its
period of prosperity. But become corrupt it did. Maybe there was too much
government.
House of Saud (PBS, 2004; website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saud/cron/
)
Provides an interesting history of Saudi Arabia, and goes into some
little known facts about critical points in history. For example, after the
Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, the United States considered invading Saudi Arabia
to open the oil fields by force, and the diplomacy used to open the fields to
Aramco by April, 1974 included playing the
Communism card. The U.S. and
fundamentalist Islam were allies against the Soviets in 1980 against Afghanistan,
which help up the situation we have today. The possibility that the current
regime could fall and be replaced by terrorist-sympathetic extremely Wahhabist regime brings back the possibility of shut down
of the oil fields again. The holy shrine of Mecca (site of the hajj) was taken over by
radicals in November 1979 for a short period.
Islam: What the West Needs to
Know (2006, Quixotic Media, dir.Gregory
M. Davis, Bryan Daly), 98 min, NR but would probably be PG-13) (subtitle: “An
Examination of Islam, violence, and the fate on the non-Islam world”). This
is a sobering documentary that presents as series of video clips from our
political leaders making politically correct statements about Islam as a
faith of peace, interspersed with some violent video, and then many
interviews with various ex-Islamic scholars. (These include Walid Shoebat, author of Why I Left Jihad (ISBN:
0977102114, Check Amazon.com), Robert Spencer (The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)) and
Serge Trifkovic (Defeating Jihad: How the War on Terrorism Can Be Won – Despite
Ourselves); The basic thesis is that Islam, even in its own “mainstream,”
is a lot more than a religious faith; is also a political and social
ideology, however theocratic, that requires hegemony, that insists on setting
itself up all over the world as controlling government and politics as well
as religion. Other religions might co-exist (as they did in Spain, around
Cordoba early
in the last millennium) but practitioners of other faiths must always have
second-class status. The speakers present the evidence of history, as at
least twice in history (in the 8th Century in France and in
1683 with the Siege of Vienna) Islam’s attempt at world domination is coming
back. Indeed, September 11, 1683 is a critical date for
that siege, a fact certainly on the mind of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda
hijackers. The speakers also (at the beginning of the film) go back to the
Koran and show textual validation of the mandate to slay unbelievers and infidels.
They discuss abrogated texts in the Koran (Qur’an), and suggest that the
conclusive texts justify violence. They claim that the Prophet Mohammed’s own
behavior in Medina
justifies this belief. Even so, the idea of a formal hegemony seems hard to explain
when Islam does not have a hierarchal priesthood as does, for example, the
Roman Catholic Church. The decentralization of Islam has curiously worked to
its advantage when trying to advance radical political ideology.
Now, obviously there are a lot of questions. Most religions have extremist
factions. We know that it is possible to read many passages from the
Christian and Jewish Bibles with extreme interpretations (as with respect to
homosexuals). We know that there are cults within Christianity determined to
spread violence. What is the difference? The film claims that this indictment
of Islam as a dangerous ideology (comparable to Communism and Fascism) is
supported by history. They deny that Israel is responsible, or that Israel’s
behavior (with West Bank settlements and the
takings of Palestinian lands) is the explanation by itself. That is just a
recent development. Lebanon was
almost a Christian nation and now it is Muslim. Toward the end there is a
video clip of a radical speech given in Baghdad
in February 2003, one month before President Bush started his invasion.
Radical Islam today claims its intentions to reclaim a caliphate (an idea
satirized in opera, as with Adrien Boieldieu’s The
Caliph of Baghdad!) from southern Europe
to Indonesia,
and gradually to encroach upon Europe and America as it
gains strength. Because “The West” has lower birthrates (due to modern
cultural competition with old-fashioned family values, lineage and
procreation), in the long run this could become a dangerous possibility,
ideas that some conservatives have already noted.
The second class citizenship idea is disturbing in another way. We know of
many other parallels in our own culture. For example, in many areas of
society today homosexuals are supposed to be second-class citizens, at the
behest of people raising families through biological marriage.
There is one other observation that is disturbing. Why would an ideology
insist on this kind of world domination. It gets
back to the old truism: in a world where average people have little
opportunity to make their own ways as individuals, moral self-righteousness,
forced upon others by the muzzle of a gun, sounds pretty attractive;
democratic consensus sounds like a cover for sin or failure. The film does
discuss the psychology of suicide bombers (you have to “apply” to become
one), the religious promise of virgins in the afterlife (the film even says
it cannot be explicit about what is promised to heterosexual young men), and
the idea that the end of this life, if necessary, is preferable to living
with a sense of shame that one’s cultural identity has been overtaken by
others (or, in the West Bank, that one’s property was taken).
The sudden escalation of tensions
along the Israel-Lebanon border around July 13, 2006 illustrates the point
of this film, ironically in the first few days of its Washington DC
showing. It appears that the Lebanese government, however the Bush
administration characterizes it as democratic is captive to Hezbollah and
extremist ideology. It also seems that this latest skirmish was fueled by Iran as a
deliberate diversion. It appears also that Iran has intentions to use
Hezbollah to capture Israeli soldiers to its own territory as an oil
producing country, in order further inflame emotions. It’s alarming to remember Israel’s
zero-tolerance policy, and that in 1981 Israel attacked Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq, and Iran is trying to get
ready to make nuclear weapons…. http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/69697.htm
The course of the “war” in Lebanon
suggests that Hezbollah has asymmetric power that exceeds that of the
government or state itself.
I saw this at Landmark E
Street Cinema in Washington
DC on a Saturday night, and the
auditorium almost sold out. Many people were adults of various ages (often
young) who came alone, without dates.
Another site is http://www.jihadwatch.org
Tom Blankley has an important editorial “Just another
coincidence? World public remains baffled by Islamic threat” in The Washington Times, July 26, 2006,
p A17.
Even given all of this, it is well to compare it to
Islam’s own account, as in Yahiya Enerick, The
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Islam (2002, Alpha), a franchise
guide that seems to present a morally reassuring account of the beliefts of Islam. The book discusses jihad on p. 166 and
claims that the word means a striving for something, not a holy war (as often
indicated in dictionaries), and it says that it is not within the prerogative
of the individual to wage a “holy war.” The Wikipedia entry is instructive.
Extra:
On September 2, 2006, media outlets
reported a 48-minute video from Ayman Al-Zawahiri and an American from California,
Adam Gadahn, telling all Americans that they have a
“last best chance” to convert to Islam. CNN shows a little of the video on
its website. The video apparently maintains that natural conversion of
Americans to (radical) Islam is a threat to non-Muslims. On the other
hand, an Oct 2006 CNN report presented an American female convert to Islam
who claims that the "rules of engagement" in the Koran do not
permit aggression, nor to they permit denial of women their rights.
Obsession:
Radical Islam’s War Against the West (2006, G-Machine / Clarion,
dir. Wayne Kopping, 60 min), compares radical Islam
to Nazism, and claims there are historical connections. Blogger
entry.
Not
Without My Daughter (1991, MGM/Pathe, dir. Brian Gilbert, book by Betty Mahmoody and William Hoffer,
116 min, PG-13) is the true story of Betty Mahmoody
(Sally Field), raised in Michigan, who marries an Iranian physician Moody
(Alfred Molina) when they are living around Alpeena,
MI. He loses his job and decides to take his family back to post-Khomenei-revolution Shiite Iran (in 1984, several years
after the Cater-years hostage crisis). Once there, he confronts her with the
fact that he wants to convert his entire family to strict Islam. From the
Swiss embassy, she finds out that she has no legal rights. The patriarchal
culture of Islam is shown, with the psychological dimension that men get
their sense of worthiness from their domain over family and women, and that
life is a communal affair in which the individual is suppressed for the sense
of religious well-being of the group. This idea is by no means limited to
Islam, of course. One person’s claim for freedom becomes someone else’s
diminution, and life is a zero-sum game of collective destiny One line expresses the idea that the
Iranian people feel pride in being descendants of original followers of
Allah. (The Shiite issue complicates things.) She finds that even if she can
break away from her husband, he will keep her daughter. For a while, she
plays along with him, and seems to get more “freedom.” Eventually, she
arranges an escape with her daughter to Turkey. This film has been objected to my moderate
Muslims (as with Yahiya Emerick’s “Idiot’s Guide to
Understanding Islam”) as biased and overstating the oppression of women. Though from a major studio, this movie has
the style of a “Lifetime” cable movie.
Ever Again
(2006, Moriah/Simon
Wiesenthal Center, dir. Richard Trank, 72 min, UK, sug PG-13) presents modern anti-Semitism and anti-Israel
sentiment in Europe, with a focus on radical
Islam, but also neo-Nazism. Kevin Costner narrates, and Alan Dershowitz is often interviewed. The film opens with
shots of Auschwitz, and a take-off on “Tanzen macht frei” (Dance makes free) and an imaginary disco party in
the Birkenwald buildings. The title of the film, of
course, comes from “Never Again” and the Holocaust Memorial
Museum was involved in
production. Nevertheless, the main focus of the film is the agitation caused
by radical imams and mosques in Britain, France, and
the Netherlands,
particularly in suburban areas around Paris
where many Muslims live. The film questions freedom of speech, whether in
satellite broadcasts or on radical websites, as, given the emotionality of
the target population, the material tends to inflame unstable young men into
violence and sometimes into suicide bombings. The Madrid train attacks in 2004 and London subway attacks
in 2005 are revisited, as is the collapse of the WTC towers on 9/11 (2001) in
the U.S.
The shame and humiliation of the Muslims youths is discounted as a motive for
the violence, and the radical religious ideology is offered as an explanation
instead. Neo-Nazism is more active in Germany than most of us thought
(given Germany’s
anti-Nazi laws); it might be a good time to make a film about the same
movement in the U,S. (with McVeight
and Rudolph). It was a surprise to me (after 9/11) how critical a force
religion could become (in view of the ideas I had looked at in my own DADT
book, where I saw fascism, communism and extreme nationalism as threats), yet
I can see my own kind of pseudo-religious fervor even in my own mind at
times.
The Stoning of Soraya
M. (2009, Roadside Attractions, dir. Cyrus Nowrasteh,
117 min, R) A French journalist Freidoune Sahebjam (James Caviezel) gets
the scoop on a framing and stoning of a woman in rural Iran, in a film that
examines Islamist patriarchal values. Blogger.
In the stoning scene, one of the most horrificly
violent scenes ever, she is changed to a mass of pulp while still alive.
Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims
Really Think (2010, Unity Productions, dir. Robert Gardner, 58 min)
presents a Gallup poll showing much more moderate attitudes in Islam. Blogger.
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