New anti-Islam film and new report on “Islamophobes”
Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the weeks leading up to national elections have become fraught for American Muslims.
2008 is no different.
In 2006, a movie called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against The West” made the rounds and made American Muslims nervous. “Obsession” was recently distributed to an estimated 28 million people via 70 American newspapers, primarily in states crucial to next month’s presidential election.
In 2006, we reported that “Obsession”,
…was made by Honest Reporting, “a grass - roots movement dedicated to ensuring that Israel receives fair media coverage,” according to its website. Honest Reporting is an arm of Aish HaTorah, an orthodox Jewish education network based in Jerusalem.
Now, the same company is screening its new movie, “The Third Jihad,” in Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Texas and Utah. According to its website, the movie includes interviews with:
Rudy Giuliani, Clinton CIA Director Jim Woolsey, NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, Senator Joe Lieberman, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and former terrorist group member Tawfik Hamid.
It looks, from the trailer, like “The Third Jihad” will say that terrorists have infiltrated the United States with the intent of “eliminating western civilization from within.” No answer back from the e-mail address provided on the website as to whether there will be a screening in St. Louis.
Meanwhile, a liberal media watchdog group called Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting released a report Tuesday called “Smearcasting: How Islamophobes spread fear, bigotry and misinformation.” The report is essentially just a collection of comments by conservative Internet commentators, cable news and radio talk-show hosts like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage.
“They are here on our shores, pretending to be loyal Americans, and they are plotting to take over our country,” goes one example from web commentator Debbie Schlussel. “With the help of plenty of complicit Muslim-Americans, working for the government and government contractors.”
Tim Townsend has been the religion reporter at the Post-Dispatch since June 2004. He previously covered personal finance and consumer news for The Wall Street Journal. He holds master's degrees from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Divinity School. In 2005 he won the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year Award, given by the Religion Newswriters Association. 
It’s too bad that things like this continue to happen. It’s even worse when it appears that major religious groups might be backing the effort.
I wonder, when will major religious leaders start standing up and branding this kind of thing as fundamentally wrong? This shouldn’t be a political issue, where the opinions are based on one’s political view. Spreading negative propaganda against ANY religious group should offend all of us.
Remember this famous quote? “When they came for the Jews, I said nothing….”
For today, could we say, “When they came for the Moslems, I said nothing….”?
hs,
*disclaimer - haven’t seen the film
Yes, but only if what is called propoganda truly is propoganda.
What if they’re right and we found ourselves saying “When the Moslems came for us, we said nothing…”
My point is not that they’re right. My point is that they may not be wrong. You don’t have to look too deep into Islam to see Islamic people using direct rhetoric about breeding themselves into control of western societies. Again, not that these guys are right or even fair, but this is not paranoia out of a vacuum. There has been plenty of reason to believe that a large part of Islam believes that they have a destiny of world conquest to fulfill (not that the sentiment is necessarily that of American Muslims.)
I’ll go back to what I said last time we talked about this. Muslims are there own worst enemies on this. If they want to clear their names, then they should do so. They should unite in a loud clear voice denouncing the extremists. They do not. Instead we hear them trying to make it illegal in the world to say a negative word about them - with the UN’s help they’ll probably get it.
The folks making these films are no different than Michael Moore. They create “documentaries” full of carefully chosen footage and interview clips to create their version of the story.
As Mike said, not everything in these flicks (Moore’s or Fairness & Accuracy or Honest Reporting) is false. There are some truths to these things, albeit often greatly skewed and distorted.
I guess I fall somewhere in between hs and Mike. While I appreciate the real danger that radical Muslims present to the world, I also know that most Islamics are peace-loving and have nothing to do with that fringe of their religion. It would help if Islam stood up more to the whackos, but when you are afraid of getting bombed it makes it harder to do the right thing.
Telling the truth, as objectively as possible, serves the most people the best. Telling all the truth too, including the radical aspects of Islam, will help keep it real.
Yeah, the Michael Moore tactics are generally disgraceful.
My real point is that the “PC let’s all get along” people would want us to think that radical islam is a very small fringe of the whole. I’m just not so sure how true that is. My inclination is that what we would like to consider normal Islam may be generally considered the liberal minority. I always go back to the public opinions taken around the middle east after 9/11. You wouldn’t say the majority was anti-terrorism.