Post-Dispatch refuses to distribute DVD offensive to American Muslims
Despite the perilous state of American newspapers, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch advertising department took an ethical stand and refused to distribute the DVD of a film that for two years has troubled American Muslims.
The film, called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” was distributed to an estimated 28 million people via 70 American newspapers, primarily in states crucial to the coming presidential election. The only other newspaper reported to have refused the DVD was the News & Record in Greensboro, NC.
The Miami Herald reported that its own decision to distribute the DVD angered the Muslim community there:
We feel that it’s going to incite more hate and bigotry against our community,” said Altaf Ali, Florida chapter director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The DVD does not do enough to differentiate between terrorists and mainstream Muslims, he said.
The Herald’s description of the DVD says it includes…
…montages of terrorist training camps and suicide bombers paired with narration by commentators such as Daniel Pipes, founder of the conservative Middle East Forum think tank. Many of the film’s pundits are known for controversial views on Islam. In one part of the DVD, clips of Muslim children being recruited as suicide bombers are interspersed with images of Nazis.
Jen Wood, the Post-Dispatch’s vice president of advertising, said her department received the request to include the DVD as an insert at the beginning of the summer. She said the advertiser provided the newspaper only with a trailer, and refused when Wood asked to see a copy of the entire film - something she described as “not an unusual request.”"I didn’t have enough information to make a decision, so I said ‘no thank you,’” said Wood. “It wasn’t clear what exact message they were trying to send.”
The Herald reported that the nonprofit Clarion Fund, which promotes “national security through education,” sent the DVD to 28 million households, “many in election swing states such as Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.”
In Florida, the DVD was distributed in the Herald, the Orlando Sentinel, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the St. Petersburg Times, the Florida Times-Union of Jacksonville and the News-Press of Fort Myers.
In October 2006 (another election year) I wrote a story about how besieged the St. Louis Muslim community was feeling- the worst, many told me, since just after Sept. 11, 2001. A St. Louis screening of the “Obesession” movie featured in that story:
At the end of August, a thousand people — about half of them Jewish and half Christian, according to organizers — attended a screening of the movie “Obsession: What the War on Terror is Really About” at the Frontenac Hilton Hotel. The group’s sponsors promoted the movie with a provocative billboard featuring a dark-skinned man whose head was wrapped in a kuffiyeh and the words, “Confessions of a Terrorist.”
The terrorist in question was Walid Shoebat, who said he was a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Shoebat appeared in the hourlong movie and then spoke to the audience.
Muslims who were there said they were horrified by what they believed was the movie’s inference that Islam, terrorism and Nazism were one and the same, despite a disclaimer that ran at the beginning and end of the movie that said “most Muslims are peaceful and do not support terror.”
Far more upsetting, they said, was the reaction of the audience.
Writing in “The American Muslim” two weeks after the screening, [Sheila] Musaji said those Muslims who attended were “still experiencing physical and emotional distress primarily due to the positive reaction of the audience — including applause and standing ovations — and to some of the hateful comments we overheard from individuals sitting around us.”
Fatemeh Keshavarz, head of Washington University’s department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages, who was at the screening, said: “This was hate speech, pure and simple. … being in that room, I felt threatened.”
The movie 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.
Richard Senturia, executive director of Citizens for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Middle East, which co-sponsored the screening, said that the Muslims who attended “saw what they saw and heard what they heard. I’m not going to deny their feelings.”
Karen J. Aroesty, the Anti-Defamation League’s regional director for Missouri and Southern Illinois, was also in the “Obsession” audience and said she was disturbed by what she saw in the crowd’s reaction. She is now working with Muslims on an effort to re-screen “Obsession,” but this time to also provide a forum for people to discuss their feelings about the movie.
“Frankly, things are getting out of hand,” Aroesty said about the sequence of events that have frightened many St. Louis Muslims. “All these things happen, and they converge in different ways in a community like St. Louis.”
Wood said her department needs to have a full understanding of what is being advertised in the newspaper, otherwise, it “reserves the right” to decline an ad. “I exercised my right not to accept [the DVD],” she said.
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. 
Let me ask you guys a question. Was it really necessary to include pictures of the Nazis in this “documentary”?
There are a persistent group of rapid anti-Islam posting. Propaganda is one thing, but for a people to start believing their own propaganda is another. That ultimately leads to misallocation of resources and disasterous policies. We can try to stomp out Islam and convert/kill all muslims who think might be radical. But it won’t work as it is not the underlying problem. The problems of terrorism are almost entirely POLITICAL and ignoring that fact will lead to complete failure and more terror.
“The problems of terrorism are almost entirely POLITICAL and ignoring that fact will lead to complete failure and more terror.”
Here’s the alternative, to which many posters subscribe: The problems of terrorism are almost entirely THEOLOGICAL (and political, in the sense that Islam is basically a political system). We are in danger of accepting a developing sedition. I do not wish to over-emphasize terror; I wish to live in a country that protects itself domestically.
My guess is that the following text (not yet published) will horrify the well-meaning, astute reader:
http://www.amazon.com/Stealth-Jihad-Radical-Subverting-America/dp/1596985569/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222386149&sr=1-1
Free of speech is a great right that any free society can have.
But what this DVD has to do with free of speech when it brought
hate and violence against a community living in that society!
We have already in South Florida a home of a Muslim have been stoned!
I assure you that this Muslim leader have promoted projects between
Muslims and non-Muslims.
The result of the newspapers who promoted the Obsession DVD!
Is it healthy in the name of free of speech to start to create DVDs
against Jews, against Christians, against Black, against Muslims by
mentioning a part of these groups are radicals! That means be a ware
of the whole population because we did not identify the part and we did
not identified the meaning of radicalism!
Yes we all support the free of speech but we should stand against any
plan or a plot made to create hate between communities living in the
same society. We should instead bring projects to build a healthier
Society to develop a stronger nation against all harms may comes
to our country America.
I stand with a great respect for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
They did the right thing to prevent harms to the
Muslim community in general.
Br. Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout
American Muslim Association of North America
http://www.al-amana.org
FreeSpeech,
Sorry, but I think a film of this nature simply ceases upon stereotypes to spread a message of hate. I just won’t buy into that, but I do respect your right to do so.
Dear Mr Tom Townsend,
I am a Muslim living in the Middle East. I read about the Obsession DVD and I would like to thank you for not distributing it. I am not against free speech, I have no problem people discussing or debating Islam, what I am against is hate speech and this DVD was simply hate speech.
Thank you for your decision.
Tareq
A heartfelt Thanks to Post-Dispatch and New & Records for taking their stands against these politically-directed activities.
These terrorists are complete fanatics, extremists and a part of world polity rather than some ideologies. Fuck them and their irrational ideologies. It’s all creating a mental block among educated Muslims and hampering their development.
If you go by the fact, Islam is the second largest religion in the world. Do you know why? No, not because of these Extremist’s nonsense ideologies but because Islam preached peace. Islam preached brotherhood. Islam told peoples to be at peace and let others be at peace.
Jihad and all that, what these terrorists call as their ideologies are simply not true. A Muslim youth quote these terrorists as, “They are not Jehadis but Fasadis (Arabic term for Rampagers)”.
Jihad is a way to make Islam alive among Muslims and it’s a way to peace, preached by Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). Nor Islam neither Prophet Mohammad ever preached hatred against followers of other religions and yet he’s misrepresented. He never asked anyone or malign any God’s religion to convert into Islam.
I have seen this movie too, the Palestinian woman was saying that Arabs want to feel they are always right and everyone else false. She forgot to mention that Arab is NOT = Muslim. Most Arabs are indeed Muslim, some Chrisitian and some Jew.
The problem facing the Middle East in Particular and the world in general has to do with one word: ISRAEL.
The best source of how it all came about can be found at none other than the Truman Online library. It is a compelling read, it is a must read. American Jews threatened Truman and they offered him bribes in exchange for Palestine. But Palestine did not belong to America but Palestinians, all Palestinians: Muslim, Christian and Jew. European Ashkenazi Jews and the European people made the Arab people to pay a heavy price by sending off Europe Jewry to Palestine. Herzl mentions in his diary that the Europeans were willing to pay a PREMIUM to get rid of their Jews. But the question that begs to be asked is: What have the Palestinians got to do with it?
Please search for EDWIN M WRIGHT INTERVIEW archived at the Truman Online Library.
It is interesting how, the collective spirit of the comments on this post kind of follow the same one of the reactions of the poeple in the screening. I am ok with that though, I’d rather have poeple express their true feelings than hide behind a false sense of political correctness. Muslims do not deserve to live in this world because ALL OF THEM are trying to hurt us, maybe we could gather all of them and isolate them in their own living area so that they do not harm us….or if they fight back, let’s nuke them all. This is a sarcastic post by the way….
Please note that the Dispatch stance on this issue is being recognized in other communities where discussion of this issue is going forward:
http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=213331