Should Oregonian have distributed DVD?

The peril of political correctness

By Robert Horenstein

article created on: 2008-12-01T00:00:00

How does one watch a documentary about radical Muslims inciting hatred against Jews and Christians and come away troubled that it’s the film that is inciting hatred—against Muslims? This is the question I asked myself when I received an e-mail a few weeks ago under the subject line “Hate DVD in the Oregonian.”

The e-mail, sent by a retired Presbyterian pastor whose opinion I respect, was in reference to an allegedly controversial film, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against the West.” The pastor urged me to join people of “many faiths” in calling on The Oregonian “to take a moral stand and refuse to circulate this inflammatory DVD,” which the newspaper was planning to do as a paid advertisement that Sunday.

Disregarding these objections, The Oregonian did distribute the DVD. So did numerous other major papers around the country, prompting similar expressions of concern heard by my counterparts in other communities.

In the ensuing days, several letters to the editor of The Oregonian denounced the film, and an op-ed co-authored by a pastor, rabbi and Muslim leader, all from Eugene, expressed “alarm” that the paper had chosen to distribute “hate-mongering propaganda.”

It was at that point that I decided to watch the DVD again—I hadn’t viewed it in nearly two years—and see for myself what could be generating such an outcry. Does this film “educate Americans about issues of national security,” which is what the Clarion Fund, the organization that produced it, describes as its mission? Or does it exploit the horrendous acts and incendiary rhetoric of Muslim extremists to “erect walls of fear and hate” as claimed by critics?

Let’s start with the assertion that “Obsession” depicts Muslims as terrorists and portrays Islam as a threat to our way of life. The film begins with a disclaimer that its subject is not Islam but “radical Islamic terror,” adding that, “It’s important to remember most Muslims are peaceful and don’t support terror.”

Were that the only attempt by the filmmakers to distinguish between radical and mainstream Islam, I would agree that it’s wholly inadequate. But it’s not. In fact, the term “radical” or “militant” Islam is mentioned no fewer than 16 times in this hour-long documentary. And as if that weren’t enough, there’s footage of a press conference after the London bombings in 2005 at which then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared, “We know that these [terrorists] act in the name of Islam, but we also know that the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims here and abroad are decent and law-abiding people who abhor these acts of terrorism every bit as much as we do.”

True, a film about radical Islam will show only Muslims committing acts of violence. But documentaries about the Ku Klux Klan typically show images of violence only where the perpetrators are KKK members. Do you suppose viewers of these films come away believing all southern white men are thugs and bigots? Would watching such a film cause one to develop suspicions about a white male co-worker from Alabama?

Another criticsm of “Obsession” is that its focus on the extremist elements of one religion makes it appear that only that religion has a problem, i.e., every religion has its extremists. I call this half-truth the pomegranate argument: “Apples, oranges, lemons and pomegranates all have seeds—why are we only talking about pomegranate seeds?” Just as there are considerably more seeds in a pomegranate than all of those other fruits combined, it’s indisputable that radicalism and terrorism are a much greater problem within Islam than they are within other religions.

Still, argues a local Muslim leader with whom I’ve partnered on poverty issues, “Obsession” grossly exaggerates the threat posed by radical Islam. He claims that the ideology of hatred toward Israel and the West that exists in Islamic societies is confined to fringe elements.

The film, however, reveals a different story. It exposes a radical ideology that has infiltrated the mainstream culture: Muslim worshippers being exhorted to kill the “infidels,” not by a Hamas cleric, but by the official Palestinian Authority mufti of Jerusalem; anti-Semitic cartoons published, not in Al Qaeda leaflets, but in the government-controlled Arab press; textbooks depicting Christians and Jews as the enemy of Islam used, not in madrassas, but in public schools in so-called moderate Arab countries; a popular TV series based on the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” aired not on Hezbollah’s Al Manar station, but on government-owned Egyptian television during Ramadan.

To be sure, the Jewish community should be building bridges to the American Muslim community. Indeed, Jewish community relations councils all over the country work generally to combat discrimination and xenophobia and to promote pluralism and tolerance.

At the same time, we needn’t be apologists for being vigilant and for confronting evil. Unfortunately, there are those, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who brand as anti-Islamic anyone condemning radical Islam, thereby trying to divert attention away from a grave danger facing the West. But if we ignore that threat for the sake of political correctness, we do so at our own peril.

Robert Horenstein is the staff director of the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland.