New DVD Whitewashes Islamism
by Sid Shahid
Pajamas
Media
July 5, 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2401/new-dvd-whitewashes-islamism
Last year, Islamist anger over the
mass
distribution of the DVD Obsession: Radical Islam's War
Against the West was quite predictable. As is their modus
operandi, the Islamist cry focused on victimology and attacking the
messenger, while avoiding any real debate over the message of the DVD
itself.
North Carolina proved to be
particularly fertile ground for the validation of Islamist woes. One
newspaper, the Greensboro News
and Record, flatly refused to distribute the DVD, while another,
the News
and Observer, "allowed" the paid distribution of free speech but
enclosed an editorial board op-ed, which served as an insert warning to
readers.
But that wasn't enough for
Islamists. Some are now fighting back with their own DVD, entitled The Fog Is Lifting (Part
1): Islam in Brief, produced by an Egyptian nonprofit group, the
Bridges Foundation. Some
20,000 copies of the DVD were
distributed to three zip codes within Wake County, North Carolina.
Bundled in an issue of the News and Observer, the DVD aims to
"repair the image of Islam" and is allegedly designed to counteract the
Obsession DVD distributed in the same paper in September of last
year. While marketed to "explain" Islamic precepts and theology, it does
so from only a single point of view. Islamist apologist Omid Safi,
a professor of religion at UNC-Chapel Hill, described the DVD as
follows:
It's a full-throated defense of
the tradition in which Islam is presented as the perfect egalitarian,
scientific, pluralistic, modern religion that doesn't have the flaws of
all the other religions. … It remains to be seen if it will be seen as
preaching to the choir, or if it will succeed in persuading people
outside the Muslim community.
Apparently, Professor Safi believes
that a video proselytizing to the general public, which proclaims Islam
not to "have the flaws of all the other religions" and declares scientific
doctrines like evolutionism wrong, is somehow preaching to the choir and
constitutes an appropriate American message. He ignores the fact that
there is a diversity of theological interpretations in Islam, including
the varying schools of thought within Sunnism and varying sects within
Islam, including Alevism, Sufism, and Shiism. Safi would have been more
accurate if he had stated that the DVD portrays Islam as interpreted by
the political Salafi movement. He then would have also had to concede that
some Muslims would find such evangelism wrongheaded and a
misrepresentation of the diversity of thought amongst Muslims here in the
U.S. It is precisely this type of Islamist supremacism that prevents real
reform today against radical Islam and marginalizes any Muslim thought
that does not toe the line of political Islam or the Salafist
movement.
Moreover, it is counterproductive
for Muslim groups like the Bridges Foundation and so-called thought
leaders like Professor Safi to support a proselytizing video of Salafist
ideology in today's post-9/11 climate, where moderate Muslims and
non-Muslims battle against the root of Islamist terror, the ideology of
political Islam. Even Khalilah
Sabra with the Islamists
at the Muslim American Society thought it obvious that the DVD "doesn't
address the real concerns people have about Islam." It leaves out any
discussion whatsoever of political Islam (Islamism), terrorism, and the
root cause of both: militant
Islamism (radicalized political Islam).
What seems to be missing in the
debate is a candid effort to
separate spiritual Islam from political Islam, which was at the heart of
the DVD Obsession. The spirituality within Islam demands that
Muslims assume the responsibility of tackling the root cause of terror
which is perpetrated in Islam's name. Any effort that fails to recognize
and address the slippery slope that political Islam presents misses the
mark and calls into question its intentions.
Consider the Bridges Foundation
itself. Founded in Egypt, the birthplace of the Muslim
Brotherhood and political Islam as envisioned by its founders, Sayyid
Qutb and Hassan
al-Banna, should the Bridges Foundation not be speaking out against
the grand
design of the Brotherhood?
This isn't likely when one considers
its director, Fadel
Soliman, who is also the main narrator in the DVD. Soliman is a former
national chaplain of a Saudi-based charity named the World
Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) in Northern Virginia. According to the
Washington Post, in May 2004, WAMY was shut
down in a raid by the FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, and the Joint Terrorism Task Force in connection with a
terrorism investigation. In addition, the U.S. branch of WAMY was founded
in 1992 by Osama bin Laden's nephew, Abdullah bin Laden, whose connections
with WAMY were suspect.
The Post notes, "An affidavit
signed by Customs Senior Special Agent David Kane contends that a WAMY
publication lists people who have attacked Israelis, including a man who
killed 14 people by driving a bus off a cliff, as 'heroes from
Palestine.'" Moreover, the same affidavit states that the document also
claims that "Jews are humanity's enemies: they foment immorality in the
world."
Given this background, the
distribution of the DVD now takes on a whole different meaning. Despite
its somewhat innocuous message to "educate and inform," the sources of the
DVD, and more importantly producers' intentions, cannot be wholly
discounted.
All of a sudden, one realizes that
the fog has not lifted. In fact, it has gotten much thicker. The media did
not do a thorough investigation into the ideology behind the DVD and its
distributors with even a portion of the fervor it demonstrated with the
fall release of the Obsession DVD. I guess the media is in the fog
as well.
Originally published at: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-fog-is-not-lifting-new-dvd-whitewashes-islamism/
Sid Shahid is the director of
research and publications for the American Islamic Forum for
Democracy (AIFD). He can be reached at sid@aifdemocracy.org.
Related Topics: Muslims in the United
States, Radical
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