AS we waited for the theatre to darken for Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, my friend and I talked about the current "war on terror." The discussion led to parallels in my lifetime between how the West sees the terrorist threat, and how a few decades ago we viewed the Communist threat.
Terrorism, I remarked, like godless communism is a perfect enemy. It is amorphous, it can never be completely eradicated, it is out there and it is here within our midst. And empires and civilizations need enemies -- preferably ones that can never be completely eliminated, and are always poised to return and threaten anew.
The film began, and after the repeated opening scenes of bewildered and panic-stricken New Yorkers and twin towers burning and crashing, the screen began to draw a map of the world. The world map filled with a proliferation of Xs marking bombings or terrorist attacks, the ink filling the world, just like the flowing patches of red that marked the relentless advance of Communism in the "documentary" films of my youth. The relevance of our conversation a few minutes earlier was stunning. Is there nothing new under the sun?
Obsession opens with explicit statements that it is not describing Islam or Muslims in general. Captions flash on the screen stating that it is only a minority of Muslims who hold to radical views, and that their actions are an affront to most Muslims.
I found Obsession's focus on the deliberate cultivation of hatred to be the production's strongest point. Too often terrorism with an Islamic flavour is portrayed as religious fervour, rather than as the systematic construction of an ideology of dehumanizing and demonizing hate, akin to what the world has seen elsewhere in the white supremacist groups.
But Obsession is at its essence a predictable product of the propaganda genre. Proclaim objectivity about the subject. Frame it at the beginning and end with Edmund Burke's famous quotation about how all that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph in the world is for good people to do nothing.
Show the interviewees who hold favourable opinions through flattering camera angles and clear focus, their faces carefully made up and lit with studio lighting. These are obviously intelligent, rational, knowledgeable people. Show all who hold enemy views in grainy, jumpy newsreels or home-video style that makes "them" look as unattractive as possible, distorted, even less than human.
At some point the predictability of the medium becomes comical, as a succession of grainy, robed Islamic firebrands fill the screen, yelling and gesturing wildly, followed by grainy footage of Michael Moore proclaiming that there is no terrorist threat. (Really, who needs cheap cinematic tricks to make Michael Moore look ridiculous? He manages to do that well enough on his own.)
Pick a point of view and repeat it over and over. Ignore contradictory evidence or viewpoints. Add enough scenes of blood and carnage for a Hollywood thriller. Draw repeated comparisons to Hitler and his Nazi designs for world domination -- complete with a map of the Nazis spilling across Europe like black ink.
The radical Muslims are at war with the Jews and the Christians. Don't be fooled like Neville Chamberlain holding aloft the deal-with-the devil paper bearing both his signature and that of Hitler, proclaiming "peace in our time."
The painful became the absurd toward the end of the "documentary" when the focus is on Jews as targets of radical Islam. The propaganda-laden Obsession shows how Arab news and entertainment media broadcast images that portray Jews as sub-human or evil. True, but the irony was laughable, except that no one was laughing in the Imax.
The only time Obsession went off track with its message that radical Muslims are out to get Christians and Jews was in some of the repeated links to Nazism. The narrator was making a point about Muslim collaboration with the Nazis in the Balkans during the Second World War. My friend leaned over and whispered that it was the Christian SS that the Muslims were siding with.
I have to admit that as a Christian I have not realized that radical Islam is out to get me or my religion. I have always understood that it is the secular nature of the West, replete with its atheism, sexual debauchery, and hedonism that is far more objectionable than the Judeo-Christian contributions to this modern culture.
As a Christian, I am painfully aware that my religion has been as bloody as any in history. My preachers have repeatedly proclaimed that theirs is the only true religion, and that all others will eventually be defeated by their God.
Is Obsession propaganda? Most certainly. Is it offensive? I almost gagged (Why did I pay $18 to see a propaganda film -- whose pockets am I lining?). Is it hate propaganda? Probably not in my lay opinion, although the voiceover of Franklin D. Roosevelt extolling the "Nazi shape of things to come" while the camera rests on that face of an Arabic preschool boy holding a gun probably crosses the line, and certainly curdled my stomach.
But the real whammy was yet to come. Nonie Darwish, who spoke to the crowd after the screening, said "America needs to see more films like that."
Darwish is an intriguing individual whom I would like to know and understand better. She was born a Palestinian Muslim. The man who was her favourite bodyguard died during Israeli interrogation and her father was executed by Israeli security forces when she was eight years old. Today she is a self-proclaimed Zionist.
She went on to describe how in the world today "it's the same hate speech, propaganda, and us against them." In a telling manner, she observed, "Before they make you hate someone, they scare you."
She proceeded to do it. Whereas Obsession at least held the pretence of not stereotyping whole groups of people, she had no such compunction. As she warmed up, her speech was peppered with sweeping generalities. The Islamic radical are not just fringe groups, she proclaimed. They are the hands of Arab leaders and governments. A Jew can't walk on the street in Islamic societies without being lynched. "The whole Muslim world is persecuting non-Muslims."
Moreover, moderate Muslims around the world have failed to denounce their radical co-religionists, she asserted. By their silence they bear the shame and share the blame.
That was a hate speech.
When she finished it, three-quarters of the Winnipeggers in the Imax theatre rose in a standing ovation.
There is nothing new under the sun, but there is much of the old and familiar in our beloved community that is depressing.
If all that is necessary for the voices of extremists to prevail is for enough moderate Christians, Jews, Muslims, humanists, and unclassified citizens to remain silent, our community will be the weaker.
I expect a strong political message from the Winnipeg Zionist Initiative, one of the sponsors of the movie, but not from a religious group like Aish Winnipeg or a registered charity like the Asper Foundation, both of which also helped sponsor the movie.
There was more than one obsession showing in Winnipeg on Tuesday night, when I saw the film. The evening's rhetorical excesses cannot be written off as a "stimulating educational program." It could have been that, if Obsession had been followed by a thoughtful panel of individuals of differing persuasions describing how watching Obsession affected them, rather than by an engaging diatribe.
Religious and charitable sponsors of the screening cannot hide behind a cloak of modesty that precludes taking a stand. They owe it to the people of Winnipeg to either provide a forum for meaningful conversation on important matters, or to disavow the extremist message of Tuesday night.
Dean Peachey is the academic dean of Menno Simons College.
PREVIOUS
