National Council of Churches, Interfaith Relations Commission Speaks out against the Obsession DVD.

In recent weeks many Americans have found in their mailboxes and morning papers a DVD called ‘Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.’ As the Interfaith Relations Commission of the National Council of Churches, we are alarmed by the massive distribution of some 28 million copies of this DVD through paid advertisement by the Clarion Fund in more than seventy newspapers. While this film purports to educate and offers, at the outset, a disclaimer that it is not about the majority of peaceful Muslims, we see its content as serving only the aims of distorting truth and misleading viewers, fanning the sparks of mistrust, bigotry, and hatred that undermine the very foundations of a multi-religious democracy.

The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., bringing together thirty-five national Protestant and Orthodox churches, is concerned not only with relations among Christian churches, but also with our relations with neighbors of other faiths. Toward that end, we participate in a national dialogue between Christians and Muslims. We believe that deep relationship as neighbors calls us to common moral engagement and leadership in a world plagued by violence, poverty, atrocities, and environmental degradation.

We are deeply troubled by the apparent intent of a film that presents a barrage of violent images, pieced together with the voices of commentators who move from speaking of ‘radical Islam’ to impugning Islam and Muslims more generally and presenting fear-mongering parallels between today’s extremist terrorists and the Nazis. The National Council of Churches and its member churches consistently and adamantly denounce anti-Semitism in all its forms and condemn all forms of ethnic, racial, and religious hatred, including the Islamophobia typified in this film.

The stated aim of this film is to alert and educate the public about the dangers of terrorism perpetrated in the name of Islam. We recognize that in all our traditions, extremists and radicals have forged the weaponry of violence. The National Council of Churches condemns extremism, terrorism, and religiously motivated violence, as do our Muslim dialogue partners here in the United States and globally. We stand firmly against terrorism in all its manifestations. However, the content of this film has no useful analysis of terrorism beyond a shallow, monolithic, clash-of-civilizations theme that suggests that the only two responses to ‘radical Islam’ are war or appeasement. Such a false choice serves only to incite the fear of Islam and aggression against Muslims.

As an alternative to the message of this DVD, we lift up the current and unprecedented worldwide exchange between Christians and Muslims. The Muslim initiative, ‘A Common Word Between Us and You,’ has gained wide response from the churches and has generated an ongoing process of dialogue. Building constructively on the foundations that unite us in fractured world provides a far more hopeful way ahead for Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike.

In the National Council of Churches, we stand with our Muslim colleagues and fellow citizens who have experienced the de-humanizing effects of stereotyping and bigotry. As Christians, we are mandated to uphold the values of the Gospel. As Americans, we stand with all who are determined to create just and fair democracy.

It’s Our Choice: Standing up to Extremisms of all Shades

Reprinted with the kind permission of the author as part of a new feature here at The Agonist sponsored by FSB Associates which will run on Mondays: The FSB Book Club. Full disclosure: absolutely no money is changing hands here. FSB has generously agreed, at my request, to provide us with book excerpts and from time to time interactions and chats with the authors themselves.

by Sumbul Ali-Karamali
In Ohio, early voting began yesterday. In a seemingly unrelated event, four days ago in Ohio two men sprayed a noxious chemical into the babysitting room at a mosque in Dayton, causing babies and children to suffer burning eyes and throats, and forcing panicked evacuation of the mosque. Two apparently disparate events, perhaps, but they’re unexpectedly connected.
The incident at the mosque occurred at the end of the same week that an anti-Muslim propaganda dvd was distributed by mail in Ohio. Twenty-eight million copies of this same dvd had previously distributed as a paid advertisement in major newspapers in swing states, of which Ohio is one.
Called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War on the West,” this film has been described as perpetuating anti-Muslim hate speech, characterizing Muslims as followers of a violent religion, and equating Muslims with Nazis (though Muslims are a faith group and Nazis were members of a European state with a standing military). The movie features Islamophobic pundits speaking on behalf of all Muslims.
Several organizations, including the “Hate Hurts America” coalition (www.obsessionwithhate.com) – a nonpartisan diverse community coalition that brings together Americans of various faiths, races and backgrounds in a unified stance against intolerance – have already thoroughly debunked much of what the dvd claims as truth. In fact, Dr. Khaleel Mohammed, the only Islamic Studies professor featured in the film, issued a statement communicating distress “that [the filmmakers’] alarmist drivel should be mixed with [his] whittled down interview” and that it “proves that the intent of the film is not to educate, but to mislead.”
At least two lawsuits have been filed because a nonprofit, which the distributor of the film purportedly is, cannot participate in political activities. Although the filmmakers claim that they simply wish to inform both parties about the “threat of radical Islam,” the film, three years old now, was distributed in battleground states just weeks before the upcoming election. Moreover, one of the talking heads in the film has insisted elsewhere that Obama, whatever he says, is still a “political Muslim” (whatever that is). And the Republicans are clearly reputed to be the party “tough on terror,” with McCain repeatedly using the threat of “Islamofascism” (whatever that is) to garner support for his campaign.
But here’s the obvious point that so many are missing: the so-called “war” this film talks about and allegedly inevitable “clash of civilizations” isn’t about incompatibility between Muslims and the Jewish-Christian world. Or even between Islam and the West. It’s a war of ideology between the dogmatic, rigid, exclusivist people on both sides.
A friend of mine recently mentioned in an email that he’s come to realize that the world is divided into two religious groups. “Nope,” he wrote, “it’s not Jewish-Christian and Muslim. It’s thoughtful and dogmatic.” And it’s the dogmatic fear-mongers in this film, the very parallels of the dogmatic fear-mongers in the Islamic world, which are precipating a war here.
The message of the Obsession dvd is to convince Americans that Muslims are on a violent mission to further their goal of global domination. In other words, they say that Muslims despise the West and are out to convert or destroy it. The filmmakers are recruiting Americans to their side with this argument and attempting to affect the election to stop this claimed calamity.
Well, guess what? Muslim extremist groups do exactly the same thing.
Al-Qaeda and similar groups of Muslim extremists busily translate American anti-Islam hate literature into Arabic so that they can convince Muslim populations that the West abominates Islam and means to crush it. They had the Crusades as proof, after all, and now they have Iraq and Afghanistan, as well. Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations mindset simply plays into their hands and proves their own correctness: the West despises Islam and means to destroy it.
So the real war is between hate-mongering, fear-mongering extremists on both sides who recruit followers to perpetuate an eternal war against “the other side.”
Airing bin Laden’s videos and declaring him an enemy legitimizes him and perpetuates hate speech. Would we interview prominent members of the Ku Klux Klan on national television? Would we distribute a KKK dvd on racist philosophy? No, because it would be tantamount to hate speech. Distributing the Obsession dvd is the same thing; it’s distributing hate speech.
And, as the children at the Dayton, Ohio mosque can attest, perhaps it’s already resulted in at least one hate crime committed by Americans.
Thank goodness, though, that at least one newspaper in this country understands that freedom of speech comes with the responsibility to use it wisely. The Greensboro News and Record in North Carolina refused to distribute the Obsession dvd and declined the money that came with it. The publisher stated that the dvd was divisive and it played on people’s fears. Editor John Robinson said that “just because you can publish doesn’t mean you should.”
Today is Eid ul-Fitr, the Festival of the Fast-Breaking, the holiday that comes immediately after the fasting month of Ramadan. Muslims all over the country, and indeed the world, are celebrating Eid. And despite the dvd, despite all the flourishing hatred the 9/11 attacks unleashed, a wonderful thing happened today: The Empire State Building in New York, the self-same city that suffered those attacks, lit its world-famous tower lights in green today Eid, in the same tradition of its yearly lightings for Christmas and Hanukah.
It’s there, I think with pride in America, my country, it’s that way that peace lies.

©2008 Sumbul Ali-Karamali

Sumbul Ali-Karamali grew up in California frequently answering difficult questions about Islam and its practices posed by friends, colleagues, and neighbors. (”What do you mean you can’t go to the prom because of your religion?”) She holds a B.A. from Stanford University and a J.D from the University of California at Davis and earned a graduate degree in Islamic law from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. She has served as a teaching assistant in Islamic Law at SOAS and a research associate at the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law in London. Her book, The Muslim Next Door, is available from White Cloud Press. www.muslimnextdoor.com

Video Response to Obsession from MAS Charlotte