Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West

On Friday, September 26, the end of a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West — the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail — were distributed by mail in Ohio, a “chemical irritant” was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service. The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers. This, apparently, is what the scare tactic political campaigning of John McCain’s supporters has led to — Americans perpetrating a terrorist attack against innocent children on American soil.







Reported here the followings:

She told me that the gas was sprayed into the room where the babies and children were being kept while their mothers prayed together their Ramadan prayers. Panicked mothers ran for their babies, crying for their children so they could flee from the gas that was burning their eyes and throats and lungs. She grabbed her youngest in her arms and grabbed the hand of her other daughter, moving with the others to exit the building and the irritating substance there.

“The paramedic said the young one was in shock, and gave her oxygen to help her breathe. The child couldn’t stop sobbing.

“This didn’t happen in some far away place — but right here in Dayton, and to my friends. Many of the Iraqi refugees were praying together at the Mosque Friday evening. People that I know and love.

“I am hurt and angry. I tell her this is NOT America. She tells me this is not Heaven or Hell — there are good and bad people everywhere.

“She tells me that her daughters slept with her last night, the little one in her arms and sobbing throughout the night. She tells me she is afraid, and will never return to the mosque, and I wonder what kind of country is this where people have to fear attending their place of worship?

“The children come into the room, and tell me they want to leave America and return to Syria, where they had fled to from Iraq. They say they like me, … , and other American friends — but they are too afraid and want to leave. Should a 6 and 7 year old even have to contemplate the safety of their living situation?

“Did the anti-Muslim video circulating in the area have something to do with this incident, or is that just a bizarre coincidence? Who attacks women and children?

“What am I supposed to say to them? My words can’t keep them safe from what is nothing less than terrorism, American style. Isn’t losing loved ones, their homes, jobs, possessions and homeland enough? Is there no place where they can be safe?

“She didn’t want me to leave her tonight, but it was after midnight, and I needed to get home and write this to my friends. Tell me — tell me — what am I supposed to say to them?”

Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West is a pseudo-”documentary,” produced in 2006, by the right-wing Clarion Fund. The film openly compares Islam today to Nazism prior to the Second World War, showing images of Nazi rallies intercut with images purportedly of Muslim children being exhorted to be suicide bombers. The film features prominent right-wing Islamophobes like Daniel Pipes and Alan Dershowitz, among others. Last year, arch-conservative David Horowitz screened the film on several college campuses as part of his “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.”

During the last two weeks of September, the Clarion Fund–which has run at least one article supporting John McCain’s presidential bid on its Web site–paid to distribute more than 28 million copies of the DVD through 70 different newspapers in 14 “swing” states, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and, of course, Ohio.

Shamefully, even some so-called “liberal” papers like the New York Times have distributed the DVDs to subscribers, arguing that because they were sent as paid advertisements, the newspaper isn’t responsible for the content.

Except, of course, what’s being “sampled” in this case is misinformed bigotry. Angry subscribers wrote back to denounce the decision. As some commented:

"A box of cereal? Toothpaste? Does a box of cereal or a tube of toothpaste encourage me to look with hatred and suspicion on my law-abiding neighbors who have a different religion than mine? Does cereal and toothpaste lead to pogroms, religious harassment, fear and intimidation? The trailer for this video is about hate, pure and simple, and shows the video has only one goal–to instill fear and hatred of neighbor against neighbor. If I receive this DVD in my paper, that day, after 22 years of receiving the [News and Observer], will be the last day of my subscription."

"This thread is in serious danger of running off the rails into offensive territory. Let's all play nice, shall we?" You guys send out 160,000 DVDs designed to incite fear and hatred against those of the Islamic faith, but when I make a mildly humorous reference to Pentecostals we're getting into "offensive territory"?

"I object in the strongest terms to this invasion of my privacy. This DVD is meant to inflame fear and hatred that allows people to believe they are justified in doing things that are against the very principles on which this country was founded. The disclaimer that it about "radical" Islam is ridiculous. How educated in Islam do you think most readers of your paper are? All I could think of was the films the Nazi's used to enflame non Jewish citizens against their Jewish fellows. Images are a powerful effective way to control minds and lead them directions that they might never image they would go. What is this film really meant to do? It claims to be educative. That is a joke. Fear is not a basis for determining how we as a nation should act. If it becomes so, then those who have come to hate us will have won our very souls. When called on, the people of this country always have had the courage to adhere to the very basis of a democratic life. Fear mongering is the most unpatriotic of acts and insults the intelligence of all of us. I am profoundly saddened by this and fearful but not of Islam."

"Newspapers are supposed to hire journalists. Journalists are supposed to investigate and then report the facts. So why is the N&O sending out propaganda as in this dvd without fully investigating the source and a full divulgation of the findings? (I tried, as it seems a whole bunch of others did...with no luck...even after stiff neck and bulging eyeballs from the effort from searching). I have an idea. Why don't we all cut up this outrageous inflamer of hatred and bias and leave the consequent package of detritous on the doorstep of the N&O to dispose of? PS: The comparison of toothpaste, cereal and other product samples is ridiculous, Mr. McClure. I have never heard of toothpaste inciting violent emotion in people."

"I don't know what motivated this decision, if it was political or merely financial, or "a herring" to spur philosophical debates about "Freedom of the Press," the credibility of your next response is already in question, and frankly, I don't care, you have quite simply breeched our contract. I pay you to deliver a newspaper to my home, nothing else. I look over the advertisements as a courtesy to you and to your paid advertisers. If you want to end your subscription service because of fuel costs to your drivers that's your option, but this is the poorest customer relation maneuver to bring that about I can think of. If you don't want to service us with a "free press" on a paid subscription basis just say so. Tell us straight and to the point, "What is it you now want and expect us to do?"

Clarion Fund spokesman Gregory Ross has denied that the DVD is design to influence the election, telling the Los Angeles Times that it is simply “a reminder that a 9/11 could happen again, and we need to remember the past.”

But Ibrahim Hooper, president of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told the LA Times there were some reports that DVD recipients in Ohio also received automated phone calls referencing the film, saying, “We hope you take it into consideration when you go into the voting booth.”

A multi-faith coalition called “Hate Hurts America” has launched a Web site to counter allegations made in the DVD. CAIR is also asking the Federal Election Commission to investigate Clarion for possible violations of campaign finance law.

There are a few things the film says:

Firstly, it sets up the story by saying that most Muslims are not extremists, and this film is about them. This acts as a useful caveat that allows the filmmakers to go on and present the Islamic world as packed to capacity with crazies. It’s undeniably there, so they can’t be accused of portraying Muslims as a whole in a bad light.

Secondly, early on in the film, is the argument that there is a co-ordinated effort in over 50 countries in the world in the name of jihad. In fact, I’m not exactly sure that’s what the filmmakers say exactly. Not exactly. But with this film you have to read between the lines, at the heavy, double-underline in red ink. And they very clearly imply that jihad is a global problem. That the same people, essentially, are behind the whole thing. And that’s why it’s such a giant threat.

Thirdly, it says quite adamantly that people in the west who cut the jihadists any slack — by trying to reason with them; by trying to negotiate; by blaming themselves for having an arrogant foreign policy — miss the point. The jihadists don’t care a damn. They only care about destroying the western way of life.

So let’s look at two specific claims in this film, and ask ourselves if they are to be taken seriously.

1. There is a global, co-ordinated Islamic fundmantalist threat: is this true? Yes, there are many countries that may be called “Muslim states” from Algeria to Indonesia; from Pakistan to Iran. And, thanks to the removal of secular Mr Hussein, probably Iraq soon enough. And unsurprisingly, many of them have similar ideologies.

That said, is it a fact that Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan and Dubai are all teamed up in a plot to destroy America and Israel? The Saudis who have massive investments in the US economy, and are apparently so buddy-buddy with the Bush’s as to think of George as part of the royal family? The Jordanians who openly condemned the World Trade Centre attacks, and co-operated with America fully in the Gulf War?

And while we’re on the subject of common ideologies, how many countries in the world are Christian countries? I’m not talking about the thin veil of separation of church and state. I’m talking about countries where people swear on the bible to tell the whole truth and nothing but. Where President’s use the word “God” in speeches and attend Christmas masses. And yet we would never argue that there is some kind of common threat to the world as a result of common religion.

Unless that religion happens to be Islam, it seems.

Islam has been demonised — perhaps you can trace that back as far as the crusades. Perhaps further. But now of all times, a shifty man in a turban walking onto a plane or a subway or a bus in London or New York is scary. And that’s not because, in fact, he’s a threat. But because public perception, shaped by mass media, has turned him into a figure of evil, just as it did to the Russians during the Cold War.

In fact, the global nature of the threat is emerging as the ATTACK on Islam as a religion and a way of life emerges from the West. Not to argue that extremism is new, or that there haven’t always been calls for the destruction of Israel and America. The Ayotollah in Iran was doing that 20 years ago. But mobilisation on a mass scale is more recent. And it’s being helped — as the intelligence report this week in the US says — by an outright attack by the US in particular on the sovereignty of Arab nations.

2. Islam is just like Nazism: now wouldn’t this be the ultimate clincher if it were true? If the Muslims are up to the same no-good that Hitler was up to, and we ignore it again, well then as George Bush himself said, “fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again”.

And yes, the producers have managed to come up with a whole lot of anti-semitic claptrap from Arab TV; a handful of cartoons that are scarily similar to Nazi propoganda; and testimony from “a historian” who argues that the two situations are exactly the same. There’s even footage of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem hanging with Hitler, and a regiment of Arab SS officers he helped to assemble.

My response to this: it’s hardly a surprise to learn that people in the Arab world hate the Jews. That’s a bit like finding out that the IRA have a problem with the British government. We know this already. And whilst they may not be inclined the same kind of shameless extremism, a lot of Jews feel rather similarly about the Arabs. The phrase “mortal enemies” comes to mind.

Jews will be quick to say they don’t want Arabs wiped off the earth. They just want them to stop wanting Jews wiped off the earth. Leave Israel alone, stop spreading anti-semitic feelings and just buzz off. Problem is: they aren’t going to just buzz off. And so there is a much shorter step from this apparently tolerant point of view to war — as we recently saw in Lebanon.

As Matthew Rothschild argues in this piece, to pull Nazism like a rabbit from a hat to explain today’s situation is spurious. Whatever similar ideologies these two groups may have (and even that is a stretch: Hitler was certainly no religious zealot) the Arab world simply does not have the might to pose that kind of threat to the world. The US has, as Rothschild notes, over 10,000 nucleur weapons. Perhaps double that number exist in the whole of the Western world. Iran — the greatest threat Bush and Israel presumably see today, has, maybe, the chance of building one or two.