If this “conflict-resolution” professor deems the Obsession film “pure propaganda,” at least one Middle East history professor thinks otherwise. Wonder who knows more? More on this story.
“Obsession smells: It’s propaganda, professor argues, by Tom H. Hastings for Oregon Live, September 29:
Many who subscribed to The Sunday Oregonian received, unbidden, a copy of Wayne Kopping’s “Obsession: Radical Islam’s war against the West,” a packaged DVD that purports to show us the threat of worldwide radical Islam. It is disturbing and contains enough fact and truthto spur a logical and correct rejection of the ghastly beliefs and conduct of radical Islamicists.
Obsession is also connected to both the Israeli intelligence service and Christian evangelicals via Middle East Media Research Institute, according to SourceWatch.org.
Naturally, then, it is an hour of pure propaganda…
If it’s “pure propaganda,” what makes the good professor say earlier that it “contains enough fact and truth”?
It is truly disgusting to watch Muslim ‘clerics’ practice their twisted version of hatred and objectification. Anyone who defends or tolerates that revisionist theology should rethink their moral code.Calling on believers to kill Jews or any other kuffar (non-Muslim) is loathsome.
Amazing: Muslims calling on the death of infidels is a “twisted version of Islam” and “revisionist theology.” Actually, not so amazing since it is clear that this professor (as is increasingly the wont of most “professors” and “experts”) is relying more on an emotionally-driven postmodern epistemology than he is by standard Islamic theology and doctrine, which he clearly knows next to nothing about, aside from reading, perhaps, Karen Armstrong’s cutesy, feel-good-about-Islam books.
However, there are sections of the film that defy logic and history.For example, in interviews with several principle subjects,astonishment is expressed at the possibility that foreign policies of the U.S. or the UK might have contributed to the growth of jihad.
Actually, the record is quite clear on this point; the foreign policy of the U.S. and UK helped exacerbate and foment jihad at many turns, from the killer sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s to the unconditional military aid to the Israeli Defense Force (at greater levels than any other nation on Earth every year), to the support for corrupt Middle Eastern governments such as Egypt’s Mubarak and the Saudi royals, tothe U.S. occupation of places regarded as holy by Muslims (U.S. troops first in Saudi Arabia and now controlling Iraq).
Ah, the famous response from the “experts,” such as Michael Scheuer: US foreign policy is the root of all Islamic “radicalism.” For more on this, including textual evidence that, at least for al-Qaeda types, Islam instructs hatred and animosity for the infidel, per se, see here.
There is plenty of blame to go around, but right now the most productive path forward is dialog based on lessons learned, on caution but on the determination to support nonviolence and democracy, not the armed control of any nation…