Posted on 09/11/2005 10:54:34 AM PDT by pcottraux
Mullahs, madmen and monotheists September 10, 2005 TORONTO -- Someday I would love to see a Werner Herzog documentary about blithering messianic monotheists -- those religious snake-oil salesmen (of Christianity or Islam or whatever) -- that would emphasize the circular absurdity of their world view, in the way that Herzog's "How Much Wood Would a Wood Chuck Chuck" flaunts (and even celebrates) the ludicrous but hypnotic speech patterns of Southern auctioneers.
We get a sampling of the Islamic variety, without a lot of coherent context, in "The Smell of Paradise," a documentary about jihadists in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Qatar, Azerbaijan and elsewhere by Polish filmmakers Mariusz Pilis and Marcin Mamon. Perhaps because the directors are Polish, and had (according to the official programme) "travelled the world for ten years, meeting with warlords, clan leaders, emirs, mullahs and others who believe in the principle of Dar al-Islam, the abode of Islam" -- one world, under God, indivisible, with no national or continental borders -- I had hoped for a film that would be both enlightening and have that peculiarly Polish sense of skepticism towared the all-too-human absurdity of fundamentalist religion. After all, if the last four years have taught us anything it's that if we don't try to figure out who we're actually fighting in the "war on terrorism," and what they're fighting for, we don't have a prayer of making any meaningful progress.
Maybe "The Smell of Paradise" does, in fact, suggest that mullahs can be just as morally bankrupt and full of nonsense as sound-bite spewing Western politicians and so-called "spiritual leaders," but it's so straight-faced and affectless that it doesn't seem to be aware of it.
OK, I admit this is coming from the point of view of someone who thinks that the idea of the One True God is maybe the worst invention in the history of our species -- worse than The Great Leap Forward, New Coke and Hello Kitty combined. Monotheism, in the form of the "World's Great Religions," may bring about the extinction of us all.
I mean, listen to this: One supposedly august and learned religious leader in "The Smell of Paradise" says, in arguing that Islam should have dominion over the world, that national borders are insignificant because God named our nations simply in order to tell us where we live. Really? God came up with the Nation Formerly Known As the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" and Chad? It would be unwise to claim that God was the unintelligent designer of the haphazard boundaries that (today, anyway) contain the country known as Iraq. The British really have to take the bulk of the blame for that one.
The former president of Chechnya, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev (now deceased) declares, "I think that democracy as a system is the last attempt by man to create an alternative to God's law. The last one. An attempt that will end tragically for mankind." This sounds almost like Pat Robertson, who is forever itching to declare America dead and bring on the Rapture himself.
Indeed, the fundamental illogic espoused by the fundamentalist windbags we see in this film is virtually identical to that of their Christian counterparts in the West. It goes something like this:
1) The Word of God is the only Truth. (The word "Truth" is often capitalized in the movie's subtitles.) 2) All people should believe the Truth, which is religion (no matter which monotheistic variety), and behave in accordance with it, because God commands it. 3) We know God's Word and the Truth of God's commands because they are written in the (fill in name of holy text). 4) We know that (said holy text) is the Word of God because it says so in (said holy text) and the Word of God is the only Truth, therefore it must be True. 5) Repeat endlessly until armageddon.
Sound at all familiar?
If I remember correctly, Kozh-Ahmed Noukhaev, described as the Chechen "godfather" in the film (now vanished, but said to be dedicated to eradicating all evil from the world), makes the astonishingly Western-sounding argument that there can be no Islamic "state" anywhere in the world, because any government of men that sets itself up as having religious authority is a blasphemy to religion. Heck, that's reminiscent of one of the groundbreaking principles of the United States Constitution -- that religion has no authority over government (and government can claim no religious authority) because one is mortal and the other is spiritual.
And Jordanian fighter Ibn al-Khattab sounds eerily like George W. Bush when he says jihadists strike only when they perceive an attack or threat on their way of life (and their religion) first. (This is one key to understanding what the West is up against; as Richard Clarke and Michael Scheuer, the CIA Middle East analyst and best-selling nonfiction author formerly known as Anonymous, have said: The people who have attacked us firmly believe that we have been out to destroy them. That's been the basis of Al Qaeda's recruiting technique for years and American policy is still playing right into Osama bin Laden's bloody hands.)
"The Smell of Paradise" contains images of bleak and haunting isolation, and moments that are peculiarly affecting, as at the end when a religious leader in a village near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border (in the region bin Laden is said to be hiding) tells the filmmakers he hopes they will carry the message of his tribal leaders to the rest of the world and that they will themselves come to follow the Truth. He then begins to cry and puts his gnarled hands over his face. Why? What is he expressing: Hope? Shame? Fear? Anguish over the human price of the war itself? We don't really know.
As a friend who has travelled extensively in the Middle East and Asia said on the way out of the screening: "I really want to understand that world better, but I'm not sure anybody in the film said anything that made any sense." It's just circles within circles within circles, leading nowhere -- except, maybe, to the inner circles of hell itself.
ADDENDUM (9/11/05): Roger Ebert notes that Werner Herzog has, in fact, made a documentary about one such evangelical: "God's Angry Man" (1980), about the looney televangelist Gene Scott. This I gotta see... Posted by: Jim Emerson
Who is Gene Scott?
I don't know, but from a certain blog recalling a memory of watching his show, I found this:
"After realizing that we never once heard a firm statement of belief from Dr. Gene, one night we decided to call the number and ask. The lady on the other line kept repeating 'just watch the show and you'll see'. Lady, I've been watching the show for a year."
I'd never watched him personally, but heard that he was a bit eccentric. For example, he'd make his band play a certain song on the show 6 times over and over, just because he wanted to hear it. Or he once looked into the camera and said he hated his ex-wife. He would light up cigars mid-sermon, and then insist on playing a video of his personal race horse.
Here's a good example:
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/religion/dr-gene-scott/
It was fun to watch,thought. Never knew what insanity would come from his mouth. KInda like a drunk reading from the bible...
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