Posted on 05/09/2007 8:52:21 PM PDT by Valin
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting continues to enable PBS' censorship of the film "Islam v. The Islamists."
After the revelations concerning the Fort Dix Six , it is simply incredible that CPB/PBS is censoring this film. The U.S. audience needs more information on the strugglew within Islam, not less, and it doesn't need politically correct censors at CPB/PBS to babysit that information flow.
Register your opinion at FreeTheFilm.net, and call 202-879-9600 to urge CPB president Pat Harrison to release the film. Call your congressman and senators to demand that the film you paid for be shown.
Can’t say I’m surprised. Government censors.
Free the film. Now.
“Register your opinion at FreeTheFilm.net, and call 202-879-9600 to urge CPB president Pat Harrison to release the film. Call your congressman and senators to demand that the film you paid for be shown.”
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Well, I looked that over several times, even before this article and I’m not exactl sure what it is that I would be urging them to put on the air. I’m just not sure what these guys are saying, actually. For all I know, they could be putting on Michael Moore (unlikely, to be sure, but how would I ever *know*?).
So, I find it sort of difficult to be demanding something when I don’t know the content of it. I would like to see that content *first* before I go recommending that it be put on air.
Who needs PBS? Put it on the Web and it reaches incalculably more people.
Documentarians battle PBS over Islam film
By Karoun Demirjian
Washington Bureau
Published April 29, 2007
WASHINGTON — This story contains corrected material, published May 4, 2007.
The film features grainy footage and dramatic music, presenting itself as a stark look at the way fundamentalist Muslims in America and Europe crush dissent by their more moderate co-religionists.
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But the very production of “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices From the Muslim Center” has highlighted sharply different views about the state of Islam in the United States and showcased how intensely sensitive that subject remains. PBS, which commissioned the project, is delaying airing the film after protests that it is anti-Muslim. Now its creators are launching a public campaign against PBS to get it shown.
The hourlong documentary is one of 22 episodes funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for PBS’ “America at a Crossroads” series, which examines post-Sept. 11 subjects such as terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the experience of American troops overseas and global perspectives on U.S. foreign policy.
“Islam vs. Islamists” follows the efforts of socially liberal Muslims in America and Europe to reclaim their religion from political extremism by speaking out against ultra-conservative imams.
But the film never made it into the initial lineup of 11 shows that aired recently. A film about widespread discrimination against Muslims, “The Muslim Americans,” did air as part of the series.
The producers and subjects of the “Islam vs. Islamists” film, who began to show it in private screenings last week, say that PBS demanded what the producers saw as unrealistic editorial changes after the series’ advisers, acting on criticism from such Muslim groups as the Nation of Islam, claimed the documentary unfairly portrayed Muslim religious leaders (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). They say their experience with PBS proves the point of their film: that moderate Muslims have no platform from which to criticize extremists in their own religion.
“I can’t see what they object to, except that they don’t want to see the true plight against modern-day Muslims,” said Hedieh Mirahmadi, a representative of a moderate imam who spoke at a screening in Washington that was organized by the film’s producers. “Not being able to see the political reality means that it may come to root in a very dangerous way.”
Mirahmadi argued, for example, that the Saudi-based Wahhabist movement, a fundamentalist form of Islam, has spread across the U.S.
Mary Stewart, a spokeswoman for WETA, the PBS station in Washington, and executive producer for the Crossroads series, said in a phone interview that even though the film hadn’t made the cut for the first 11 parts that were broadcast, it would be aired as soon as PBS feels that it has been satisfactorily edited.
“It is a film with a lot of promise,” she said. “But every film that comes through PBS goes through editorial standards. They have received notes on what editorial changes would need to be made to bring it up to standards for PBS.”
Producers and hosts of the Crossroads series have publicly accused the production team for “Islam vs. Islamists” of showing an editorial slant by being overly alarmist and demonizing imams.
But defenders of the documentary say it merely portrays, in realistic terms, the divisions within the Islamic community in the West.
The Muslims portrayed in the movie — including Naser Khader, the Danish parliamentarian who spoke out against Imam Ahmed Abu Laban and others leading the riots over last year’s cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad — say that PBS does not want to consider Western Muslims as a variegated group.
“In my opinion, we don’t have a crisis of civilizations, we have just one clash,” Khader said. “It is in Muslim society, between Islamists and those who say ‘yes’ to democracy and modernity.”
Speaking for the film’s production team, Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, a Washington national security think tank, insisted that the film was finished and said PBS’ refusal to budge on editorial demands meant that the film’s relationship with the network was finished, too. “They’re insisting on structural changes that would essentially eviscerate the message of the film,” he said.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting provided $675,000 for the production of “Islam vs. Islamists,” nearly all federal funds. Some members of Congress saw the film last week.
A Corporation for Public Broadcasting spokesman said it is committed to finding a way to publicly show the film.
Why do we need to waste our time contacting the Commies at the CPB? I assume the producers of this film have their own footage in Avid or Final Cut. Render it and release it to Google Video or on your own site. Let PBS sue you. It will go nowhere. Get it out NOW.
Frank Gaffney vs. PBS
Behind PBS’s “America at a Crossroads” series.
by Sonny Bunch
04/17/2007 12:00:00 PM
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/529htbdv.asp
WHEN IT WAS REVEALED last week that Frank Gaffney Jr.’s contribution to PBS’s “America at a Crossroads” series was not going to be aired, conservatives around the country knowingly shook their heads and clucked their tongues. Gaffney, a hawkish conservative who founded the Center for Security Policy (CSP), served as a producer on an hour long documentary, Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center, about the harassment moderate Muslims face in America and other Western countries. PBS and WETA (the Washington, D.C. PBS station handling the production of the shows) pulled the show from the series, the stories went, because of the liberal bias pervasive throughout the hierarchy of public broadcasting.
The flap over Islam vs. Islamists was largely driven by a piece in the Arizona Republic which reported that WETA had demanded the firing of Gaffney and another co-producer for their involvement with the CSP, and aired a laundry list of complaints about WETA’s involvement during the production. “A WETA manager pressed to eliminate a key perspective of the film: The claim that Muslim radicals are pushing to establish ‘parallel societies’ in America and Europe governed by Shariah law rather than sectarian courts,” the Republic reported, adding that one of WETA’s advisors had shown a clip of the film to the Nation of Islam, a subject of the documentary.
(snip)
Or you can google “ Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center”
Or Keyword search: Islam vs. Islamists
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=islamvsislamists
Well, I’ve seen that before, and it is troubling, at least to me...
“But defenders of the documentary say it merely portrays, in realistic terms, the divisions within the Islamic community in the West.”
As far as I can see, the whole idea that Islam is a religion of peace, and that it is simply Muslim radicals that are hi-jacking the religion and making it so (against what “peaceful Muslims” believe and find from the Koran) — would be doing a *great disservice* to the public for understanding what Islam is all about.
There is no such thing as a “moderate Muslim”. They are either secular and don’t care about Islam, or they support Islam and the terrorists. And from the numbers that I’ve seen, about 70% of the Muslim population in the world support the Islamic terrorists in one fashion or the other. And for the other 30%, they are simply secular and don’t care and are “Muslim” in name only and don’t really want anything to do with it (plus the fact of not being able to get out from under it).
And that’s why I want to *see the file* before I go recommending that *anyone* release it. It sounds to me like a propaganda piece for “peaceful Islam” which — if this is what the film “bears out” (by seeing it first) — then I would *never recommend* it being released to the public.
So, once again, until I get to *see it* — I can’t recommend what I don’t know for sure that the film says or does not say.
I’ll let you know as soon as I get a chance to see it. Then I’ll make my recommendation to release it or not to PBS for their stations and for their broadcasting.
Regards,
Star Traveler
I’ve seen, about 70% of the Muslim population in the world support the Islamic terrorists in one fashion or the other.
Source?
Go to the website for “Tea with Terrorists” and go to his information about Islamic terrorism. He has the information there... I read it a while back and that’s the figure that he has documented from his research...
He’s got an excellent resource for all things “Islam” there, in terms of the terrorists. And also, there’s an excellent resource there of over 100 pages of documented Islamic terrorists attacks throughout the world for the last (oh... I think) 20 years or more...
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So, remember, as far as Islam is concerned — there is no such thing as a “moderate Muslim” because *terrorism* was “hard-coded” right into the Koran by Mohammed himself. And, for an example of what Muslims would do if you suggested that Mohammed was not to be listened to, in what he said in the Koran, just remember how Muslims all over the world reacted to *simple cartoons* of Mohammed. Just think what they would do if you tried to tell them that the “kill the Jews” and to create “terror” in your enemies, and to “kill the infidel” and to “take over the world by the sword” — were all to be ignored from Mohammed.... LOL... good luck...
So, sorry, any program that tries to give the idea that there is such a “divide” and that there is such a thing as a moderate Muslim and that these guys have simply “hijacked” Islam — is simply a program that is *telling lies* to the public.
I won’t support a program to be released to the public that is telling lies to the public...
Tonight PBS aired two hours of docudrama footage (largely pseudosnuff for the second hour) of Christian torture during The Inquisition.
PBS makes me sick. Such vile propaganda.
They ignore the modern murderous theocracy.
According to the likes of Dr Benard lewis, Daniel Pipes, Walid Phares (to name but a few) the number of Muslim supporters of the jihidist is 10=15%. If the 70% number were true why in the last elections in Malaysia & Indonesia did the Islamist parties lose..quite badly, why have we seen recently large anti Islamist demonstrations in both Turkey and Pakistan?
I went to “Tea with terrorists” I saw no footnotes, no index so I can’t take it seriously.
You said — “According to the likes of Dr Benard lewis, Daniel Pipes, Walid Phares (to name but a few) the number of Muslim supporters of the jihidist is 10=15%.”
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Well, that 70% figure is representative of all those who *support* this — and — are the jihadists. The jihadists have their support network, too. So, they are not all jihadists any more than the people in this country who support the war in Iraq are all soldiers. The soldiers fight and we support them in what they are doing, although we’re not shooting over there and we’re not actually pulling the trigger to kill the terrorists. But we give the soldiers *all they need* to shoot up the Islamic terrorists — more money spent on them doing this than we spend for many other things in this country.
Likewise, not all Muslims are the jihadists, and that figure of 10-15% probably is an accurate figure for those who are doing the actual fighting. And “likewise” the rest of those Muslims give the jihadists *all that they need* to take the war to the enemy (which they consider to be us).
So, in other words — the rest of the number (up to the 70% mark) are those who will supply money, who will teach, who will provide any and all support to the Islamic goals (for this kind of fight worldwide), who go to the mosques and teach others to hate America, hate Israel, teach their kids to never become integrated into this society, they are the ones fighting to get Sharia law installed wherever they go, they are the ones who remain silent when the buildings fell down, and in other places cheered wildly when it was announced, they are the ones who protest that the U.S. and Britain will get their due (in the many protests you see staged in many different places), they are all these people supporting the world-wide jihadist movement.
Yes, the 70% are definitely in the camp with the jihadists all right...
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