Posted on 06/23/2007 7:19:49 AM PDT by Valin
Where on Earth are the moderate Muslims? Thanks to PBS, they’re not on public television.
PBS has blocked the broadcast of Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center. This new documentary — funded with a $675,000 Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) grant — contrasts the ubiquitous bearded, burka-covered Muslim radicals with others seldom seen: men and women who wear Western attire, shave daily, show their female faces, and prosper without slaughtering “infidels.”
While moderate Muslims may appear elsewhere on PBS, Uncle Sam’s TV channel declines to air this compelling, even-handed, and surprisingly tame film that explores the struggle between modern Muslims and their backward brethren. Produced by Canadian filmmaker Martyn Burke and the Center for Security Policy’s (CSP) Alex Alexiev and Frank Gaffney, Islam vs. Islamists is no fire-breathing, Islamophobic screed. While it sympathizes with mellow Muslims targeted by their hotheaded co-religionists, it simply lets individual Muslims speak for themselves, with limited commentary — none of it inflammatory.
Capital HQ — a New York-based public-affairs organization — quickly arranged a sold-out screening of Islam last Tuesday night (after CRC Public Relations had done the same in Washington, D.C,. the week before). Even after benches and folding chairs were dragged in from the Union Square 14-plex’s lobby, guests still clogged the aisles.
The film showcases brave, moderate Muslims like Naser Khader, a Syrian-born Danish legislator who preaches the separation of mosque and state. The mere fact that he votes in Copenhagen’s parliament enrages Muslim zealots.
“To make laws — only a god does that. And there is only one god in Islam, and that is Allah,” says Slimane Abderrahmane, an Algerian-Danish alumnus of al Qaeda’s terror camps and, later, Guantanamo. “So you’re saying, ‘I’m just like Allah.’ And you can’t do that.”
Rather than submit to such Muslim crackpots, Khader fled Copenhagen for a small Danish town. He also requires 24-hour police protection. This is hardly paranoid. During the deadly Muslim overreaction to those newspaper images of Mohammed in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten, Danish Muslim fanatic Ahmed Akkari said, “If Khader becomes minister of integration, shouldn’t someone dispatch two guys to blow up him and his ministry?”
The man who videotaped Akkari’s words also appears in “Islam.”
Mohamed Sifaoui, a peaceful Algerian-French journalist, infiltrated a Parisian band of Muslim extremists. Some appeared via hidden camera. Others hammed it up, thinking Sifaoui was shooting an Islamist propaganda and training movie.
Since French TV showed his film, bodyguards have surrounded Sifaoui.
It is highly newsworthy that moderates such as Khader and Sifaoui need security agents to shield them from Allah’s potentially homicidal followers. Nonetheless, PBS has nixed this film.
“Islam vs. Islamists had not completed the production and review process for PBS,” says presenting station WETA’s statement. “They [sic] program still has not.” Despite minor audio glitches, the screened film appeared complete.
The documentary “was irresponsible because the writing was alarmist, and it wasn’t fair,” WETA executive Jeff Bieber has complained. (Full disclosure: I was a panelist on WETA’s Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered.)
Islam is abundantly fair. Those in it, all Muslim, represent themselves. They range from thoroughly relaxed, perfectly patriotic Arizona physician Dr. Zuhdi Jasser to Canadian imam Aly Hindy, who embraces the fatal stoning of adulterers. “It’s not controversial,” he laughs, waving a Koran. “This is Islam.”
Burke claims PBS executives told him to fire his conservative production partners, which he refused to do. WETA’s statement disputes this, adding:
While PBS and CPB were concerned about Mr. Gaffney’s office [sic] role with the CSP a decision was made early on to judge the film on its merits rather than excluding Mr. Gaffney because he runs this conservative advocacy group.
WETA’s communiqué calls the CSP “a right-wing think tank.”
Tariq Fatah also appears in Islam. This Toronto-based TV host calls himself “a 9-to-5 Muslim.” He wears suits and wields no rocket-propelled grenades. Like other Muslims in this picture, he has endured violent attacks from Islamists who detest his joviality.
“These people are opposed to happiness,” he told his Manhattan audience. “And a constitution that mentions the pursuit of happiness is a problem for them.”
Fatah argues that politically correct PBS executives “believe you are a genuine Muslim only if you look like a Muslim.” Sans beards, burqas, and blood in their eyes, Fatah says, PBS officials regard Muslims like him as inauthentic and thus unworthy of consideration.
Gaffney, one of Islam’s executive producers, wants Americans to “raise some hell,” until PBS either shows the film or lets another channel broadcast it. He hopes citizens will call PBS at 703-739-5000 and urge them to air the documentary. FreeTheFilm.net suggests other ways to promote this movie.
“Everyone whose tax dollars went into making this film should have the chance to see it for themselves and make up their own minds,” Frank Gaffney says. “That’s all we ask.”
— Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution.
Frank Gaffney's documentary PBS wouldn't show will be on the Fox News Channel this weekend.
06/22 06:43 PM
Hey PBS, why don’t ally with the dimbulbs and hand the fox the fox the key to the henhouse
Fork you.
Oops, sorry for the stutter! LOL
I thought I heard that the movie was goign to be on Fox at 6 pm tonight (Pacific)/ 9 pm Eastern.
Bill O Reilly mentioned that Thurday night on his show, he really stuck it to PBS in the process.
Saturday, June 23 at 9 p.m. ET
Repeats Sunday, June 24 at 3 a.m. ET
Hosted by E.D. Hill
Tune in this weekend, as FOX News Channel presents the documentary the Public Broadcasting System didn’t want you to see.
It’s a film about the difference between moderate Muslims and the radicals who want to kill us. It asks where are the moderate Muslims and why aren’t they speaking out against the jihadists? And it was financed with $675,000 of taxpayers’ money.
It was commissioned as part of the PBS series “America at the Crossroads” about the post 9/11 world, but PBS executives rejected it.
PBS claims the filmmakers were “alarmist, overreaching and unfair.”
The filmmakers say they were censored because of liberal bias at PBS.
On a topic this important, we think you have the right to decide for yourself.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,285695,00.html
Thanks for the link. I don’t have cable, so I’m sure what I’ll do, maybe Fox will stream it.
Correction. What is being shown on FOX tonite is called “Muslims Against Jihad”. It is NOT the PBS banned documentary. PBS has not released that for broadcast on other stations.
However, what will be shown tonite should be well worth watching. Especially for those who still don’t understand why they rarely hear from moderate muslims. 9PM EST.
There’s a 2min video clip here.
http://www.foxnews.com/fnctv/
It seems rather odd that you post a May 7th article saying that you won’t get to see it on the very day that FOX NEWS CHANNEL is airing it.....
I posted this because
1 to keep it on people minds.
2 it was a good article on this subject.
3 just because I won’t get to see it, doesn’t mean I others shouldn’t get to watch it. If it get’s good ratings it’ll put more pressure on PBS to “Frre The Film”.
Thanks.
the title of the article (and therefore the thread) gives the impression that you won’t be able to see it.....most people already knew that.....maybe you could get the Mod to update the thread title to indicate the FOX broadcast tonite?
regarding the different title of the film, I’d guess that PBS owns it, as well as the precise content and arrangement of its own piece.....but Gaffney and Byrke own the raw footage, so FOX’s version might reveal some of it that PBS balked at......I recall an interview with Gaffney wherein he said that they had to keep modifying it to satisfy PBS’ poloitical correctness.
Thinking like this is why the vast majority of the world's muzzies are nowhere near ready for the democracy that our President thinks is the answer to the problem of islamunism.
Friday, May 25, 2007
By JOHN DUNBAR, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON — A television documentary about Islam that has been the subject of a nasty fight between the filmmakers and PBS will see the light of day after all.
“Islam vs. Islamists: Voices From the Muslim Center” will air on the Oregon Public Broadcasting system’s five stations, thanks to an agreement reached this week. The company will also act as distributor for the 52-minute documentary for possible broadcast on other PBS stations nationally.
The documentary was paid for by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a taxpayer-supported private corporation that funds public radio and television stations.
It was one of several the CPB paid for as part of a $20 million project supporting films that would examine the challenges facing the nation following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The CPB does not produce or distribute programs. WETA, the Washington public television station, oversaw production and packed the series of films for distribution by PBS. After viewing the documentary, WETA and PBS asked the producers to make changes, saying it needed work.
The producers, who include former Reagan administration official Frank Gaffney Jr., claimed the film was held up due to liberal bias. Since then, the film has been in limbo. snip
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007May25/0,4670,PBSMuslims,00.html
Tuesday , April 24, 2007
By M. Zuhdi Jasser
RCP
ADVERTISEMENT
Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic broke the story on April 10, 2007 about PBS’s censorship of the documentary, Islam vs. Islamists from its America at a Crossroads series which debuted this week.
The film’s producers, Frank Gaffney, Alex Alexiev and the veteran filmmaker, Martyn Burke of ABG Films, Inc. have since presented in shocking detail their painful protracted experiences trying to navigate the censors at PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which funded the film with $675,000 of the taxpayers’ monies but now has chosen to shelve it.
In just the last week of public debate, there has been a firestorm of outcry from the public who are demanding that oppressive methods of editorial content control by power brokers at PBS be investigated and the real story behind the shelving of Islam vs. Islamists be exposed.
PBS’s exploitation of the public dime and the public airwaves for the narrow point of view of the Islamist sympathizers with the exclusion of the anti-Islamist Muslims is just now beginning to be understood.
As one of the subjects of the documentary, I was able to experience first-hand the professionalism and in-depth journalistic standards of veteran filmmaker, Martyn Burke, and his first-class team of consummate professionals. It was refreshing to have a documentary set out objectively to look into the deep-seated internal struggles of anti-Islamist Muslims like myself....snip....I have previously discussed the harm of our government’s enabling of Islamists (like CAIR, MPAC, MAS, MSA, or ISNA) in the United States and how the governmental endorsement of Islamists publicly empowers them and allows them to dodge their responsibility of countering Islamism as an ideology....snip....The PBS censorship of the documentary, Islam vs. Islamists, highlights one of the best examples to date of the symbiosis of both government complicity and media complicity with the Islamist ideology....snip....It is interesting that even in the recent April 18 New York Times, Virginia Heffernan appropriately critiques the vacuous nature of Robert McNeil’s documentary, “The Muslim Americans”. McNeil’s documentary which did conveniently make the cut of the Crossroads series, turned out to be a puff-piece for political correctness with no insight into Islamist ideologies and its danger to America....snip....
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,268088,00.html
When I first heard all the noise about this I was thinking that Gaffney seemed liked a real whiner, given that he knew in advance that only about half of the films made for the PBS show on Islam would be selected for broadcast. But when he appeared on C-SPAN and explained what had happened at PBS I thought he seemed very reasonable.
I routinely ignore statements like this one, because they are self serving, and there is never a reason given as to why it is deemed unfair.
Is it factual?
That's the only yeardstick that can measure a documentary, and I feel as qualified to measure its unfairness as anyone.
End of discussion.
E.D. Hill hosts “Muslims Against Jihad.”
“Thinking like this is why the vast majority of the world’s muzzies are nowhere near ready for the democracy that our President thinks is the answer to the problem of islamunism.” -” says Slimane Abderrahmane, an Algerian-Danish alumnus of al Qaeda’s terror camps and, later, Guantanamo.”
“the vast majority of the world’s” muslims are NOT alumni of al Qaeda’s terror camps.
I hope you watch the program tonight
So Deroy Murdock actually removed his nose from Rooty`s butt long enough to write an article that doesn’t shill for the former Mayor. Hard to believe. LOL
“While moderate Muslims may appear elsewhere on PBS, Uncle Sam’s TV channel “
I stopped reading here. PBS is a private nonprofit company. If the writer can’t get that simple fact straight then nothing else can be believed in the article.
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