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STUDIO: Quixotic Media (tilting at windmills…)
MSRP: Not advertised
RATED: Not rated
RUNNING TIME: 98 mins
The Pitch
"It’s Loose Change meets your World Religions class!"
The Humans
Interviews with noted anti-Islam folks such as Robert Spencer and Serge Trifkovic, along with scholars of Islam like Bat Ye’or, Abdullah al-Araby, and former Palestinian terrorist Walid Shoebat.
The Nutshell
Over the course of six segments, the filmmakers work to convince you that Muslims are bad and the West is foolish to suppose that those Muslims who are not terrorists are members of a religion of peace.
The Lowdown
I’m not even sure why this movie exists. It has to be a propaganda piece. Why else would people sacrifice time and effort to produce a documentary with such an intellectually corrupt thesis? The terrorists have scriptural backing for their actions, goes the argument. Those millions of Muslims who are not terrorists are members of the same violent religion.
That’s the whole thesis. It’s not even a proper argument. It just gives you those two facts and winks and gestures at them a bit going, "Eh? Eh? See?"
"I do not see."
Leave aside for a moment that the thing looks to have been constructed on iMovie, or maybe PowerPoint, with static images and dreadful voiceovers intercut with black-background interviews with its subjects. The argument they’re trying to make isn’t even necessary. The West already knows that the Islamic terrorist organizations use scripture to justify their actions. This is not news. Yet the film spends almost an hour minutely detailing how Qu’ranic scripture supports terrorist actions.
The cognitive stretch that the filmmakers are hoping the audience will make is absurd. They want the audience to equate Muslim terrorists with practitioners of Islam the world over. The stance is morally repugnant. How does it even follow logically that we shold approach all of Islam as if it were a giant, violent hive of men and women eager to convert the unbeliever through any means necessary? There’s is a weight of evidence to the contrary, millions of humans deep.
For most of the film, I thought that the fearmongering was an end to itself, that the filmmakers just wanted to play at having revelations. It gets worse than that, though. The nadir of this mess is when the term jihad, meaning struggle, is equated with Mein Kampf, which also translates to "my struggle." Yes, that’s right, the filmmakers have invoked Hitler, and as a result the holocaust, in their little project.
"Ooooo…"
This shit makes me angry. I’m a passive kind of guy, but the dissemination of idiocy boils my blood. It’s not that the factual and textual references are incorrect. On the contrary, the readings from the Qur’an and attendant texts seem to be accurate and well-researched. It’s the context they’re placed in that makes the film so worthless as an academic piece, or successful as a propaganda piece. (Although Leni Riefenstahl the filmmakers ain’t.) Instead of using the thesis: "Terrorists have textual support for their actions. Isn’t that interesting?" the filmmakers have extended it to the ill-connected mess of theses that they hope will breed together just by being placed in proximity.
The West doesn’t need to know any of this. The West already knows that religion can be used as justification for the most inhumane acts on the planet. But to devote an entire documentary to casting Islam as a ticking time bomb of violence and hysteria? The West needs only to ignore that kind of shrill, illegitimate work.
"But how could you ignore this face?"
The Package
Nothing. Hallelujah.
The historical curiosities offered by the interview subjects are occasionally enlightening, but the filmmakers’ missteps and terrible thesis ruins all credibility. This documentary has no worth.