"Obsession" full of contradications

Just viewed the documentary, "Obesssion: Radical Islam's War Against the West."

This is a right-wing documentary, apparently funded at least in part by pro-Israelis, by the way. For more on the funding behind "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," check out the entry on "Popular Progressive," another blogger.com blog.

I'm not sure if I'll have time to show my students clips from "Obsession," but if I do, I will be encouraging them to deconstruct some of its fundamental "logic", its decided, really complete, lack of context vis-a-vis Islam and the history of Islam, and, some of the contradictions that riddle this right-wing documentary that was recently distributed in 70 daily newspapers across the U.S., including The Denver Post, and The New York Times.

I won't be deconstructing 'Obsession' in order to indoctrinate my students with so-called liberal propaganda. Contrary to the right-wing dogma -- which completely undersells their intellectual capabilities -- college students are not mindless, ideological sponges, or empty vassals into which doctrine of one kind or another is poured. They are intelligent, critical individuals who come to the classroom with strong viewpoints, and a lifelong set of political, religious, cultural experiences that have transformed them into reflective people fully capable of maintaining points of view at odds with those other students, with those in a given reading assigned by a professor, or those contained within a particular documentary film.

In fact, I probably won't have to deconstruct it. My students will do it on their own. But if they miss some of the contradictions and argumentative holes (giant chasms, really), I'll be happy to point them out -- in the spirit of inspiring good, critical, reflective thinking on the part of my students, not with the intent of "indoctrinating" them -- which, again, is impossible (and isn't my goal anyhow).

OK, on to a few criticisms of "Obsession" -- whose right to be distributed with 70 newspapers I fully support. (The problem isn't that right-wing documentaries are being distributed in The Denver Post, etc., but that the Left doesn't appear to have the money, or its act together, to distribute its own documentaries in similar fashion).

It's amazing to me that the producers of "Obsession" apparently don't see some of the gaping contradictions which severely undermine the primary points of their own documentary:

1) you have sources criticizing "the" Arab media for demonizing The West, when, of course, one of the primary goals of "Obsession" is to -- you guessed it -- demonize Islam.

2) you have sources in "Obsession" repeatedly saying that one needs to create fear, anxiety, etc. in a public -- they're referring to Muslim publics -- in order to get them to fight (a war). But, of course, "Obsession" is seeking to do exactly the same thing it condemns: Raise fear levels in the U.S. by tapping into stereotypes of Muslims so that "we" will fight "them."

The analogy of "radical Islam" to Hitler and Nazi-ism only loosely holds. That is, there are some parallels in terms of ideologies of indoctrination, but the documentary's analogy falls flat after that. Hitler was the leader of a powerful, industrialized nation-state in the middle of Europe that had the ability to produce a true, meaningful military threat to Europe and the world. Moreover, he wasn't trying to impose a radically different religous ideology on his citizens, which, presumably, so-called "radical islamists" are. In other words, because his material and larger ideological conditions were radically different, he was able to mobilize a true threat to Europe and the world.

So-called "Radical Islamists" simply do not have the same material means at their disposal as Hitler, nor do they enjoy the same geographic location -- they're not located at the heart of a Euro-centric world, geographically speaking."Obsession's" claim that a few "Radical" muslims have now "infiltrated" the U.S. and UK, etc., and that, therefore, "Radical Islam" is on the brink of total and complete world domination is, in a word, laughable.

This is not to say that there won't be more terrorist attacks in the UK, Germany, Spain, etc. in the future. There will be some, and every reasonable effort should be made to stave these off (notice that "Obsession" is very weak on "solutions" -- because it's primary goal is to instill fear, not meaningful, useful dialogue, etc.). But while these attacks will kill people, comparatively few will die in them, especially compared to the numbers of cilivians killed in Iraq in the last 5 years. (That comparatively few will die, doesn't mean that I do not value the lives of those who will die. I do.)

Furthermore, these small terrorist attacks simply do not have a hell's chance of knocking off the entire Western world and turning it into a 'Radical Islamic" empire. After all, 95% of Europeans, Americans, Canadians, etc. simply wouldn't buy into the ideology of "radical" Islam. Indeed, as the documentary clearly shows, this ideology is anti-thetical to their very being. How could you conquer, and maintain control over a population, 95% of which fevertently opposes you? Especially with essentially no military might to do so. It ain't happening!Finally, comparing Hitler's legions of tanks, planes, howitzers, U-boats, millions of soldiers etc. to a handful of suicide bombers? Please!!!!