Obsession

Yesterday I watched "Obsession: What the War on Terror is Really About", now available for free viewing at Google movies. This awarding winning film brings home what radical Islam is really all about and why we can’t ignore its rise.

Thankfully, the movie both begins and ends with assurances that most Muslims are not radical extremists. Nevertheless, official estimates of the number of radical Muslims run at ten to fifteen percent. With over a billion Muslims in the world today, that means there are between one hundred and one hundred fifty million people completely dedicated to terror. Sadly, the percentage of anti-Zionists and anti-Americans in the Islamic world is much higher than that fifteen percent.

Those of us in the West do not understand the deep hatred of these extremists. Our natural inclination is to search for reasons for their loathing. After 9/11, our media personalities and academes claimed it was our own imperialism to blame, but as several in the film pointed out, this distracts from a twisted ideology that wishes to destroy the West, an ideology that states that that Jews, the United States, and the West are trying to destroy them and that they must conduct war against us kaffurs as self-defense.

Several professors, historians, and other experts on Islam and the Middle East spoke in this documentary. Also appearing were Nonie Darwish, a daughter of a terrorist, and Mr. Shoebat, a former terrorist. Mostly the movie used the news programs, the “inspirational” political and religious speakers, music videos, children’s cartoons, and shows for adults appearing throughout the Arab world to demonstrate what these extremists say for themselves.

Media clips from Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Somalia, and Pakistan use their own words against them. Their religious, terrorist, and even political leaders indoctrinate their viewers with the belief that the U.S. is a threat to them, trying to destroy Islam. Some of these clips pre-date 9/11 and so can be seen more as a cause for such an attack rather than a response to what’s happened since, as some might claim. Leaders call for all honorable people to stand against the West and kill its young men and slit throats and for the beheading of Jews. Again and again there are shouts from huge crowds, “Death to America”. There are cartoons and doctored photos making Americans and Jews look like demons. Children’s cartoons depict Israeli leaders drinking the blood of Arab Muslims and adult programming shows the same. There are calls to kill all the polytheists and infidels.

Perhaps the saddest part of this film were videos of little Arab-Muslim children in classrooms and news clips of little children reciting jihadist poetry calling for suicide attacks against Jews and young children claiming that Israelis are the offspring of pigs and apes as taught them from the Qur’an, per their claims. Even a tiny three and a half year old girl called for the death of Jews. How can young children speak so admiringly of martyrdom as a goal and pour forth such hatred unless they are inculcated with these beliefs?

The film also showed the strong ties between Nazi Germany and the Middle East. They had a strange cooperation based on their mutual hatred of Jews. Hitler, in fact, had met with the Mufti of Jerusalem and informed him that the war was for the extermination of the Jews, emphasizing their shared goals. The Mufti raised a Bosnian-Muslim SS division with recruits brought in from all over the world. In many ways, Islamo-Fascism is more dangerous than the Nazis were because they are spread across fifty-five states and brainwash the people that their god instructs them to hate the West and Jews. If we play ostrich as our ancestors did while the Nazi threat slowly built up, we could face huge death tolls also, just like we did in World War II.

Watch the film and see their own leaders on their television programs calling for the conquest of the world (by Iran’s president, for example) and for a world unified under Islam. Witness the reactions of the crowds to whom they speak. The goals of these radical extremists are nothing short of killing all Jews, the destruction of democracy and western civilization and the spread of Islam to all of us, by force if necessary.

Admittedly, the documentary is long- an hour and seventeen minutes- but we watch movies longer than that all the time. It’s well worth the effort.

Links:

Thanks to Little Green Footballs for the link.

Cavalier wrote another review of the movie at Guardian WatchBlog which appears here.

The movie's website is here.