Author: Michael Medved
Publication: USA Today
Date: June 23, 2002
URL: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002/06/24/ncguest1.htm
Why does the popular culture - including
the movie industry - place such a powerful premium on downplaying the obvious
connection between international terrorism and fanatical Islam?
Just 10 days before the government
announced the detention of Jose Padilla (also known as Abdullah Al Muhajir)
on charges of plotting a "dirty bomb" explosion on American soil, Hollywood
unleashed Bad Company, its second thriller in two weeks about nuclear terrorism
in the United States.
But in that Anthony Hopkins-Chris
Rock box-office dud - as in its high-profile predecessor, The Sum of All
Fears - Islamic extremists bear no responsibility for the deadly designs
against our country.
The Bad Company bad guys hail from
Yugoslavia and wear colored scarves and nasty scowls to make them identifiable
as they plan to explode a nuclear device under New York's Grand Central
Station.
In a feeble attempt to describe
the terrorist mastermind he plays, actor Matthew Marsh declares: "Dragan
is a deeply troubled and very disaffected man. There were problems in his
homeland during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia" - there's a classic
understatement - "and some of his family was destroyed, and this fueled
his psychopathic nature. He has become a freelance troublemaker and has
allied himself with misfits from other countries, all crusading to cause
some trouble for Uncle Sam."
Nothing trivial about real threats
Writing off terrorist threats as
the work of ill-assorted "misfits" and "freelance troublemakers" trivializes
the real dangers we face. The ruthless, dedicated and well-organized killers
who slaughtered 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11 deserve more respect and should
inspire more fear - especially when they boldly announce their intentions
to kill millions more.
It makes no sense for Hollywood
to create cartoonish images of terrorist villains when real-life villains
are an ever-present concern.
The Sum of All Fears is an even
more ridiculous distortion of reality. Its producers changed the identity
of the nuclear terrorists specifically to avoid any imagery that might
show Muslims in an unflattering light. In Tom Clancy's best- selling novel,
on which this film is based, Palestinian fanatics lead an elaborate conspiracy;
but the movie version's laughably caricatured Nazis, complete with accents
and overacting reminiscent of Hogan's Heroes, take over the plot and make
it look ridiculous.
This same pattern applies to earlier
movies about terrorist schemes against the USA. In 1997's The Peacemaker,
George Clooney and Nicole Kidman battled a chilling attempt to blow up
New York with a nuclear weapon. Again, the plotter came from the former
Yugoslavia. The Siege (1998), one of the few movies to show Islamic terror
attacks against America, suggests that the U.S. military represents a greater
danger to the republic than any foreign enemy. The armed services impose
martial law, suspend the Constitution, herd law-abiding Arab- Americans
into concentration camps and display precisely the sort of racist, xenophobic
overreaction so strikingly absent since Sept. 11.
All of these films, including the
most recent two, were shot before the Sept. 11 attacks, so entertainment-industry
apologists claim that the de-emphasis on the Islamic nature of the terrorist
threat remains more excusable.
Yet a long series of attacks before
9/11 - Beirut, Lockerbie, Khobar Towers, Somalia, the East African embassies,
the USS Cole, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing - showed the single-minded
determination of Muslim fanatics to murder Americans.
Young but observant
Even some schoolchildren understand
the danger, but in today's climate must be careful describing it. A friend
of my eighth-grade daughter got into trouble at their public school when
a teacher asked why al-Qaeda hates us so ferociously. The 14-year-old girl
accurately observed that some Muslims have always interpreted passages
in the Islamic holy book, the Koran, to demand that believers conquer or
kill infidels who refuse to follow the prophet. Her observation produced
gasps of horror from fellow students and a stern reprimand from the teacher
for her indulgence in "hate speech."
Why is it hateful for a bright teenager
to speak the truth about a religious faith that was first revealed by a
brilliant and successful warrior and has always thrived on violence? As
Piers Paul Read, historian of the Crusades, recently observed in The Women's
Quarterly: "Islam, from its inception, had espoused the use of force. Where
Jesus had died for his beliefs, the Prophet Mohammed had wielded a sword."
Among all major faiths, Islam stands
alone in the 21st century for its frequent imposition of rigid theocratic
rule - as in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, parts of Nigeria and other nations.
All religions occasionally produce monstrous killers, but in Islam those
monsters receive encouragement and inspiration from some prominent mainstream
leaders, and thousands of the faithful openly celebrate the random slaughter
of innocent civilians. It is impossible to find Christian, Jewish or Buddhist
equivalents to the recent Saudi telethon that raised millions for the families
of homicide bombers.
Such statements make many uncomfortable.
They worry that these observations will encourage the persecution of Muslim
Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom obey the law and honor our
flag. But another even more powerful factor inhibits the honest discussion
of Islamic ideas and helps explain Hollywood's reluctance to identify movie
terrorists as Muslims.
All good, or all bad
The secular worldview that dominates
American elites, including leaders of the entertainment industry, insists
that all religions deserve identical respect - or similar dismissal. Conventional
wisdom holds that all faiths are comparably valid, beautiful paths to the
same God. Or, if the commentator feels ill-disposed toward religion, then
all faiths manifest similar violent, anti-intellectual, intolerant tendencies.
The idea that any one religious
approach might be especially dangerous or dysfunctional leads to unacceptable
conclusions: If some religions are worse than others, then some are better
than others - and perhaps even more true.
Such reasoning is a greater threat
to secular relativism than any terrorist. The politically correct position
therefore suggests that it's merely coincidence that most Islamic societies
oppose Western ideals of liberty and progress, and it's only an accident
that nearly all mass-murdering conspirators pledged to kill Americans take
their inspiration from the Koran.
Ideas - including religious ones
- have consequences, and examining those consequences is the best way to
judge them. Americans are mature enough to handle the inescapable truth
that our daily dangers come not, as Hollywood would have it, from freelance
misfits and nostalgic Nazis, but from a serious and frightening Islamic
mass movement implacably devoted to our destruction.
Film critic Michael Medved hosts
a nationally syndicated daily radio talk show. He is a member of USA TODAY
board of contributors.
