Must-see TV: Muslims Against Jihad
Posted by Richard on June 23, 2007
Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center is a documentary about moderate Muslims and the intimidation and threats they're subjected to by the radical Islamists. It was made by Canadian documentary filmmaker Martyn Burke, with a $700,000 grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, for the 11-part PBS series America at the Crossroads. But PBS removed the film from the series because it was "alarmist" and not fair to the radical Islamists.
Read this interview with Burke, who's certainly not a raving neo-con, for the remarkable story. The film's critics at PBS and its D.C. affiliate, WETA, argued that the moderate Muslims in the film weren't "true" Muslims because they believed in democracy and were "Westernized" — the anti-democratic, sharia-promoting Islamists were the truer representatives of Islam and weren't treated fairly in the film! They also demanded that Burke fire co-producers Frank Gaffney and Alex Alexiev because they're conservatives.
Alyssa Lappen posted some interesting details at American Thinker last month about the folks at WETA (which produced the Crossroads series) who nixed Burke's work. One of the five-member committee that killed the documentary is associated with the Nation of Islam. Another is Crossroads producer Leo Eaton, whose father, Charles Eaton, a.k.a. Hassan Abdul Hakeem, is a Muslim convert with numerous ties to radical clerics.
You can't see the original Islam vs. Islamists yet, although PBS has relented just a bit and will allow the Oregon PBS to show it and make it available to other PBS stations. But tonight Sunday night, the Fox News Channel is airing Burke's companion/spinoff documentary, Muslims Against Jihad. Tune in, Tivo, or fire up the DVR or VCR. It's on at 9 PM Eastern (that's 7 Mountain) and again Sunday morning at 3 AM Eastern.
UPDATE: Fox News rescheduled Muslims Against Jihad for Sunday night at 9 PM so they could give Geraldo and a gaggle of shyster "criminal justice consultants" an extra hour to blather about the breaking news in this week's Crime of the Century. Sheesh.
UPDATE 2: I was disappointed, and I know who to blame: Film botched by Fox
JTA said
If congress wants a “Fairness Doctrine” does that mean PBS would be forced to show this along with their left-wing slanted shows?