My two cents

Submitted by Moataz Emam (United States), Dec 18, 2002 at 11:18

First of all, let me make it clear that I am a Muslim, and I am going to criticize Mr. Pipes article from that point of view. An important disclaimer is that I have not seen the film yet, so post viewing comments or corrections may be in order.

The article addresses several issues, foremost among them is the question of the constitutionality of using taxpayers money to promote any religion. I won't comment on that since it is a legal issue. I would like to comment on the rest of it though.

The idea that this one movie is designed to attract Americans to Islam does not make sense to me, simply because it is one film and not a whole religious campaign. Recall that Islam, whatever you think of it, is the least represented of all major religions in the US. 9/11 has certainly sparked a lot of interest in this religion, and from a commercial point of view, if I were a PBS official looking for ratings, Islam would be one of my choices for a documentary. You can be sure a lot of viewers will tune in.

Which brings me to both the comparison with the earlier film about Jesus and the question of using current research as opposed to standard dogma. As I said, Islam is underrepresented in the US. If you wanted to do a program explaining Islam, good or bad, you must certainly explain the basics, you cannot just go ahead and present new ideas to viewers who have no idea what the old ideas were in the first place. Christianity is the most widely believed religion in the US, doing a program to explain the basics of Christianity does not make sense because almost everyone is familiar with them. Here it certainly makes sense to present more controversial views.

As for the producers presenting Mohammed in a favorable light only, that is their choice and Mr. Pipes is certainly welcome to produce a counter film that shows any unfavorible issues. He can argue Muslim women issues all he wants, he can ignore that Muslim women under Islam are indeed given right unimaginable to European women until very recently (and actually more rights are given to Muslim women today). The fact that these rights are violated in some countries has nothing to do with what Mohammed or the Quran, which apparently Mr. Pipes did not read, said. They are more related to the ignorance and arrogance of men of all religions and beliefs. Mr. Pipes lists: "genital mutilation, forced marriages, purdah, illiteracy, sexual apartheid, polygamy and honor killings." Of course, he neglects to point out that there is an absolute lack of any Quranic verses or Mohammedan quotes that supports these, in fact quite the opposite: there is an abundance of verses that prohibit most of these. The only exception is polygamy which has its very limited reasons and very strong restrictions, which I won't go into right now.

If some men in Muslim countries commit women's rights violations, they do so AGAINST the Quran and Mohammedan teachings, i.e. the issues the program is about.

Mr. Pipes question of how can anyone know that Mohammed's marriages were not of lust has a simple answer: Mohammed married several women, all but one were widows or divorced, several were older than him, in many cases much older. Why did he do that? There was always either a religious reason; to strike an enduring example of some point, or a political reason; to form alliances with a certain group. ...

Mr. Pipes implies that Mohammed's marriage to Khadija was a marriage of convenience, completely ignoring that Khadija was the one to ask Mohammed to marry her. Even though she was richer, Mohammed came from a very political powerful family, and if anyone, she was to gain more of this marriage. Anyway, they were happily married for many years until she died.

Representing religious beliefs as fact, which Mr. Pipes criticizes, is debatable. Many programs of Jesus represent religious beliefs as fact. The point is the whole issue is an issue of religious beliefs. Again, if Mr. Pipes wishes to produce a counter program, I would be the first one to watch it.


..Thank you ...

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