{"id":81,"date":"2008-10-29T09:15:58","date_gmt":"2008-10-29T09:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2008\/10\/review-of-obsession-by-david-s.html"},"modified":"2008-10-29T09:15:58","modified_gmt":"2008-10-29T09:15:58","slug":"review-of-obsession-by-david-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2008\/10\/review-of-obsession-by-david-s.html","title":{"rendered":"Review of Obsession by David Shasha"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Silverstein has posted a review of the Islamophobic hate-film Obsession<\/a> on his blog, written by David Shasha, one of the leaders of the American Sephardic Jewish community. It’s a powerful indictment, beginning with a list of basic facts about the muslim world that are not open to debate, but simply a matter of historical record – and all providing needed context that Obsession deliberately eschews.He points out clearly exactly why Obsession, despite its disingenuous claim otherwise, is indeed an attempt to delegitimize the entire faith of Islam itself and Otherize muslim-Americans as a whole. And it does so by using the same propaganda tactics that Arab anti-semites themselves use to fan the flames of hatred against israel and America! A few excerpts:<\/p>\n

\n

Using a canny mixture of incitement and factuality the producers of
\nthe film bookend their movie with the admission that the film is not an
\nindictment of Islam itself, but just a certain part of it. When I use
\nthe word “incitement” I mean to say that the film is completely
\ndisingenuous as it offers the basic theme that it hammers over and over
\nagain that Islam is akin to Nazism and that the Arab world is in the
\ngrip of this Nazi-Islamic ideology.<\/p>\n

Propaganda is a means to express an ideological viewpoint at the
\nexpense of a plurality of views within the parameters of an open
\ndebate. According to this definition we can see a ratiocination taking
\nshape which stacks the deck of argument. And to those living in the
\nJewish community, the primary mechanism for the distribution of
\n“Obsession,” this “obsession” with Radical Islamic ideology is
\nsomething that we have become quite familiar with.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Embedded within this discourse are a deadening and repetitive array of
\nmedia clips of screaming, lunatic Jihadis and their minions. Again,
\nthere is no need to deny that these people exist or to question the
\ndanger they pose not only to Jews and the West, but to the well-being
\nof the Muslim world itself. Image after image is laced with stirringly
\nbombastic music that often resembles the propaganda that the film
\ndecries. The rhetoric of the principles being interviewed eschews
\nsubtlety and intellectual heft and hammers home in propagandistic
\nfashion that Arabs are Nazis and that’s all there is to the matter.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

And we cannot forget while watching this execrable piece of
\npropaganda, a work that is as unhelpful pedagogically as it is
\ndangerous, that the dual logic of contradiction is continually at play:
\nwe are TOLD that Islam is not like what is being shown on the screen
\nand yet this is what is being SHOWN to us with a relentlessness that
\nputs the rhetoric of Islam as a peaceful religion to the lie. After a
\nsteady diet of one solid hour of seeing images of Muslims juxtaposed –
\nLITERALLY – with those of Hitler and other Nazis, I am not sure if it
\ntakes a genius to figure out that we are being browbeaten into
\ncapitulation to hate all Muslims.<\/p>\n

And to make sure that we do not forget this fact, we are treated to
\nan extensive set of interview clips with an old man named Alfons Heck –
\na now-reformed former member of the Hitler Youth!<\/p>\n

The “obsession” of this film is to turn the current situation with
\nwhat are admittedly some very dangerous people – all of whom it must be
\nhonestly stated are religious Muslim fanatics who twist the words of
\ntheir traditions and promote ideas of hate and violence that have
\ncontinually been spread throughout the world over the course of the
\npast century – and make it into a primordial battle being waged between
\nabsolute good and absolute evil.<\/p>\n

Now it is not at all necessary for us to demand that “Obsession” be
\nfair, or that it present the socio-political and historical contexts
\nthat have created this mess. Having said this, it does seem more than
\ncurious that the producers of “Obsession” make this demand of the
\nMuslims themselves. And indeed, the visual techniques used in the film
\nare eerily similar to those used by the Muslim fanatics themselves: the
\nendless repetitive barrage of flashy and shocking images presented in a
\nde-contextualized atmosphere smacks of what we might best call
\nhypocrisy. But I think we would more accurately understand the
\nrhetorical mechanisms of “Obsession” as a form of PILPUL; the attempt
\nto speak out of both sides of one’s mouth while not-so-subtly
\nrailroading home a single, obsessive mono-causal point.<\/p>\n

In essence, this is the very rhetorical means that is used against
\nIsrael and the US by the Arab media which often inflames the masses to
\nhate Israel and the US<\/b>. When Israeli and American acts of violence are
\nstripped of their socio-political context, the Arab viewer’s feelings
\nare inflamed and the individual is left with a passionate hatred
\nbordering on the pathological.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is essential reading. Click to read the whole thing over at Tikkun Olam<\/a>. The only thing missing from Shasha’s analysis is a discussion of why the producers of Obsession have engaged in this propaganda exercise; the timing of the mass-mailing of the DVD, and the specific targeting of that mailing to specific swing states under contention in the Presidential election, make the answer rather obvious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Silverstein has posted a review of the Islamophobic hate-film Obsession on his blog, written by David Shasha, one of the leaders of the American Sephardic Jewish community. It’s a powerful indictment, beginning with a list of basic facts about the muslim world that are not open to debate, but simply a matter of historical…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6],"tags":[100,92,26,95],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islamerica","category-read-this","tag-islamophobia","tag-obsession-dvd","tag-politics","tag-presidential-election"],"yoast_head":"\nReview of Obsession by David Shasha - City of Brass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Review of Obsession by David Shasha - City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Richard Silverstein has posted a review of the Islamophobic hate-film Obsession on his blog, written by David Shasha, one of the leaders of the American Sephardic Jewish community. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}