C.P.B.’S ‘Rosa Parks’ Treatment

This one took a little time for me around to due to the fact there was so much news coming out about terrorists, captures, illegal aliens, etc. I am finally getting around to posting it. It was sent to me by Bryan Hill, and it was written by Frank Gaffney. The rest of this article was written by Frank. Have a great day.

Last Wednesday, the Oregon Public Broadcasting Service announced that it had reached an agreement with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) that seemed, at first blush, to represent a breakthrough: The national Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) would no longer prevent the airing of a film CPB commissioned as part of its “America at a Crossroads” series called “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center.” Instead, PBS’s Oregon stations would make it available to the more than 350 other affiliates across the country.

As one of the Co-Executive Producers of this film, I began to receive a number of congratulatory messages from all over the country. Most were from people who had followed the saga of this documentary about moderate Muslims who have courageously challenged co-religionists known as Islamists – adherents to a totalitarian political ideology seeking to dominate the Muslim faith and, in turn, the world. Like innumerable editorialists, bloggers and ordinary citizens around the country, the authors of these messages had been frustrated and outraged when PBS and its Washington flagship, WETA, culminated months of efforts to alter and then censor “Islam vs. Islamists” by refusing to broadcast it, as planned, as part of the “Crossroads” series rolled out last month. They assumed that the Oregon announcement meant national distribution was imminent.

Unfortunately, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s arrangement with the Oregon PBS means no such thing. Far from the treatment accorded other “Crossroads” series programs – nationwide broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service, in prime-time with a substantial promotional budget – “Islam vs. Islamists” would simply be “made available” to PBS stations. Maybe some would decide to run it over the next few months. Maybe they would do so at 3:00 a.m. or Sunday afternoons when practically no one is watching. There are no guarantees of pick-up in any, let alone all, major markets.

Worse yet, the Oregon distributors have announced that they will accompany the film with the equivalent of a consumer warning label – a “discussion” that will provide “context” for viewers. Presumably, this means the sort of “context” our film’s critics at PBS and WETA kept trying to impose on us: Changes that they believed would make it, in their words, less “one-sided” (read, more fair to the Islamists) and less “alarmist.”

If past practice is any guide, those recruited to provide such “balance” will likely be representatives of organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA). Despite the fact that these groups are well-known Saudi-funded, pro-Islamist fronts, their views were exclusively and highly sympathetically featured in a documentary called “The Muslim Americans.” PBS seemed to have no reservations about airing this wholly one-sided film during the “Crossroads” series roll-out in April.

In short, now that widespread criticism has made it impossible to sustain PBS’ suppression of “Islam vs. Islamists,” the anti-Islamist Muslims who are its subjects are to be remanded to decidedly second-class coverage. Call it CPB’s version of the “Rosa Parks treatment.”

Recall that Rosa Parks could have gotten to her job via public transportation – as long as she “knew her place” and agreed to ride in the back of the bus. So, too, moderate Muslims can have their stories, as recorded in a film produced with some $675,000 in public monies, shown on the public airwaves – in at least a few locations at some point in time.

But these heroic figures must know their place, too. And their place is not in prime time, nor national distribution. Only Islamists and their apologists are entitled to front-of-the-bus treatment from those like Robert MacNeil (the host of the “Crossroads” series and producer – thanks to a sweetheart deal – of “The Muslim Americans” show), Sharon Percy Rockefeller (wife of one Senator and daughter of another, Jay Rockefeller and Charles Percy, respectively, and president of WETA) and the handful of others responsible for PBS’ rejection of “Islam vs. Islamists.”

If ever there were a time when the American people are entitled to the most comprehensive presentation possible of information concerning the struggle for the soul and future of Islam, this should be it. After all, last week a Pew Research poll found that roughly a quarter of the Muslim-American population thinks suicide bombing is legitimate in at least some circumstances. An even larger percentage claimed not to believe that Arabs perpetrated the attacks of 9/11.

The particular irony is that the whole idea behind “ America at a Crossroads” was that it was intended to offer the American people twenty programs featuring differing viewpoints and a variety of stories that would, taken together, help inform the public about the post-9/11 world. This creative vision demands that the experiences and warnings of authentically moderate, pro-democratic and tolerant Muslims be treated at least as favorably as the portrayal of those in the Muslim community determined to stifle their voices. Certainly, public broadcasting should not be party to such suppression.

A bipartisan group of legislators have called for prompt, national distribution of “Islam vs. Islamists.” They have been as impressed by the quality of the film PBS doesn’t want you to see as they are outraged by the way people entrusted with responsibility for the public airwaves have handled it and those involved in its production. The “Rosa Parks” treatment is not what they have in mind, what the courageous anti-Islamist Muslims deserve, nor what will be acceptable to the national audience that expects to be able to view this documentary without further delay.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is a partner in ABG Films, Inc. which produced “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center .” He is also a columnist for the Washington.

Moderate Muslim voices silenced

PBS won't show 'Islam vs. Islamists,' but you should see it, says ROD DREHER.
02:19 PM CDT on Sunday, May 13, 2007.

I've asked myself a thousand times since 9/11: Where are all the moderate Muslims? We're assured that there's a silent majority of Muslims who want nothing to do with the jumped-up jihadists. But those voices are few and far between.

Here's the good news: The makers of the PBS-commissioned documentary Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Center found some outspoken moderate Muslims and profiled them and their astonishing courage. The film shows these men mounting a lonely resistance against Muslim leaders in the West who are fronting a false moderate face to the public while using oil money from Gulf Arab sources to make their hard-line version of Islam the norm.

Here's the bad news: PBS refused to air the film as part of its recent "America at the Crossroads" series, even though it had been scheduled. I saw Islam vs. Islamists and concluded that it's absolutely vital to informed public debate. That PBS decided not to show, at least for now, such an important film is shocking.

Or is it? Most of the U.S. media has done a lousy job of critically covering Muslim organizations here, of asking serious questions about what their leaders believe and where they get their funding. These folks are quick to shriek "Islamophobia!" when a journalist points out their connections to radical Islam or asks straightforward questions about what they believe. The idea – and it's a successful one – is to squelch a legitimate and necessary public discussion.

As Islam vs. Islamists documents, it's a tactic they use with far less finesse on dissenting Muslims. Tarek Fatah and Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, two of several moderates featured in the film, told me that the Islamophobia canard is useless against them because they are proud, practicing Muslims. Yet they say they can't get a hearing at many mosques or Islamic institutions because those places have been taken over by Islamists – adherents to a highly politicized form of the faith.

"They've basically turned our mosques into a political party of their own," says Dr. Jasser, a Phoenix physician. "We have nowhere to go to have this debate."

He's talking about the discussion regarding their religion and its role in a pluralistic society, especially in this time of war. Dr. Jasser warns that many Muslim denunciations of terrorism are deceptive.

"Terrorism is simply a means," he says. "The Muslim community has not had a debate about whether or not they endorse the ends of the Islamists" – namely, an America that is thoroughly Islamicized and organized around sharia law.

In the film, Dr. Jasser expresses confidence that most American Muslims are not violent but advises that most accept the Islamist view of world politics – conspiratorial, self-pitying and quick to blame America for all the Muslim world's problems. We also see in the movie a leading Arizona imam denouncing the reasonable and patriotic Dr. Jasser as an "extremist liberal."

Which raises a troubling question the film does not answer: How representative of the Muslim mainstream are these Muslim moderates? The truth, as one counterterrorism investigator told me, is that the Jassers and Fatahs are probably in the minority – "but their voices need to be heard."

Indeed. Muslims, especially young ones, need exposure to competing voices from within their own traditions making the case for pluralism. And the rest of us need to take seriously the warnings these anti-Islamist Muslims are sounding: Muslim leaders' honeyed words when talking to the media and English-speaking audiences do not necessarily make them moderates or friends of peace.

Why would PBS not want to air this film defending moderate Muslims under attack – even facing death threats – from religious hardliners? An official at WETA, the Washington, D.C., public television station overseeing the "America at the Crossroads" series, has slighted the documentary as "alarmist," "unfair" and "irresponsible."

Nonsense – as any fair-minded viewer of the thoroughly professional film would attest, if only they could see it. Islam vs. Islamists would only appear alarmist and unfair to those whose cover it blows – and by useful media dupes willing to protect them. If PBS is too embarrassed to broadcast this movie, it should release the rights so someone else can, and let the American people can judge for themselves.

The West is waging a war of ideas with well-funded Islamists who far too often have the mainstream media on their side. If we ignore prophetic Muslim voices warning us that most Islamic leaders among us are not the gentle lambs they claim to be, and if we leave Muslim allies to fight the battle against these wolves alone, we only sabotage ourselves.

Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist. His e-mail address is R. Dreher.

Update: Here are some replies to this article:

Feedback.
Interesting e-mail responses to my Sunday column about Muslim moderates, like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, and their courageous struggle against Islamists. This struggle is documented in the PBS-commissioned film "Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Center," which PBS has inexplicably declined to broadcast. This first one comes from a Muslim American former military officer:

Thank you for your opinion piece in the Sunday Dallas Morning News. What Dr. Jasser faces is not at all uncommon. For a long time, I was shunned by many in my community in [deleted] for having ideas outside the mainstream. Those ideas were completely harmless and included support for electing Republicans to office and support for the first Gulf War. My parents and sister, who still live in [deleted], have had to endure snide remarks and insults because of what I have said publicly . Groups like CAIR and MAS tend to do the heavy lifting for the Islamists in the US and this does truly pervade the mosque/school systems in many cities leaving many moderates no where to go.

Your help in our struggle is appreciated.

This one comes from a non-Muslim in Arizona:

Great and important article Rod. I happen to be a patient of Dr. Jasser's. He is a hard working, compassionate, up-to-date professional physician. He is very open to people of all faiths or no faith. I also happen to have lived and worked in Islamic cultures as a language teacher, in Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. I speak Persian and some Arabic. I can do the call to prayer better than lots of Muslim religious leaders. I know many Middle Eastern cultures at their best and worst. I worked 17 years in the Middle East, in 2 to 4 year blocks, between 1965 and October 2001. I have many Muslim friends here in the U.S., especially in the Phoenix area.

Let me assure you that the problem of Islamists taking over Muslim American communities, and thinking, is far worse than the American media and government bureaucrats can imagine. Their critical analysis is impaired by the fear of being tagged as "Islamophobic" for commenting on the obvious. Europe, America and open, related states are in grave danger of destruction from within by Islamists who knowingly, or out of ignorance, pave the way for terrorist acts, by individuals or groups, which will grow in frquency and in spectcular devastation.

THE FILM P.B.S. DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SEE

Background

In the spring of 2005, Frank Gaffney was among those invited to submit a proposal for a documentary film about the world post-9/11 to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s “America at a Crossroads” competition. Shortly thereafter, a partnership was formed by Mr. Gaffney with Alex Alexiev (an internationally renowned expert on Islamism) and Martyn Burke (an accomplished author and Hollywood director of feature and documentary films) – ABG Films Inc. ABG proposed to make an hour-long documentary about the plight of moderate Muslims at the hands of their Islamist co-religionists.

This film, with the working title of “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center,” was one of thirty-five proposals selected by CPB out of roughly 440 competitors for a research and development grant. The ABG team used this grant to produce a 35-minute short film and written treatment. The ABG proposal was, in turn, one of 20 competitors further down-selected by CPB to receive a nearly $600,000 production grant. At the time, moreover, it was announced in a CPB press release that “Islam vs. Islamists” would be one of the Crossroads series films to be aired by the Public Broadcasting Service during eight prime-time hours set aside for that purpose, initially scheduled for the Fall of 2006.

At about the same time as the latter decision was made in early 2006, personnel changes at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting began affecting planning for the Crossroads project. These ultimately resulted in the entire initiative being turned over to the Public Broadcasting Service and its flagship Washington station, WETA.

The Trouble Begins

As this transition went forward, “Islam vs. Islamists” began to experience a succession of problems that have been documented in correspondence between ABG’s principals and WETA President Sharon Percy Rockefeller. They started with an unconcealed effort by PBS executives to dissuade CPB from making the production grant to ABG. The grounds given: two of the film’s executive co-producers were associated with an “advocacy” organization (i.e., in their “day-jobs” as President and Vice President, respectively, of the Center for Security Policy ). It was asserted that PBS “guidelines” would not permit such individuals to have a role in determining the content of a film aired on the Public Broadcasting Service’s airwaves.

After ABG documented that these guidelines were routinely ignored by PBS and its affiliates – resulting in the frequent broadcasting of films and even series produced by or otherwise associated with left-of-center advocacy organizations – CPB President Pat Harrison decided to approve the production grant for “Islam vs. Islamists.” Even after this decision, PBS continued to insist that it would not broadcast the film unless Messrs. Gaffney and Alexiev were stripped of their Executive Producer roles, delaying by four months the execution of our contract. PBS asserted this position again, both orally and in writing, once the production funds were finally in hand.

Death of a Thousand Cuts

In the face of ABG’s refusal to allow members of its team to be blacklisted, the WETA/PBS Crossroads series management apparently decided to use other means to accomplish the objective of preventing “Islam vs. Islamists” from being aired on the Public Broadcasting Service. As the attached correspondence makes clear, these included:

• Hiring as a series producer an individual who made known to ABG the high regard he had for his father, who happens to be a Muslim convert with long-established ties to British Islamists. This producer has repeatedly insisted that changes be made in the structure and “context” of our film in ways that seemed intended to provide a more favorable treatment of the profiled Islamists, compromise the documentary’s central concept and greatly complicate its production.

(N.B. These changes are not to be confused with more straightforward editorial changes which were also proposed throughout the process. Wherever such suggestions were warranted and constructive, we have incorporated or otherwise responded to them.)

• Engaging an outside “advisor” to the series whose well-publicized sympathies for known Islamists made it predictable that she would object to our film. In the event, this advisor actually breached her confidentiality agreement and showed the film to interested parties, who promptly threatened litigation if it were not changed to their liking.
• Handicapping “Islamist vs. Islamist” to the benefit of other films. One also dealing with American Muslims was commissioned – after and altogether outside the Crossroads competition – from Robert MacNeil, who had been brought in by WETA/PBS to serve as the series moderator. In another case, individuals who we had advised the series producers were going to be interviewed during our location-shooting in Canada became unavailable to us when they were invited to be filmed by a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation crew working for another Crossroads film.
• On 12 February 2007, PBS and WETA informed ABG that “Islam vs. Islamists” had been rejected for airing by the Crossroads series. The reasons given amounted to a repetition of previous complaints that the Islamists and their sympathizers had not been given favorable enough treatment. On 3 April, Mr. MacNeil denounced this film on a nationally syndicated NPR program as “extremely one-sided and alarmist.”

Conclusion

PBS/WETA’s highly prejudicial treatment of “Islam vs. Islamists” seriously disserves the viewing public insofar as there is, arguably, no more important topic for American (and, we believe, foreign) audiences to understand about the post-9/11 world than the plight of moderate Muslims at the hands of their Islamist enemies – and ours.

As awareness grows about the “parallel societies” the Islamists are trying to insinuate into Western democracies – and, thereby, to undermine them – the importance and timeliness of this film which illuminates these efforts and their dangers becomes all the more apparent. CPB should immediately take steps to allow “Islam vs. Islamists” to be seen in the near future by the largest possible audience. Toward that end, it should make arrangements at once to permit this documentary’s distribution by outlets other than PBS.

The proof, evidence if you will, is right here that the show was to air. Why won't they allow someone else to air it, and what are they hiding?