June 2, 2006

ASPERS SPONSOR HATE FILM, SAY CRITICS

By Carol Sanders, (Winnipeg Free Press, 5/30/06)

Last night's Canadian premiere of the controversial documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West was a sellout.

"People are basically excited about the film," said Rabbi Daniel Klatzkow with the Jewish faith group Aish Winnipeg. Aish, the Winnipeg Zionist Initiative and the Asper Foundation sponsored the screening last night at Imax in Portage Place. A second screening in the theatre, which seats about 300 people, was added for tonight. 

The movie will also be shown in Toronto next month, with Canada's Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day as a featured guest.

Local Muslims and some non-Muslims who obtained a copy of the film last week said it's hate propaganda that promotes intolerance.

Howard Davidson, who has spent time in the Middle East and is a director of aboriginal focus programs at the University of Manitoba, attended the screening and questioned the intentions of the film and its sponsors.

"A huge problem with the film is at no time does the film give any explanation for why people would be saying these things," said Davidson.

"If the Asper Foundation is bringing in the film that is clearly propaganda and clearly fear-mongering and this is the organization that is a leader in the human rights museum, that is not only baffling, it's astounding. Where is their credibility? Their legitimacy?"

Letter to the editor, Winnipeg Free Press, 5/30/06

ANTI-MUSLIM PROPAGANDA

Why would the Asper family, which is working so hard to establish a human rights museum in Winnipeg, sponsor the IMAX screening of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West? I saw this awful film last Friday. It is a vicious piece of anti-Muslim propaganda that comes at you in a steady stream of images of violence and of Muslims chanting angry threats and shaking their fists.

Throughout the film, talking heads make assertions that reveal either a profound ignorance or crass disregard of the socio-political context of these events and a lack of critical thought. There is not a single image of the multitudes of dispossessed Muslim people who live in miserable squalor, nor of the vast majority of peaceful, law-abiding Muslims among us who regularly must deal with racism in their everyday lives. Instead, there is some black-and-white footage of a sheik meeting with Hitler, and from that the dire assertion that radical Islam is today's Naziism.

As I understand it, the purpose of the human rights museum is to remember many human rights abuses and struggles and, thereby, stimulate reflection and promote understanding of the roots of hate and violence and their terrible personal and social costs. Why then, I ask, would the Aspers promote a film that can only breed intolerance and, worse still, provoke violence against Muslims in their own community?

MARGUERITE WARNER

Winnipeg

Source: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/subscriber/local/story/3519696p-4067049c.html

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