If this "conflict-resolution" professor deems the Obsession film "pure propaganda," at least one Middle East history professor thinks otherwise. Wonder who knows more? More on this story.
"Obsession smells: It's propaganda, professor argues, by Tom H. Hastings for Oregon Live, September 29:
Many who subscribed to The Sunday Oregonian received, unbidden, a copy of Wayne Kopping's "Obsession: Radical Islam's war against the West," a packaged DVD that purports to show us the threat of worldwide radical Islam. It is disturbing and contains enough fact and truthto spur a logical and correct rejection of the ghastly beliefs and conduct of radical Islamicists.If it's "pure propaganda," what makes the good professor say earlier that it "contains enough fact and truth"?Obsession is also connected to both the Israeli intelligence service and Christian evangelicals via Middle East Media Research Institute, according to SourceWatch.org.
Naturally, then, it is an hour of pure propaganda...
It is truly disgusting to watch Muslim 'clerics' practice their twisted version of hatred and objectification. Anyone who defends or tolerates that revisionist theology should rethink their moral code.Calling on believers to kill Jews or any other kuffar (non-Muslim) is loathsome.Amazing: Muslims calling on the death of infidels is a "twisted version of Islam" and "revisionist theology." Actually, not so amazing since it is clear that this professor (as is increasingly the wont of most "professors" and "experts") is relying more on an emotionally-driven postmodern epistemology than he is by standard Islamic theology and doctrine, which he clearly knows next to nothing about, aside from reading, perhaps, Karen Armstrong's cutesy, feel-good-about-Islam books.
However, there are sections of the film that defy logic and history.For example, in interviews with several principle subjects,astonishment is expressed at the possibility that foreign policies of the U.S. or the UK might have contributed to the growth of jihad.Ah, the famous response from the "experts," such as Michael Scheuer: US foreign policy is the root of all Islamic "radicalism." For more on this, including textual evidence that, at least for al-Qaeda types, Islam instructs hatred and animosity for the infidel, per se, see here.Actually, the record is quite clear on this point; the foreign policy of the U.S. and UK helped exacerbate and foment jihad at many turns, from the killer sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s to the unconditional military aid to the Israeli Defense Force (at greater levels than any other nation on Earth every year), to the support for corrupt Middle Eastern governments such as Egypt's Mubarak and the Saudi royals, tothe U.S. occupation of places regarded as holy by Muslims (U.S. troops first in Saudi Arabia and now controlling Iraq).
There is plenty of blame to go around, but right now the most productive path forward is dialog based on lessons learned, on caution but on the determination to support nonviolence and democracy, not the armed control of any nation...
Unfortunately, the term "propaganda" is associated with "lies". Tain't necessarily so. Yes, I'd call the film propaganda: it consciously promotes a particular viewpoint, one which happen, in my opinion, to be correct: alarm about the violence and oppression which tend to accompany Islam wherever it is found, and which do not appear to be in any way contradictory to the core ideals of Islam.
For the West to prevail against Islam's intentions to reshape it in its image, not only must Islam be combatted, but also the arrogance and foolishness of Western elites who remain deeply ignorant of what Islam is really all about. In short, the West must win on two fronts, not one.
No one is forcing anyone to watch this DVD. Those who receive it "unbidden" are free to toss it in the trash, unopened and unwatched.
All we have to do is betray Israel and bow to our moslem betters, did I get it?
/not going to happen
Those in the "conflict resolution" business -- which comes mostly from Roger Fisher and the "Getting to Yes" boys who turned Fisher's banalities into a well-packaged presentation that has become, and not only in Cambirdge, a vast "Negotiations" or "Conflict Resolution" industry, with plenty of academic positions, and still more important, lots of opportunities to be hired as consultants by businesses, to come in and show them how to Get To Yes.
Of course, the whole enterprise is based on the belief that no one, anywhere, cannot be reasoned with, is not susceptible to permanent compromise. One points to Hitler. One points to Stalin or Chairman Mao. And one points to the ideology of Islam, which is absolutely clear on certain things.
To wit:
Muslims are superior to non-Muslims, and the only faith that is true is Islam. All others are inferior, and some even more inferior than others.
All of humanity divides into Muslims and non-Muslims, Believers and Infidels. Muslims have a duty to engage in the "Jihad" or "struggle" to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam. That is, the Lands Where Islam Dominates and Muslims rule – the Dar al-Islam – must be steadily expanded, at the expense of the Bilad al-Kufr (Lands of the Infidels), or as it was normally called, the Dar al-Harb (“Domain of War”), where non-Muslims still ruled, and Islam had not overcome obstacles to its spread, and its necessary dominance. For there is no equality of faiths in Islam;’ the word “pluralism” in the sense in which that word is widely understood has no place.
Traditionally, the expansion of Islam, the “removal of all obstacles to the spread of Islam,” was accomplished through qitaal, or combat, and nowadays Muslims descirbe certain acts as a form of qitaal when we, Infidels, have no trouble as describing them as acts of terrorism, for they are aimed at civilians and noncombatants, and do not take place on a field of battle, but are attacks on schoolbusses and schoolyards, on pizza parlors and office buildings, everyehwere that non-Muslims innocently gather.
Furthermore, the conditions of present-day life now permit an expansion of the instruments of Jihad beyond the traditional qitaal, and the most potent of these instruments are the result of the trillions of dollars (some 11-12 trillion since 1973 alone), that the Muslim states of OPEC have received, and the millions of Muslim migrants allowed into the countries of Western Europe, by heedless and negligent political and media elites, apparently indifferent to what was contained, undeclared, in the mental baggage of those Muslim immigrants. Finally, Muslims have been good about appropriating , and non-Muslims must in the end yield to Muslim rule. In those lands where the non-Muslims have yielded, usually -- in the past -- by military conquest (though some places, such as the East Indies, succumbed differently), they were, if Christians and Jews (and later, Zoroastrians and Hindus, solely practical reasons, were treated as "honorary" People of the Book), allowed both to live and to practice their faith, but were also subject to a series of onerous political, economic, and social disabilities, occasionally relieved by a more benign and relaxed ruler (see Akbar), that over time naturally caused many to convert to Islam in order to avoid that status, of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity that constituted the life of the "dhimmi."
What do the epigones of the late Roger Fisher, who started out with a business – the “Neogiation Project” (which some celebrated fellow HLS professors, finding the consulting business infra dig, were known to call “the Negotiation Racket”), make of an ideology that sees real “compromise” as impossible, as negating what Islam inculcates, though, of course, following both the example of Muhammad in his treaty-making, that 10-year “hudna” or truce-treaty, with the Meccans in 628 A.D. at Hudaibiyya that, as soon as he felt his side had become stronger, he immediately discarded and went on the attack, and the advice that Muhammad so famously gave – “war is deception” – and deception, subterfuge, taqiyya, kitman – all are not to be deplored, but rather receive religious sanction in Islam.
How can someone, anyone, whose professional life is based on the notion that everyone can come to final terms with everyone else, deal with the most important geopolitical question of the age – that of the doctrine of Jihad, for a while having fallen into desuetude because of the perceived superior power of the West, is now not only revived with vigor, but because of the OPEC trillions and the Muslim migrant tens of millions, is being pursued everywhere, in southern Thailand and the southern Philippines and the southern Sudan and southern Nigeria (what was the Biafran war except, as Col. Ojukwu said, an attempt by the Christians of Nigeria to become independent of those conducting a “Jihad,” as he put it, against them?), in the attempts to wipe out Israel, or to change forever the legal and political institutions of the countries of Western Europe, so that inexorably they will no longer flatly contradict the Sharia, but come to a greater consonance with it, what else is the attempt to make Westerners forget their own histories, their own achievements, and to rewrite everything so that they will come to believe the Muslim narrative, or at least great parts of it? The canonical texts of Islam – Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira – do not say: leave to the Infidels what the Infidels possess. The texts do not say: when in Infidel lands, conform to Infidel ways. The texts do not say: the world is to be shared between Muslims and non-Muslims, and in some places one will prevail, and in some, the other.
No, the texts are very clear: Islam is to spread across the earth, the earth that belongs to Allah and to the Muslims, and even, because Islam is a vehicle for Arab supremacism, not merely to the Muslims but to those Muslims who consider themselves to be Arabs, “the best of peoples.”
This is the kind of thing those whose money and prestige and jobs come from the deep and untested and untrue belief that Compromise Is Always Possible, That We Can Always Get To “Yes” (Roger Fisher, by the way, was a real, a genuine simpleton, about the world, and ignorant of history – and, bien entendu, of Islam).
What else can you expect from such people? They don’t want to study. It’s too tiring. Besides, they have their doctorates and their jobs. Now what they need is glory and money. And that doesn’t require long hours of study; it requires a simpleton appealing to other simpletons.
Well done, Tom H. Hastings, who teaches in the "ConflictResolutionprogram" at Oregon State. You have done Roger Fisher proud.
Almost any political documentary that has a point of view can be called propaganda. Given the costs of distributing the dvd, one must assume that those who gave it away did wish to use the movie to make a point. So, in this case Obsession was distributed as a piece of propaganda. That doesn't relate to its truth or falsehood.
If it is propaganda, so what? Whether it is it true or false is the real issue.
lets do the math:
idiot + high level degree = idiot
Tom H. Hastings
Well done, Tom H. Hastings, who teaches in the "ConflictResolutionprogram" at Oregon State. You have done Roger Fisher proud.
Posted by: Hugh at September 30, 2008 12:02 PM
I looked him up. His Ph.D is "in progress."
So is his brain.
I liked Obsession the DVD but I realy loved "Islam: What the West Needs to Know" DVD. I have loaned my copy to so many people that it is begining to look like a worn out rental copy. Soon I will have to buy another copy before it is outlawed by Obama.
"It is truly disgusting to watch Muslim 'clerics' practice their twisted version of hatred and objectification. Anyone who defends or tolerates that revisionist theology should rethink their moral code.Calling on believers to kill Jews or any other kuffar (non-Muslim) is loathsome."
Sounds like the teachers of the "few radicals" has been found. Now lets inform the clerics on what they have got all wrong, twisted up in the hate filled moral code they read and preach from.
We can surely discuss and dialog them on how they have their faith all wrong, reading the "holy koran" from back to front.
Break the film down and show any lies or exaggerations…that would work, eh? Let's see it.
I was pleasantly surprised to also receive an "unbidden" copy, in today's mail. Impressive distribution! Let's hope people take to heart what they view. Such unfiltered material may finally wake up some sleep-walkers. Or it may take yet another mass attack within America.... Let's hope for the former.