But, but... we're told the Brotherhood is "moderate," and "largely secular," and that a fresh, new, youthful vanguard of liberal members is challenging that tiny minority of stuffy old "conservatives." Wishful thinking aside, Ikhwan Cinema was set up by members of the group's youth wing.
"Brotherhood gets out Muslim message with movies," by David E. Miller for The Media Line, July 3 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):
A Christian and a Muslim lay injured in an Egyptian hospital room. The Christian, who has just lost an eye in a terrorist attack on his church, turns to his neighbor and asks why Muslims attack Christians.
"What do you mean by Muslims? Can the person who did this really be a Muslim?" answers the other, injured in the same attack.
Deflection of responsibility. The message: stop talking about Muslim attacks on Christians as having anything to do with Islam.
The evident symbolism in the short film "The Eye Does Not See" may seem kitsch to Western viewers, but it exposes a widespread idealistic vision of sectarian relations in post-revolutionary Egypt. At the end of the film, the Muslim patient dies, but donates his cornea to save the vision of his Christian companion.
The new Egypt is far from perfect, but a new Facebook page addresses the country's social ills through cinema, the Islamic way. With 7,000 fans and growing, "Ikhwan Cinema" embeds short locally-produced films which mirror society's most pressing issues, attempting to encourage "meaningful film.” Ikhwan Cinema hasn't yet begun producing films itself, but it intends to begin shortly.
Take corruption for example. The film "It's Not Enough" displays a civil servant cruelly milking a citizen for a bribe in return for approving a document. But no sooner does he take the payment then a phone call arrives notifying him that his son has been injured. The civil servant rushes to the hospital, but in an act of poetic justice, the hospital clerk refuses to transfer the critically wounded boy to the emergency room unless his corrupt father bribes him.
"That's not enough," the clerk tells the weeping father, echoing what the father had just said to the hapless citizen seeking his services.
"Excellent work," wrote Saad Shehata on the page's wall. "Hopefully, the Brotherhood will reveal a program to deliver Egypt from its repression."
Ikhwan [Brotherhood] Cinema isn’t sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s biggest Islamic movement and a contender for power in upcoming elections. But it was set up and is run by people belonging to its youth wing and it has gotten an official endorsement from the organization.
Its short films grapple with issues as diverse as corruption, sectarian strife, illicit gains and -- using classic anti-Semitic imagery -- Israeli cruelty towards Arabs. In the film "Soccer Match," for instance, two stereotypical Jews with ear locks gloat as they witness intra-Arab animosity on the soccer field, with the Israeli national anthem playing in the background.
Ali Khafagy, director of youth affairs in the Giza branch of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood's new political party, said he loved Egyptian film but could not set foot in an Egyptian cinema.
"I don’t go there because many films have love scenes, which our censorship doesn’t remove," Khafagy told The Media Line. "I want to see films I can benefit from."
Khafagy said the Egyptian film industry alienated and provoked many traditional Egyptians like himself, but the new youth initiative gave Egyptian film producers an alternative model for "clean and meaningful film.”[...]
Echoes of North Korea's turgid Nation and Destiny series.
A new biographical film about the life of Hassan Al-Bana, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, is an example of the kind of film Khafagy would like to see more of. Filming is to begin shortly, with Syrian actor Rashid Assaf playing the role of Bana. The film is widely viewed as the Brotherhood's answer to a television series aired last year which critically dealt with Brotherhood history.
Joseph Fahim, a Christian film critic for the English-language Daily News Egypt, said film has been used by dictators as a powerful propaganda tool for decades.
Will the Brotherhood find its Leni Riefenstahl?
"It's a very smart approach," Fahim told The Media Line. "[The Brotherhood] wants to align itself with these positive ideals in a time when their message is falling on deaf ears."...
Thanks for the most interesting link, Marisol.
Film-making is a double-edged sword, just like novels. Totalitarian governments and societies always have to maintain tight control over their creative artists, or sooner or later, the artists begin to question the premises of their own society.
We should keep a watch on the mechanisms to Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt use to maintain orthodoxy in its creative arts. Will the films critical of Egyptian bureaucracy continue, once a Muslim Brotherhood president is elected? Will a film critical of the atrocious behavior of Egyptian men towards women appear?
The German Nazis, under Joseph Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda, uses such propaganda lies, including through films, to dupe the German masses, since 1930. These Islamic Nazis - are doing the same, in their persistent and savage goal to destroy all the Jews in Israel. See the Muslim Brotherhood continuous Nazi-link from its foundation by Hitler's main collaborator or adviser, Hassan al-banna and until today, particularly through its (and Islam) main spiritual adviser, Yusuf al-Qaradawi who made this evil call to mass murder the Jews, recently: at – http://europenews.dk/en ; In - http://www.investigativeproject.org/2315/moderate-qaradawi-defends-hitler-and-nuclear
“Moderate” Qaradawi Defends Hitler and Nuclear Terror
IPT News
November 9, 2010
….According to excerpts of a speech that aired on Al-Jazeera in January 2009, Qaradawi called on Muslims to put Jews in “their place” as Hitler had done, in revenge for Israeli military operations in Gaza several weeks earlier. “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption,” he said. “The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers.” At a January 2009 “Gaza Victory Rally” in Doha, Qatar, Qaradawi prayed for the opportunity to kill a Jew before his death. “The only thing that I hope for is that as my life approaches its end, Allah will give me an opportunity to go to the land of Jihad and resistance, even if in a wheelchair. I will shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus, I will seal my life with martyrdom. Praise be to Allah.”……
OT
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) doesn't exactly like it when confronted with historical facts or common sense.
Case in point, during an airing of the Canadian program Sid Roth’s It’s Supernatural, that day's guest, Joel Richardson, author of The Islamic Antichrist, referenced the Islamic hadith (sayings of Mohammed) that calls for the killing of the Jews.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJYWIH3hkAo&feature=related
http://www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-fayetteville/some-of-the-british-are-coming-some-of-the-british-are-coming-1
Press Release
Accusation of Hatred by Muslims Violates Broadcast Code of Ethics, Says Canadian Broadcast Standards Council
Among the discussion subjects on the episode, during which author Joel Richardson was the invited guest, were: first, the 7th century Treaty of Hudaibiya and its application in the modern era; and, second, an assertion that “Muslims believe it is their divine call to eliminate the Jewish people.”
http://cbsc.ca/english/documents/prs/2011/110601.php
A new biographical film about the life of Hassan Al-Bana...
"Don't make me angry, you won't like me when I'm angry" ... Oh, no, that was Dr. Bruce Banner (or Eric Bana)... still, could be, eh, if the cap fits, etc.
Looks to me that the clueless western media is in "love" with Muslims and mo/allah. Love makes people blind that they cannot see the obvious truths (or their lies) abou them. That is why it is always the bearer of truth who is accused of hatred and bigotry and real perpetrators of such nonsense, Muslims themselves go are always the victims!!! Our moronic media and politicians are working very hard to hasten the demise of civilization of the world.
"I don’t go there because many films have love scenes, which our censorship doesn’t remove," Khafagy told The Media Line. "I want to see films I can benefit from." "
..
I recommend FITNA...OBSESSION...AND SUBMISSION...
Will the Brotherhood find its Leni Riefenstahl?
...........................
I very much doubt it. While Riefenstahl's work for the Reich—"Olympia" and, especially, "Triumph of the Will"—is deeply disturbing work, it is also beautifully rendered. Even given my hatred of Fascism and knowing all I know about the horrors that would come from it, hers is very compelling work.
Riefenstahl came out the rich German artistic tradition—especially the fine and experimental film making of the 1920s there.
There is nothing similar in the arid Muslim world. Soviet—or Communist Chinese—propaganda style work is probably the best they can hope for, and I rather doubt they will even be able to achieve that.
Still, it may not matter. Certainly, the film about the injured Christian and Muslim seems to aimed more at Taqiyya for Infidels than any actual inspiration for Ikhwan-adhering Muslims, so any clunky vehicle may fit the bill. After all, many infidels *want* to be reassured that Islam is less brutal than it is.
Come to think of it, that's exactly what those springtime scenes of swastika flags flying from the windows of quaint houses in little German towns early in "Triumph of the Will" accomplished—just in a rather more elegant fashion...
Now, where is the brave independent film-maker who will - anonymously - do a Tintin-style animated 'adventures of a journalist behind jihadist lines' black and white cartoon adaptation of John Roy Carlson's 'Cairo to Damascus'?
Hassan al-Banna makes a cameo appearance, when 'Carlson' interviews him. The book even contains a photograph of him, all ready for some brave cartoonist/ animator to bring to life.
Here's Carlson's description: "He approached us - a short, squat, ratty-faced man with puffed cheeks and fleshy nose. He was dressed in European clothes - a black pinpoint double-breasted suit - and wore an extra tall tarboosh which gave him the illusion of added height. His thin beard, running from ear to ear, crawled up, then down his upper lip like an ugly black hirsute vine. His manner was mousy and furtive. His eyes, beadlike and deep-set, were like two dark slits across his face...
'the Moorshid spoke with a pious look on his face, his head bent slightly to the right, hands folded meekly in his lap. I disliked him instantly and thoroughly.
'He was the most loathsome man I had yet met in Cairo'. - Cairo to Damascus, 1951, p. 91.
Tuesday's Riddle:
Why do those who consider sex unclean have the most children?
For those who haven't read it yet..
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47434806/Cairo-to-Damascus-by-John-Roy-Carlson-1951-P1#archive
Some things never change indeed..
Only slightly off-topic: Turner Classic Movie's theme of the month is "Race & Hollywood: Arab Images in Film".
Host Robert Osborne is in conversation with the meretricious Jack G. Shaheen, author of "Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People".
From what I've seen so far, he constantly refers to "Arabs" when he actually means "Muslims".
He goes back and forth between rage and laughing ruefully at Hollywood's "ignorance". How are they showing their ignorance? Why, by depicting "Arabs" as violent and untrustworthy, and engaging in bloody revenge, kidnapping, and slave trading.
Osborne—who I usually like—laughs uncomfortably along with him.
Uh—how exactly is this wrong? Or is it the case—so frequent with Islam—that truth simply doesn't matter?
Now, Hollywood has always—by its very nature—indulged in a certain amount of fantasy, but it seems to me that films made before rampant "political correctness" set in are actually considerably more accurate in their understanding of Muslims.
TCM is actually—as always—showing some good films, if you can put up with the weasely introductions, that is. Air times are Tuesdays and Thursdays after 8pm EDT.
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/411149|0/Race-Hollywood-Arab-Images-on-Film.html/
Gravenimage
there's an absolutely hilarious classic cartoon episode of 'Popeye the Sailor Man' that involves Arabs, Muslims, camels, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
I haven't looked for it on youtube yet but I suspect it's probably up there somewhere.
Yup.
It's on youtube.
Here's part 1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E5529aEQXU&feature=related
And here's part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slQfYXwprfg&feature=related