I haven’t seen this film — if any of you have, please add a comment or send me an email at director[at]jihadwatch.org. Maybe it isn’t as witless a manifestation of politically correct moral equivalence as it appears to be from this review; if that turns out to be the case, I’ll add an update. But from the looks of this review, Celine is fanatical, obsessively pious — to the extent that she has to leave her convent due to her apparently obvious emotional instability. Then later, when she meets Nassir, she is still fervently Christian, telling him that she is “saving herself for Christ.” Nonetheless, she joins him in his jihad terrorist activity, because she believes that “planting bombs will bring her closer to God.”
So does Celine convert to Islam in the movie? Or does French director Bruno Dumont think that piety is piety, and that a girl who is “saving herself for Christ” one minute might just as well starting setting off bombs to bring herself “closer to God” the next? After all, all religions have their “extremists,” right? And they’re all essentially equivalent — or so the mainstream media dins endlessly into our ears.
There are some hard facts here, however — indeed, essentially irreducible ones. Christianity contains no doctrines that could lead a Christian to believe that “planting bombs will bring” him or her “closer to God.” The rare occasions when someone actually does commit violence in the name of Christianity — e.g., the handful of abortion clinic bombers, whose actual numbers are dwarfed by their cultural presence as an all-purpose bogeyman of the Left and Islamic supremacist moral equivalence artists — are acting in defiance of the teachings of every mainstream sect of Christianity. By contrast, the mainstream sects and schools of Islam do contain doctrines that can and do lead a Muslim to believe that “planting bombs” will indeed lead him “closer to God”: the Qur’an passage used to justify suicide bombing, the guarantee of Paradise to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah (9:111) is just one of many available examples.
But in the popular culture the mainstream view, reinforced with dogmatic certainty and ostracism for those who dare to dissent from it, was articulated a few years back by Rosie O’Donnell: “Radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam.” And when she said this on some TV show, the studio audience applauded respectfully. This is what everyone takes for granted — and so we get astoundingly stupid films like this one (or at least so it appears to be). In movieland, fanatical Christians are just a likely, or more likely, to kill you as are Muslims, who are generally not fanatical at all, but wise, patient, and victimized. Apparently self-hating Leftist Westerners feel more comfortable in a world where the Western Christians they’ve always despised are the perpetrators, rather than the victims, of terrorist violence.
The problem with films like this one — again, if it is indeed the way it seems to be from this review — is that it paints a picture of the world that is false, and misleading, and ultimately dangerous, insofar as it weakens the resolve of Westerners to defend themselves from Islamic supremacism and jihad. After all, why bother? Christianity is just as bad, and ergo, the Judeo-Christian civilization, even in its post-Christian form, is not worth defending. Maybe the wise, patient and victimized Muslims will civilize us — you know, the way they did the proto-multicultural paradise of Al-Andalus.
“Pious novice can’t get into the habit,” by V.A. Musetto in the New York Post, December 23:
Celine, the troubled young woman at the center of French director Bruno Dumont’s “Hadewijch,” loves God. Trouble is, she loves Him too much.
When she stops eating and caring for herself, to leave more time to pray, she’s asked to depart the convent where she is preparing to become a nun.
She returns to Paris and her parents’ posh apartment and cuddly little white dog. In no time, Celine has taken up with Nassir, a young Muslim man she meets in a cafe. She even invites him over to meet her indifferent parents. (Talk about culture shock for all concerned.)
The affair is platonic because Celine is a virgin who says she’s saving herself for Christ. “It’s not a man I need. It’s God,” she tells Nassir. “I think you’re nuts,” he responds, with good reason.
Nassir, we learn, is a terrorist, and he invites Celine to join “the fight.” She accepts, because she thinks planting bombs will bring her closer to God….
“Hadewijch” — an exploration of the power of religion — should delight Dumont’s fans. For others, it will take a bit of getting used to. The effort will prove to be worthwhile.