My two cents

Submitted by Moataz Emam (United States), Jan 2, 2003 at 09:36

First of all, let me make it clear that I am a Muslim, and I am going to
criticize Mr. Pipes article from that point of view. An important
disclaimer is that I have not seen the film yet, so post viewing
comments or corrections may be in order.

The article addresses several issues, foremost among them is the
question of the constitutionality of using taxpayers money to promote
any religion. I won't comment on that since it is a legal issue. I would
like to comment on the rest of it though.

The idea that this one movie is designed to attract Americans to Islam
does not make sense to me, simply because it is one film and not a whole
religious campaign. Recall that Islam, whatever you think of it, is the
least represented of all major religions in the US. 9/11 has certainly
sparked a lot of interest in this religion, and from a commercial point
of view, if I were a PBS official looking for ratings, Islam would be
one of my choices for a documentary. You can be sure a lot of viewers
will tune in.

Which brings me to both the comparison with the earlier film about Jesus
and the question of using current research as opposed to standard dogma.
As I said, Islam is underrepresented in the US. If you wanted to do a
program explaining Islam, good or bad, you must certainly explain the
basics, you cannot just go ahead and present new ideas to viewers who
have no idea what the old ideas were in the first place. Christianity is
the most widely believed religion in the US, doing a program to explain
the basics of Christianity does not make sense because almost everyone
is familiar with them. Here it certainly makes sense to present more
controversial views.

As for the producers presenting Mohammed in a favorable light only, that
is their choice and Mr. Pipes is certainly welcome to produce a counter
film that shows any unfavorable issues. He can argue Muslim women issues
all he wants, he can ignore that Muslim women under Islam are indeed
given right unimaginable to European women until very recently (and
actually more rights are given to Muslim women today). The fact that
these rights are violated in some countries has nothing to do with what
Mohammed or the Quran, which apparently Mr. Pipes did not read, said.
They are more related to the ignorance and arrogance of men of all
religions and beliefs. Mr. Pipes lists: "genital mutilation, forced
marriages, purdah, illiteracy, sexual apartheid, polygamy and honor
killings." Of course, he neglects to point out that there is an absolute
lack of any Quranic verses or Mohammedan quotes that supports these, in
fact quite the opposite: there is an abundance of verses that prohibit
most of these. The only exception is polygamy which has its very limited
reasons and very strong restrictions, which I won't go into right now.

If some men in Muslim countries commit women's rights violations, they
do so AGAINST the Quran and Mohammedan teachings, i.e. the issues the
program is about.

Mr. Pipes question of how can anyone know that Mohammed's marriages were
not of lust has a simple answer: Mohammed married several women, all but
one were widows or divorced, several were older than him, in many cases
much older. Why did he do that? There was always either a religious
reason; to strike an enduring example of some point, or a political
reason; to form alliances with a certain group. The details are
plentiful, read for example:

http://www.themodernreligion.com/prophet/prophet_aisha.htm
http://www.themodernreligion.com/prophet/prophet.html

and many others. Mr. Pipes implies that Mohammed's marriage to Khadija
was a marriage of convenience, completely ignoring that Khadija was the
one to ask Mohammed to marry her. Even though she was richer, Mohammed
came from a very political powerful family, and if anyone, she was to
gain more of this marriage. Anyway, they were happily married for many
years until she died.

Representing religious beliefs as fact, which Mr. Pipes criticizes, is
debatable. Many programs of Jesus represent religious beliefs as fact.
The point is the whole issue is an issue of religious beliefs. Again, if
Mr. Pipes wishes to produce a counter program, I would be the first one
to watch it.

Mr. Pipes says: "PBS ignores an ongoing scholarly reassessment of
Muhammad's life that disputes every detail - down to the century and
region Muhammad lived in "

He forgets to tell us what "ongoing scholarly assessment", who is doing
it? What is it based on? Does it have backing from all historians,
Muslims and otherwise? Who is it funded by? What is this person's
political views? These are important questions to answer before
accepting any direction of research in PARTICULARLY such an issue as a
valid direction. This is not mathematics or physics, it is a subject
that has vast political implications, specially in this post 9/11 world.
In any case, presenting viewers who know very little of Islam anyway
with views and opinions that are new and controversial would be a bad
choice, as I mentioned before.

He says "* The U.S. government should never fund a documentary whose
obvious intent is to glorify a religion and proselytize for it."

As I mentioned, this is a legal issue which I decline to discuss. But
again, Mr. Pipes can go right ahead and take this to court and see what
happens.

Thank you ...

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