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Obsession

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I received a free DVD in the mail the other day. My wife also received the same DVD the same day. It is called Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West. It is produced by the Clarion Fund, self-proclaimed as an organization who furthers national security through education. While it says it's the 'special one hour edition', it appears to be the same edition (both actually 77 mins long) as the one they sell on their web site.

I just finished watching it and here are a few of my thoughts. It is not exactly an in-depth examination of the problem of Islam, radical or otherwise, but it does use plenty of current day examples of the faithful calling for the death of the west with some evidence that it is the acceptable mainstream ideology through much of the Arab world. It stresses heavily both the deception used by the faithful and the brute force brainwashing of the Arab culture. While there is some appeal to emotion in the film, mostly in the dramatic styling used to relay the information, I think they try to present mostly a factual case for why we - as in freedom loving people - should be more concerned with the threat that radical Islam represents. Towards the end of the documentary they show some parallels between the spread of radical Islam and the spread of Nazism prior to and during WWII. I have to admit, the movie scares me a good bit and I already think of radical Islam as a serious threat.

One gentleman at the end said this, "There is no evil that ever disappeared of it's own accord". That was followed shortly after by the quote "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)

While I'm not quite sure why, I had some initial reservations that their might be some Christianity behind this concern over Islam. If there is, it is not really overt in the movie.

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I definitely want to see it. I'm pretty sure that's the one made several years ago, in which the director (van Gogh) was repeatedly stabbed by a Muslim radical in the middle of a public square. And I believe it features a soon-to-be Dutch PM Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is like oh my god my hero and extremely pretty, and wrote a great book on the horrors of the Muslim world she grew up in.

Anyway, if that's the same film that I'm thinking of, one thing to keep in mind is that it's slightly dated and Holland has since improved its laws regarding Muslim immigrants.

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Anyway, if that's the same film that I'm thinking of,

Actually it is not the same film. You are thinking of Submission, a film which specifically addresses Islam and its treatment of women. I've seen that and while it relays important sentiments from the point of view of the woman, it watches almost like a music video. I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way, van Gogh intended for it to be highly stylized I believe.

Isnt the Clarion Fund a branch of an Orthodox Jewish organization with strong ties to Israel? It hardly seems the most unbiased source of information on Islam or the Arab world.

Ahhh, my spider-sense was right. I just picked the wrong dogma.

Never the less, the clips of various 'faithful' presented in the film speak somewhat for themselves unless the film producers had the translation blatantly misrepresented.

Edited by RationalBiker
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