A documentary about Muslim extremists encouraging attacks on the United States and other Western nations has sparked debate at many college campuses.
p. According to The New York Times, showings of “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” were canceled at Pace University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook due to worries that it could incite hate crimes against Muslim students.
p. When the film was shown at University of California, Los Angeles, over 300 students came to watch, but dozens of protestors stood outside.
p. Many college protestors argue that the documentary is incendiary and focuses on a radical group of Muslims who do not represent the majority. Proponents of the film say it is an important look at militant Islamist groups.
p. “The movie was so well-crafted and emotion manipulating that I felt myself thinking poorly of some aspects of Islam,” Adam Osman, president of Stony Brook’s Muslim Students’ Association, told the times. He asked that the film not be shown at Stony Brook.
p. ‘Obsession,’ produced by Raphael Shore, a Canadian who lives in Israel, features scenes of Middle Eastern children as they are encouraged to become suicide bombers. It then cuts to shots of Nazi rallies.
p. Current protests over the film are part of an increasing number of debates on college campuses about the Middle East. The Times reported that students at an anti-terrorism rally sponsored by the college Republicans of San Francisco State University stomped on copies of the Hamas and Hezbollah flags. At Brandeis University, officials removed an exhibition of Palestinian children’s drawings. The exhibition was intended to bring the “Palestinian viewpoint” to a campus where half of the students are Jewish.
p. When students at New York University tried to organize a showing of the film, they found that they had to register at IsraelActivism.com and were asked to send digital pictures of the event to Hasbara Fellowships, a group that tries to counter anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses.
p. “If people have to give their names over to Hasbra Fellowships at the door, that doesn’t have the effect of stimulating open dialogue,” Jordan J. Dunn, president of the Middle East Dialogue Group of New York University told the Times. “It intimidates people and stifles dissent.”
p. According to Karyn Leffel, who works for Hasbara Fellowships program, ‘Obsession’ is important to understanding conflict in the Middle East.
p. Shore recently said that the purpose of the film was to inspire students to take action against Islamic terrorism.
p. “We want to spread this message to all people [who] will stand up and make a difference in combating this threat,” he told the Times.
p. While he believes that the film is unbiased and nonpartisan, some students who have watched the film believe that it will fuel prejudice.
p. “If it were used in a class, it would have to be treated as a polemic and placed in that context,” said Arnold Leder, a political scientist at Texas State University, San Marcos who decided not to show ‘Obsession’ in his classes.