AL-AHRAM WEEKLY 5-11 November 1998:"Bruce Willis versus Bin Laden"

NOTE: IMRA regards this November 1998 article as meriting a current reading.

SUBJECT: Egyptian view of the US and Muslims.

HEADING:"Movies have never been just about entertainment, and real life has
never been more like the movies. Tarek Atia explores the dangers of
believing in images "

QUOTES FROM TEXT:
"The rise of Osama Bin Laden in popular lore signals, above all, that the
United States really has
decided to pursue a strategy political analysts have been predicting for
years."

"I haven't seen the movie, but it is clear from the long preview what the
basic mood and feel of the
film will be."

"Muslims are no longer cartoon villains. This is a gritty, serious movie"

"when President Clinton accuses someone of of terrorism and a blatant
disregard for national
sovereignty and international law and a lot of other unpleasant things,
he is really just projecting
what the US itself is doing."

"The whole thing is summmed up in the line from The Siege, 'They're out
to destroy our way of life,'
which is said by a Presidential aid. This is propaganda at its
ultimate, Nazi best"

"tables have been turned. Its the Jews who invented and remain in charge
of Hollywood. They are
also a force to be reckoned with in US policy-making. And they are using
exactly the same
techniques that were used against them in Europe to attack Muslims,"

"The Siege should thus be discussed in its proper context -- as
propaganda for an actual
forthcoming 'siege' of Arab and Muslim Americans.

"Senator Diane Feinstein of California told the Senate Subcommittee on
Technology, Terrorism
and Government Information that she had 'grave reservations regarding
the practice of issuing
visas to terrorist-supporting countries and the inability of the INS to
track those coming into the
country using a student visa'. "

"sent an open letter to producer Edward Zwick saying she would hold him
directly responsible for
any hate crimes resulting from the movie"

"the film ends with a condemnation of the decision to use martial law and
arrest a large section of
the population because of the actions of a few."

"Islam now labeled the fastest growing religion in the United States.
... America may actually be
the birthplace of the wold's only true Islamic state, where the
community as a whole is constantly trying to improve itself."
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EXCERPTS:
...Bruce Willis and Bin Laden have come...to represent the extremes of human
existence, pitted against each other.

When we pit the most extreme figures of each trend against one another, the
real loser is... morality and moderation itself... the cornerstone of
religion.

. . .

Bruce Willis ... is the consummate action hero... has come to represent the
United States, the policeman of the world. In Die Hard 1, 2 and 3 he saved
the world from terrorists and bank robbers ... . These were always
internationally recognised masterminds of evil, who, had Willis not been
around, might eventually have taken over the world. It's no coincidence that
the films were set in a skyscraper in Los Angeles, an international airport
in Washington DC, and on Wall Street in New York City. These are places
where, even when the toughest bad guys around try to strike, a daring
American will always be there to save the day. ...

Turning villains into cartoons makes it easier for the US to reach a mass
audience brought up to believe in whatever they see on screen.

During World War II, Warner Bros. made a series of cartoons ... These
animated shorts helped build a huge popular support base for the idea of
America joining the war. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour in 1942,
Americans were more than gung ho to go out and fight the enemy with all they
had.

What many people are not aware of, however, is that America also decided to
fight the enemy within, namely the over 100,000 Japanese Americans who had
immigrated to the United States and were living peaceful, prosperous lives
on the West Coast.

[IMRA: Subsequently regretted and compensated for. Members of that
community eagerly joined US military forces.]

These people, along with, to a lesser extent, Italian and German Americans,
feared for their safety as politicians and ordinary citizens alike began
frothing at the mouth.

[IMRA: Only a few Nazis were worried.]

. . .

Let's switch back to 1998. The ads are out for a soon-to-be-released
feature film called The Siege. They ask ...: "Will the people of this
country be forced to become monsters in order to fight monsters?"

The monsters referred to are so-called Muslim fundamentalists. ...a
"thoughtful, cautious general", played by Bruce Willis, is asked by the
President of the United States to bring law-and-order to the
terrorism-riddled streets of New York City.

Mass arrests of Arab and Muslim Americans ensue, and again ... thousands of
innocent people have their rights trampled on ... sequestered in military
camps, just because they are of the same religion or race as the supposed
enemy.

It's just a movie, right? Maybe not. The rise of Osama Bin Laden in popular
lore signals, above all, that the United States really has decided to pursue
a strategy political analysts have been predicting for years. As early as
1992, Leon T Hadar, former bureau chief with the Jerusalem Post and
researcher at a Washington thinktank, wrote in The Green Peril: Creating the
Islamic Fundamentalist Threat, that "like the Red Menace of the Cold War
era, the Green Peril is perceived as a cancer spreading around the globe,
undermining the legitimacy of Western values and political systems. The
...confrontation would make it necessary for Washington to adopt a long-term
diplomatic and military strategy; to forge new and solid alliances; to
prepare the American people for a never-ending struggle that will test their
resolve..." ..."The new villain is now ready to be integrated into popular
culture to help to mobilise public support for a new crusade."

I haven't seen the movie, but it is clear from the long preview what the
basic mood and feel of the film will be...everyone knows that with films,
the preview basically tells you all you need to know... .

And what's clear here is that Muslims are no longer cartoon villains. This
is a gritty, serious movie, starring Denzel Washington ... as the head of a
Terrorism Task force. The bombings are realistically filmed and based on
actual events, and the movie is meant to reflect a reality on the ground --
Muslims who really exist on the streets of New York.

... Representing Muslims as cartoon characters who can just be laughed off
is one thing (though a bad thing ...which has beyond a doubt adversely
affected relations between Muslims and others in America and around the
world). Presenting them as credible characters who could be your neighbours,
or co-workers, or the person sitting next to you on the bus, and at the same
time as highly dangerous to society, is a whole different ball game
altogether, and a far more risky one for all concerned.

... as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) warns in the
bulletin it has issued about the film, the only possible result is that the
"trustworthiness and peaceful intentions of the American Muslim and
Arab-American communities are made suspect. The overall impression, despite
some positive content, is that many who see it will view the next Muslim or
Arab they meet with increased suspicion and hostility."

. . .

If one uses what I like to call the reverse psychology method of
interpreting the news, all you have to do is take everything the US says,
and invert it back onto them. In other words, when President Clinton accuses
someone of terrorism and a blatant disregard for national sovereignty and
international law and a lot of other unpleasant things, he is really just
projecting what the US itself is doing.

Or, to be more precise, when Clinton declared that by striking at this
network of international terror controlled by Osama Bin Laden, the US was
not engaging in a war against Islam, he meant the exact opposite -- though
he leaves it to the Hollywood spin doctors and the media to flesh out all
the details.

The whole thing is summed up in the line from The Siege, "They're out to
destroy our way of life," which is said by a Presidential aide. This is
propaganda at its ultimate, Nazi best ...which made it seem like the Jews
were the enemy of Western civilisation, and on the point of infiltrating its
very core.

Today the tables have been turned. It's the Jews who invented and remain in
charge of Hollywood. They are also a force to be reckoned with in US
policy-making. And they are using exactly the same techniques that were used
against them in Europe to attack Muslims.

Hollywood ... is an essential arm of US foreign policy. It always has been,
actually, as can be shown by the huge number of propaganda films put out
during and ever since World War II. Mohamed Hassanein Heikal has argued that
the US propagated the myth that it was the true saviour of that war, and
that since then, it has begun to believe its own myth by becoming the
policeman of the world, with disastrous results. Now, the process seems to
be intensifying, not abating.

. . .

Just as we might look to the preview of The Siege to give us an insight into
what the film will be about, so the film itself may help provide us with a
preview of forthcoming attractions in the so-called "real world". ...

The film The Siege should thus be discussed in its proper context -- as
propaganda for an actual forthcoming "siege" of Arab and Muslim Americans.
This potentially lethal form of discrimination goes against all the original
premises of the US's founding principles, which by their very nature must
allow Arabs and Muslims who have decided to settle there just as much right
to shape the makeup of the US as any other immigrant group of the past 400
years.

[IMRA: To the extent consistent and compatible with basic US concepts.]

. . .

According to the point-by-point analysis of The Siege put out by CAIR, "in
the film we hear law enforcement officials being ordered to 'rumble', or
investigate, every American-Muslim or Arab-American student organisation or
community center. The terrorists in this film," the report continues, "come
from all segments of the Muslim community in New York. There are terrorist
auto mechanics, terrorist academicians, terrorist religious leaders and
terrorist students."

... bear in mind that the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS)
has, since 1997, been implementing a programme, in response to a memorandum
issued by FBI director Louis Freeh after the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing, to monitor foreign student activities in the US. On 24 February
1997, Senator Diane Feinstein of California told the Senate Subcommittee on
Technology, Terrorism and Government Information that she had "grave
reservations regarding the practice of issuing visas to terrorist-supporting
countries and the inability of the INS to track those who come into the
country... using a student visa." Feinstein and many others are now more
than ever calling for more stringent methods to combat what they see as a
real threat from these students. [IMRA: See current news.]

Several Muslim groups were invited to pre-release screenings of the film.
Afterwards, the groups made suggestions to the producers and directors, some
of which were accepted. The main problem the groups had with the film,
however -- that the plot line associates Islam with violence -- was
disregarded.

"We had hoped that Hollywood studios would cease demonising Arabs and
Muslims, so that our children can grow up feeling safe and proud of their
rich cultural heritage," said Hala Maksoud, president of the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), who sent an open letter to producer
Edward Zwick, saying that she would hold him directly responsible for any
hate crimes resulting from the movie.

[IMRA: We asked Hala Maksoud of ADC if there were any such cases. She
didn't come up with any.]

CAIR is attempting to organise a grassroots campaign whereby local Muslims
would be waiting outside cinemas showing The Siege on its opening day
(November 6), handing out leaflets which offer accurate information about
Islam and the American Muslim community .... They would also hand out
invitations to an open house at an area mosque the next day for anyone who
wants to learn more about Islam. ...

. . .

Talk of a boycott of 20th Century Fox, the distributor of the film (and of
many other highly popular films, such as Titanic) has not found much
support.

For his part the film's producer, Zwick, appeared on TV to say that "as
people have begun to see the film, they've come to see that it's a more
thoughtful and complex business than they might have imagined." By this, he
means that the film ends with a condemnation of the decision to use martial
law and arrest a large section of the population because of the actions of a
few. [IMRA:Reasonable, fine lesson.] This argument mirrors that of some
Muslims in America who have argued that the United States is a young country
that is still trying to come to grips with the lofty principles that its
founding fathers set forth in the constitution. These people are optimists,
who see the nation's bloody 400-year history as a period of gradual communal
growing-up. In other words, it took a while before a majority of people
realised that slavery was wrong... The second challenge, which has been in
progress since then, and is still going on now, is basically an attempt to
make society as a whole more tolerant of women and blacks....

The third hurdle, these optimists believe, will be religious equality, and,
in their view, the catalyst for this will be Islam. For with Islam now
labeled the fastest growing religion in the United States --... the numbers
are growing so fast as a result of conversions, not immigration -- these
critics argue that a film like The Seige may be the precursor to a great
leap of faith, whereby Americans begin to realise that they have to overcome
whatever distortions and misconceptions and hatred and bigotry are currently
directed against the "strange", "alien" religion of Islam. Going against the
ingrained siege mentality will be tough, but if Americans can do it, these
optimists argue, then America may actually be the birthplace of the world's
only true Islamic state, where the community as a whole is constantly trying
to improve itself.

. . .

(50) It's up to Muslims and Arabs everywhere in the world (and all
consumers for that matter) to start to make some really tough choices. Do we
want to continue to pour money into companies that clearly are not concerned
with fostering peace and harmony on Earth, that actually seem to revel in
exploiting conflicts for their own base and material needs? The most glaring
example I can think of is that of 20th Century Fox, producers of The Siege,
who have made some 2 billion dollars in revenue from the film Titanic
alone -- and that probably doesn't include all the related merchandising,
... being bought not only by Americans, but by Muslims and Arabs around the
globe. And that's just one film out of several dozen that the company
releases each year. ...Another multinational giant that comes to mind is
Disney, famous for Arab-bashing in cartoons like Aladdin. And these, of
course, are not the only culprits -- just two of many. ... All we do, when
we continue to patronise these films for the sake of a little entertainment,
is help them to patronise us, provide them with the funds and the impetus to
continue their wanton labeling and compartmentalising, their treason and
destruction of humanity. ....

Moreover, the evidence on the ground seems to indicate that we as Egyptians
have also, for the most part, completely bought into this stereotyping of
Muslims. In other words, whenever we see someone with a beard or a galabiya
we immediately, and without question, label them a fundamentalist. And this,
without even speaking to the accused. ... if we see someone with gelled
hair, or wearing fancy clothes, we also immediately assume that they are the
pinnacle of secularism, and spend most of their time drinking whiskey and
trying to pick up girls.

. . .

...with the US in moral decline and Islam spreading rapidly within its
borders, the Hollywood establishment is clearly trying to say, "Look, we
have some spirituality too. You don't have to leave your roots for that."

Combine that with the negative stereotyping of Muslims and what do you have?
A great formula for a 21st-century rerun of the Crusades.

Dr. Jopseph Lerner, Co-Director IMRA