Free the film

Free the film that PBS won’t let you see

NEW YORK — Where on Earth are the moderate Muslims? Thanks to PBS, they’re not on public television.

PBS has blocked “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center.” This new documentary funded with a $675,000 Corporation for Public Broadcasting grant contrasts the ubiquitous bearded, burqa-covered Muslim radicals with others seldom seen: men and women who wear Western attire, shave daily, show their female faces and prosper without slaughtering “infidels.”

While moderate Muslims may appear elsewhere on PBS, Uncle Sam’s TV channel declines to air this compelling, evenhanded and surprisingly tame film that explores the struggle between modern Muslims and their backward brethren. Produced by Canadian filmmaker Martyn Burke and the Center for Security Policy’s Alex Alexiev and Frank Gaffney, “Islam vs. Islamists” is no fire-breathing, Islamophobic screed. While it sympathizes with mellow Muslims targeted by their hotheaded co-religionists, it simply lets individual Muslims speak for themselves, with limited commentary none of it inflammatory.

Capital HQ a New York-based public-affairs organization quickly arranged a sold-out screening of “Islam” Tuesday night. Even after benches and folding chairs were dragged in from the Union Square 14-plex’s lobby, guests still clogged the aisles.

The film showcases brave, moderate Muslims like Naser Khader, a Syrian-born Danish legislator who preaches the separation of mosque and state. The mere fact that he votes in Copenhagen’s parliament enrages Muslim zealots.

“To make laws only a god does that. And there is only one god in Islam, and that is Allah,” says Slimane Abderrahmane, an Algerian-Danish alumnus of al Qaeda’s terror camps and, later, Guantanamo. “So you’re saying, ‘I’m just like Allah.’ And you can’t do that.”

Rather than submit to such Muslim crackpots, Khader fled Copenhagen for a small Danish town. He also requires 24-hour police protection. This is hardly paranoid. During the deadly Muslim overreaction to those newspaper images of Mohammed in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten, Danish Muslim fanatic Ahmed Akkari said, “If Khader becomes minister of integration, shouldn’t someone dispatch two guys to blow up him and his ministry?”

The man who videotaped Akkari’s words also is in “Islam.”

Mohamed Sifaoui, a peaceful Algerian-French journalist, infiltrated a Parisian band of Muslim extremists. Some appeared via hidden camera. Others hammed it up, thinking Sifaoui was shooting an Islamist propaganda movie.

Since French TV showed his film, bodyguards have surrounded Sifaoui.

It is newsworthy that moderates such as Khader and Sifaoui need security agents to shield them from Allah’s potentially homicidal followers.

Nonetheless, PBS has nixed this film.

Go sign the petition:

FREE THE FILM PETITION

To Pat Harrison, President of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Members of the United States Congress:

We are among the taxpayers whose money has been used to make “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center” – a documentary that was supposed to be aired on the Public Broadcasting Service as part of its “America at a Crossroads” series.

Yet, we are unable to see this film, despite the fact that the information it relays about what is happening to moderate Muslims at the hands of the Islamists is, arguably, as important as any issue addressed by the documentaries that were broadcast in that series.

While PBS justifies its suppression of “Islam vs. Islamists” on the grounds that the film is “unfair” and not up to the network’s “standards” we believe that, as its underwriters and the public who own our country’s public airwaves, we have a right to judge for ourselves. Please do whatever is necessary to make this documentary available to us and all other Americans at the earliest possible time.

This is an extremely important piece of work that all of us need to see. We’ve been crying out for the Muslim middle in our society to stand up against Islamic extremism. It looks like some of them are — this movie could go a long way to persuade non Muslims away from the idea that everything Muslim is bad. Yet, PBS is choosing to quash it for the exact opposite reason. Someone doesn’t want you to see this film — no real suprise who it is.

Michelle Malkin has much more.