Nov. 5, 2006
 
TV REVIEW: Fox News Channel Airs Special on ‘Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West’ with Powerful Footage from People Whose Stated Goal is to Destroy Western Civilization
 
By David M. Kinchen
Editor, Huntington News Network
 
In a documentary on a documentary, Fox News Channel host E.D. Hill says she was shocked by the hatred radical Islamists have for America, even though she has covered terrorism for years. On an hour-long special that aired at 8 p.m., Saturday night, Nov. 4, 2006 – and is scheduled to be repeated four more times on Sunday Nov. 5 – Hill interviews Wayne Topping, director/editor of the independent documentary “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.”
 
The special program on the documentary repeats Sunday at 1:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. on Fox News Channel.
 
Hill shows excerpts of “Obsession,” a film that uses footage from radical Muslim outlets that clearly outline the nature, objectives and ideological roots of the totalitarian movement that currently poses the most immediate and a potentially catastrophic threat to America and the rest of the Free World: Islamofascism.
 
The filmmakers combine three elements to make “Obsession” exceptionally compelling. First, an array of profoundly knowledgeable and articulate experts provide historical and strategic context to the phenomenon of this violent theo-ideology. They include: the Center for Security Policy's Senior Mideast Fellow, Caroline Glick; historian Sir Martin Gilbert; former Hitler Youth Group Leader Alfons Heck, who sees remarkable parallels between radical Islam and Nazism; columnist and researcher Daniel Pipes; investigator Steven Emerson; former federal prosecutor John Loftus; journalist Brigitte Gabriel; and Professor Robert Wistrich.
 
Second, anti-Islamist Muslims and former Muslims provide powerful first-hand testimonials about the nature of radical Islam as seen through the eyes of those most immediately at risk from its violence and repression: the Islamists' peaceable, tolerant co-religionists. Among the contributors from this group were comments by: Canadian professor and columnist Salim Mansur (a featured participant in the Center's Muslim Speak Out program); L.A. resident Nonie Darwish, the daughter of an Egyptian army officer killed by the Israelis; Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist; Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh; Pakistani expat and editor Tashbiy Sayyed; and California-based Professor Khaleel Mohammed. Shoebat says that Jihad may mean “struggle” but so does the word “Kampf” as in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle).
 
Loftus, the former federal prosecutor, says the West is in a state of severe denial over the threat, adding “we should take the threats seriously” because radical Islamists say what they mean and mean what they say. He joins with others in the documentary to fault Western news media for not showing footage of the hate-filled diatribes by radical Muslims and playing down the problem in a fruitless search for “root causes” of terrorism. All of the people in the documentary make the point that the radicals hate the West, and want to destroy it and turn the world into one big happy Islamist planet.
 
Perhaps the most evocative material of all, however, is provided by the radical Islamists themselves, in the form of footage taken directly from various television broadcasts from around the Muslim world. These scenes have been compiled by two formidable organizations, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and Palestinian Media Watch, and feature various imams, talking heads and political figures exhorting their audiences to bring "Death to America" and legitimizing the destruction of Christians and Jews and their societies. The point is unmistakable: This sort of virulent propaganda is being broadcast incessantly on dozens of official outlets such as Saudi, Iranian, Qatari and Palestinian television and Hezbollah's TV network, al Manar, based in Lebanon. In the process, millions of viewers, particularly young audiences, are being inculcated with the most extreme sorts of jihadist sentiment - including the desirability of murderous self-sacrifice for Allah.
 
Darwish, whose new book “Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror” I will review later this month, makes the point in the Fox special and in the documentary that we are “strangling ourselves with political correctness.” I’ve been in email contact with Darwish, who explains how young children in Muslim countries are taught to hate Jews and members of other religions, demonizing them the same way Nazi Germany did. Footage in the documentary shows Islamists destroying a Buddhist temple in Indonesia and churches in Nigeria and Iraq.
 
Radical Islamist propaganda is done with the same demonic skill exhibited by Joseph Goebbels of Hitler’s Germany, but with the latest in digital technology.