Dear Steve: I saw United 93 and it was spendid. I saw CRASH last year and it was professionally done but it was contrived and unbelievable really. United 93 really us a dose of reality. One of the most interesting minor characters was the German who was depicted as a Europacifist and a complete wimp.

I didn't get the impression that the message of the film was "that the noble religion of Islam had been hijacked". If anything UNITED 93 made it clear that these were religious fanatics of a kind we have seen before, the baraka of Ben Josuf's Islamic army in Spain in the 11th century or the Mahdi's army in the 19th century. If you will allow me, I am as you know a Christian but not of the triumphalist kind because my ancestors were not among the winners. I am aware of the Spanish Inquisition, for example, and think sometimes that some of my CHILDREN's ancesotors may have been involved. I am even aware of the anti-Semiticism (and anti-Americanism) of some of my children's Spanish relatives. It is interesting to note that in my personal experience it is the NON-PRACTICING Christians who are the most anti-semitic. But I consider my religion to have been misrepresented at times and hijacked at times by fanatics.
I don't think the film makes anyone appreciate empathize with Islam. If anything it shows the Islamicists to be savage killers and brutes. The people who should see this picture and cringe are Moslems who want to join the modern age or at least peacefully coexist with it. There is a myth, very common among Muslims themselves that there are no sects among Islam but merely one religion. In Christianity we have gone through this phase too and it has meant enforced orthodoxy and repression. Of course, Islam in Indonesia or Morrocco or Kuwait is not the same as Islam of the Taliban. Islam among American Muslims -and I have taught many- is not the same. There is much among the teaching of the Koran which is wise and holy though like the Old Testament there is a warlike at times savage tone from an era of conquest.

Stalin did hijack something: it was the Russian nation and Russian culture which he tried to make an atheist imperialist hegemony. Mao too hijacked something at that was the China of many philosophies and religions including Christianity.

We had better hope that ISLAM CAN BECOME a religon of peace -as it has been in the past in different times- rather than become dominated by this Islamcist fringe. I am not on the side of cowardly appears one bit but I do not want to war on all of Islam. This is what Bin Laden wants. We need Arab and Muslim allies. We want to be friends with those who are not filled with murderous hatred for the USA. This means, alas, that we have to have imperfect allies, who feel it necessary to boycott Isreal something I think is dispicable.
I am not a liberal utopian but I do find beauty in Islam. I find more beauty in Islam than I have ever found in Las Vegas or San Francisco or the University of Virgnia for that matter. Muslims I have known have something in common with me and that is a great love and respect for the God of Abraham. Muslims I have known believe in right and wrong. They are soft-spoken and support modesty. I will not deny this is very attractive to me. In fact I married someone influenced by Islamic culture; my wife is Spanish. I wanted modesty, the true beauty of womanhood, in my life. I wanted to go through life without Feminist harangues without the gutter language of so many modernist American women. Having taught many Muslim young girls, particularly Pakistanis, Yemenis and Egyptians I understand precisely the power and the glory of Islam. I am recognized by them as righteous Kaffir (a term I use myself; Kaffir means infidel). The Muslims can be and are moral allies of my point of view. Remember the modern Muslim believes in education for women and accepts monogamy at least as much or more than many modern Europeans and Americans. We have, in case you haven't notices, virtual polygamy in the USA, Britain and Europe. We have serial marriages and sexual abandon that recalls the Last Days of Pompeii. I make not excuses I am closer to the mores of my mother's island faith than I am to Hollywood, New York or San Francisco's Dolce Vita.

Greek, Sicilian and Spanish culture are probably the most influenced by Islamic culture. As Catholic of Scottish origin I am aware that what passed for Catholicism in Spain -dead letter since the 1970's by the way except for a tiny minority- is culturally determined and very different from the humble and meek religion of my forebears. Ours was a private and deeply help faith -often persecuted and ridiculed. This prepared me, of course, for the prejudice and ridicule of New York and Liberal university towns. I expect to be a religious minority. I expect to live on the fringe of society. I expect to be the victim of vicious relgious prejudice. I expect that my faith will not be an advantage in the workplace or in my profession. Indeed my father often warned me to keep my head down and NEVER TALK in public about my faith and to pass as it were for a secularist or at least an Establishment WASP. That was the way in the Commonwealth of course to pass as a Anglicized Protestant Lowland Scot and keep our heads down.

United Flight 93 was a very well done film and a great tribute to the brave men and women who made the first stand against the Islamofascists. There are as we speak Muslims who are fighting and dying in Eqypt and Pakistan and Afghanistan and in Iraq against the sinister Murder Cult of Al Qaida. Surely we are not a war with all of Islam though this is what Bin Laden wants. He WANTS polarization. By his terror he hopes to provoke new holocausts even a retalitory nuclear attack. That is what he wants. Remember, Islamic fundamentalists know only on Big Thing that God is great. In this they are right. EXCEPT FOR THE LORD THE WATCHMAN WAKETH IN VAIN. But they are mistaken, I believe, in their vanity, that the Arabic Koran has a monopoly on monotheism or morality. This is the great weakness of Bin Laden's Cult of course. It insists in the pride of place of the Arablic langauge and the Arab religous elite. It would be as if I believe that the only true bible were in English (a la Oliver Cromwell) -and God was therefore an Englishman- or the only real way and the only true religion was that of the Gaels in which case the English-speaking people were in big trouble since they have almost effectively snuffed out this pathway to holiness. Of course that is all such nonesense. Some cultures and langauges are more philosophical and traditionalist. Classical Spanish is deeply philosophical and religious in tone like Gaelic but the reality is that like English pop culture is destroying this chivalry and civility once almost inherent in the Spanish civlizaiton. Tir gan canan tir gan anam; a Land without a language is a land with out a soul.

I suggest to many to see FLIGHT 93. It was a picture 100 times better than Syriana which had its moments. I still recommend KHARTOUM and El CID and for Good measure 55 Days at Peking. These are all good films to greater or lessor degrees about the West confronting ant-Western terrorist ideologies. Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammuntion but let us redden the ranks to include as the Cid did and as Chinese Gordon did to include indigenous allies.

Say a prayer for me, I say, and God will send the sweet thought and blessing to me by knee-mail, the fastest mail of all.

On Sep. 11, 2001 at 8:45 am I was walking down Bleecker Street when I saw what I later learned was American Airlines Flight 11 fly directly overhead as it headed to the World Trade Center.

FINALLY! someone who gets the point that not ALL muslims has this horrific idea that we need to kill...i just finished watching the movie,and although I am Muslim, I still cried throughout that movie. I think the director really did a great job at showing us the fear, disbelief and courage of people on board that flight. But one thing got to me, the hijackers kept reciting bits of the Koran, and saying stuff like 'Allah is great'...THAT really pissed me off( i dont know if I can say that but hopefully its ok), it made it seem like thats what Islam is all about, and that we would kill with no hesitation or feelings. I grew up in an Arab country, and it would NEVER be accepted to kill. Nowhere in my knowledge of my religion, or in the Koran does it say that we should kill cold-heartedly ANYONE who isn't Muslim. I'm proud to say in my country we live side by side with christians, jews, hindus, people with no religions at all. I hate the fact that people are getting the wrong idea of what Islam really is. I REALLY hope that those people who hijacked those planes go straight to hell, they don't deserve mercy and I would swear at them right here if I could, I dont know if that would be ok though. We don't call those terrorists Muslim and we NEVER will.

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

URL:
Remember me? YesNo

Comments: