America at a Crossroads

If you have any interest at all in current events I imagine you’ve likely spent a fair amount of time pondering or worrying about events in the Middle East. It isn’t uncommon for me to run into people who have managed to develop incredibly strong ideas about what is wrong and how it ought to be fixed. It seems like everyone these days professes to be some kind of expert about the conflict between “the West” and militant Islam. I’ve spent a bit of time myself looking into the matter and have managed to read a small stack of books exploring the history of Islam. Some of these books have veered into a historiography of sorts and have posited theories of how and why the situation that exists today came into being.

I do think it is important for us to become familiar with Islamic history, for this ongoing conflict will likely continue, in various shades and formats, for a very long time.

To that end I encourage you to check out the groundbreaking series currently showing on PBS, America at a Crossroads. I’ve managed to catch five of the six films that have shown so far–each one of them has a unique flavor and angle, and each one of them has been absolutely superb. You might expect PBS to air something that edges heavily towards liberal anti-war sentiment, but America at a Crossroads so far hasn’t a trace of such sentiment at all; the whole thing is extraordinarily well-balanced. It is a precise examination, thoughtful and excellent in its thoroughness. I’ve been stimulated, challenged and enlightened each evening this week by the films and plan to devote as much time as possible to the remaining series. Tonight’s show starts at 9pm, Eastern.

Complete details about the weeklong presentation as well as overviews of each film may be found here. If you are unfortunate enough to miss this series do your best to rent or purchase it when it becomes available.

Update (4/19)

Last night’s shows were a little on the weak side; the negative potential of PBS effect on politics managed to come through:

Filmmaker Martyn Burke has learned just how leftist the powers at PBS are. The road to the inclusion of his film Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center in the popular PBS series America at a Crossroads has been rocky from the beginning. The film means to explore the ways in which moderate Muslims in the U.S. are threatened and silenced by radical Islamists.

Apparently, however, PBS forced two of Burke’s colleagues out due to their conservative political affiliations. This is where it got interesting, in the process of making the film some screenings took place:

McCloud took segments of the film which she considered objectionable (insulting to radical Islam) and showed them to a Muslim journalist and to Nation of Islam leaders. This action led to outrage in the Muslim community over the film, and the Nation of Islam has threatened to sue. In other words, McCloud instigated the very thing the film tried to portray; the tendency of radical Islamists to use threats and lawsuits to silence moderate Muslims and others who object to their ideology.

Additionally:

WETA openly wanted a key theme in Burke’s film eliminated; the claim that Islamists work to establish parallel societies in the Western societies they inhabit, setting up Shariah law, and “Islamic Courts”. The evidence that this has been attempted repeatedly in Europe and America is extensive, but WETA apparently feels that this fact is too inflammatory for the general public to handle.

This is all very interesting, I can’t seem to find Burke’s film on PBS’s website, though the film that aired lastnight, The Muslim Americans, may have been it. I have definitely noticed that some incredibly obvious things have been ignored–it is disappointing that important relevant issues are being avoided due to political issues. I suppose that’s the necessary bucket of salt that must come with PBS political fare.