Case Studies: Obsession
Major Talking Points on 'Obsession'
- "Obsession" is made by a quasi-official Israeli propaganda organization, honestreporting.com, which is closely linked to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
- The film equates Muslims, and not only radical Muslims, with Nazis.
- It casts the Palestinian national movement as a Nazi-inspired and neo-Nazi movement.
- It never mentions or acknowledges the occupation in Palestine or that Palestinians might have any reason other than Nazism to be in a conflict with Israel.
- Large parts of the film present themselves as exposing Arab and Muslim hate-speech but by misrepresenting fringe and marginal discourses as mainstream views, "Obsession" is guilty of the very hate-speech it purports to denounce.
- Converts from Islam to right-wing evangelical Christianity are presented as simply Arab commentators, presumed to know what they are talking about, or "former terrorists" or other highly dubious representations.
- "Obsession" argues that all conflicts involving Muslims are fronts in a neo-Nazi global campaign of world conquest by radical Muslims.
- This is a mirror-image of Osama bin Laden's reading of world affairs, in which all conflicts involving Muslims are fronts in a global crusade to destroy Islam – both are a-historical and absurd, and reveal a similar mind-set of reductionism, chauvinism and paranoia.
- The film opens with the statement that most Muslims do not support terrorism but immediately sets to work undermining this idea and eventually drops the pretense altogether.
- The intent of the film to promote fear and hatred is absolutely clear, as is its stunningly bad faith with regard to facts and context – it is as shameless a piece of propaganda as one might ever identify.
- Its effect can only be to produce anxiety, mistrust and deep unease in the average American viewer about the presence, activities and attitudes of millions of their fellow citizens, the American Muslim community.
- It should be exposed at every turn, shunned by all respectable institutions and not shown on campuses without at least being accompanied by a panel discussion in which the extreme problems with the film, its effects and the intentions of its makers, can be fully discussed.
