Category Archives: Film and Video

Al Qaeda in Yemen

"Arab Spring", Film and Video, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


Frontline aired an interesting program on Al Qaeda in Yemen last night. It features the Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who was able to visit the towns of Jaar and Azzam in southern Yemen, both as they were controlled by Ansar al-Sharia. It is clear from his reporting that some of the fighters are from outside Yemen, as he specifically mentions Somalis and Afghans. At the end of his report he visited Lawdar, where the local Yemeni tribesmen drove out the militants and are defending the town from them. The Yemeni tribes do not support either al Qaeda or Ansar al-Sharia, whose strict interpretation and high-handed ways go against tribal customary law. Although the government troops are currently suffering internal conflict, the days of Ansar al-Sharia are surely numbered. You can watch the program online.

The Barbarian Has to Keep It Real

Film and Video, Iraq, Iraq War, Literature, Poetry


Sinan Antoon (far right) near the Symbolic Tomb at the Martyr’s Monument in Baghdad (2003). Image from Encounter Productions.

The Barbarian Has to Keep It Real: Interview with Jadaliyya Co-Editor Sinan Antoon

Interview with Nahrain Al-Musawi, al-Jadaliya, May 03 2012

[The following interview with Jadaliyya Co-Editor Sinan Antoon was conducted by Nahrain Al-Musawi and originally published in Al-Akhbar English on 2 May 2012.]

Sinan Antoon is an Iraqi-born novelist, poet, translator, filmmaker, and professor. His 2003 widely translated novel I’jaam is a fictional prison memoir. The book is ironic and haunting as it reflects the absurdities of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime, futile attempts to escape censorship, and prisoners going mad as a final act of revolt.

Antoon returned to Baghdad in 2003 and filmed About Baghdad, documenting the exhilaration and despair of Iraqis experiencing the fall of the Baathist regime and then the US occupation. He produced two collections of Arabic poetry, which have also been translated into English.

His most recent project is a translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s In the Presence of Absence (2011). Antoon has been at home in the US for decades, so when once asked about the distinction of being an Arab-American writer, he replied, “It’s not easy being a barbarian in Rome. The Romans rarely listen, but the barbarian has to keep it real.”

In this interview, Antoon discusses the distinction of being a barbarian, “an outsider, a stranger,” in the US, as well as the trope of closure that frames the recent US withdrawal from Iraq, sectarianism discourse, and the unique quality of spatial fragmentation and division that now characterizes Baghdad – once Antoon’s home.

Nahrain al-Mousawi (NM): When and how did you leave Iraq? Can you talk about that experience a little bit?

Sinan Antoon (SA): I was supposed to leave Iraq in August 1990 to continue my studies abroad, but Saddam invaded Kuwait on August 2 and there was a travel ban. I survived the war and left in April 1991 after the war was over and the travel ban was lifted. I had always wanted to leave. Living under an authoritarian regime isn’t fun, especially for an aspiring writer who wasn’t willing to write in praise of the leader and his wars. (Some of those who made their names praising Saddam and his wars are running around now posing as patriotic anti-imperialists).

So I took the bus from Baghdad to Amman like thousands of Iraqis did and would do throughout the 1990s and later. I was happy to escape, but I shed a few tears as the bus drove away. I knew that I was leaving some irretrievable parts of my self and my life behind. I stayed in Amman for a few months and then was able to come to the US to do my graduate studies. I worked and did an MA in Arab Studies at Georgetown, then went on to get a doctorate in Arabic literature at Harvard. Continue reading The Barbarian Has to Keep It Real →

“My Name is Khan” déjà vu

Film and Video, Islamophobia, Pakistan, Terrorism Issue


Shah Rukh Khan as sex symbol

Someone really needs to read the riot act to The Patriot Act. Yes, the threat of terrorism is real and we millions of passengers dutifully take off our shoes and spread out our arms for see-through scanning or pat-down frisking in airports. But screening does not have to be irrational. How many times must a world-famous actor like Shah Rukh Khan be detained by security when he enters the United States? This is not the first time. What status is there to check out? Does the image above look like a serious threat? Would Salman Rushdie be rushed into detention?

Here is the report on Al-Jazzera :

He is one of the most famous men on the planet. Adored by millions. His films are almost always box office smashes. But when Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan travelled to the US on Thursday, he was detained by security for two hours while they checked out his “status”.

Ironic, considering his biggest hit film was the story of a man determined to visit the US president and give him a very simple message: My Name is Khan and I’m not a terrorist.

The film is a powerful look at what it means to be Muslim in the land of the free and the home of the brave. I wonder if he told Homeland Security that he wasn’t a terrorist.

He says he feels angry and humiliated. I know how he feels. In the last three years I have travelled to the US six times. Each time, bar one, I was stopped. I was asked to go to a holding facility and my passport was taken. You are asked to sit down by a polite but hostile official. Continue reading “My Name is Khan” déjà vu →

NYPD Blues…

Anthropology/Sociology, Film and Video, Islam in America, Teaching Resources


The NYPD: Islamophobia in Blue

by Deepa Kumar, Empire Bytes, February 6, 2012

NEW YORK City police officers were shown a movie called The Third Jihad which warns that ordinary Muslims are part of an age-old conspiracy to dominate the world. The police chief and his spokesperson participated in this “counter-terrorism training,” and then lied about their involvement. And Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who touts himself as a champion of religious tolerance, doesn’t plan to do anything about it.

This latest series of events that unfolded in late January only sheds more light on the depth of anti-Muslim racism in New York City. Home to about 800,000 Muslims, as well as the world’s largest police department, the Big Apple has become the crucible of entrenched Islamophobic policies enacted by the state since September 11.

“This is not stereotyping,” Talat Hamdani said at a January 26 press conference at City Hall.

Talat’s son Salman died on 9/11 as a first responder, but his sacrifice has never been officially recognized because police initially viewed him as a suspect in the attacks. “This is legal persecution of American Muslims,” Talat said. “This is our city, our state, our country.”

Almost a year ago, in January 2011, Tom Robbins of the Village Voice broke the story about the NYPD showing this racist film to its officers. At the time, police spokesman Paul Browne claimed the movie was only screened a few times, and that the clips of Ray Kelly in it were from old footageand not the police commissioner’s direct participation with right-wing filmmakers.

But when police were forced to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request from the Brennan Center for Justice, it came to light that the movie was a regular part of training for months, that more than 1,500 officers had viewed the film, and that Kelly had given a 90-minute interview for the pseudo-documentary.

After a year of denials and evasions, the truth was out, and it received some attention in the mainstream media. Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg. Continue reading NYPD Blues… →

A Madventure in Yemen

Animals, Film and Video, Food and Drink, Humor and Satire, Orientalism, Terrorism Issue, Travel, YouTube Watch


Take two rather weird Finns, a camera and a mountain of jocularity. The result is one of the stranger travelogues you will ever encounter: Madventures YEMEN. This film was made shortly after the attack on the U.S. Embassy in 2008. The two travelers are hardly experts on Yemen and much of what they say (about tribes and geography, for example) should be taken with a grain (at times a pillar worthy of Lot’s wife) of salt. But I love this film, once you get by the Ali-G-ness of the two f-ing (a word they use to the hilt) Finns. First, the cinematography is fantastic and you hear from a number of Yemenis, who often make far more sense than their guests. Second, it does not treat qat as a drug and the Yemenis come across as anything but the “terrorists” portrayed in the media. Indeed, at one point, the traveler Rika notes that despite the number of weapons in Yemen it probably has less crime than the country you are watching the film from.

Check it out and enjoy…

There are three parts to the film available on Youtube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

All-American Muslim

Film and Video, Islamophobia 101, Terrorism Issue


The Bazzy-Aliahmad Family

Watch ‘All-American Muslim’ This Weekend

By Alyssa Rosenberg, Thinkprogress.org, Nov 10, 2011 at 1:38 pm

Normally, I would never tell you to watch something just because it would make someone mad. But noted Islamophobe Pamela Geller is apparently vexed that TLC’s All-American Muslim, a new reality show about a group of Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan, doesn’t achieve what she thinks of as balance, by which she means including storylines where Muslims commit crimes based on their faith. So I’d really like to see the show, which premieres at 10 on Sunday, do smashingly well as a rebuke to folks like her, and to the idea that we should based practitioners of a faith by its extremists.

You should also watch All-American Muslim because it’s a very good show: warm, funny, with great characters, high-stakes storylines, and the some of the most thoughtful discussions of faith I’ve ever seen on mainstream television, or in mainstream popular culture at all. First, the characters: it’s nice to have so many people to like on a television show. Blowsy Shadia’s the least observant member of her fairly observant family, but she’s sweet and funny. Nawal and Nader are expecting a son, and watching them attend a childbirth class, even though it’s not traditional in Dearborn’s Muslim community, or seeing Nader get extremely anxious when faced with a tiny, adorable baby in a tutu makes Up All Night‘s instincts for parenting comedy look clumsy. And seeing the Muslim football coach of Dearborn’s high school team explain to the Christian parents of a black player how he’s trying to balance the obligations of Ramadan for observant players with the need to get the team in championship shape is a great moment of dialogue. In an era of increasingly vile reality television characters, and in a fall television season that’s stumbled in part by relying heavily on abrasive main and supporting characters, it’s a nice to have people to get invested in and to root for. Continue reading All-American Muslim →