Norwegian bombing: How Islamophobic fever among western media and anti-terror experts came to surface?

At 3.30 p.m on Friday, the 22 July 2011, a hefty explosion ripped through the centre of Oslo, the capital of Norway, causing heavy material damage, dozens of injured and 7 people died. The bomb caused heavy destruction to the offices of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and a number of other official buildings. Neighboring offices – including those housing some of Norway’s leading newspapers and news agency NTB were hit and evacuated. Oil ministry was also among the other government buildings hit, while the headquarters of tabloid newspaper VG were also damaged.

From TV pictures, one can see the extensive damage in the shape of rubble. Glass from shattered windows littered the streets and smoke from the fires drifting across the city could be seen from the devastated government quarter. One must condemn such cowardly and brutal carnage as strongly as possible. There should be no buts and ifs on the issue violence and terror.

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'US unable to hijack Middle East uprising'

'US unable to hijack Middle East uprising' Sun Feb 27, 2011 3:30PM Interview with International Lawyer, Franklin Lamb.

People cheer during a celebration of the liberation of eastern Libya On Friday, massive Arab Revolutionary demonstrations were held throughout the Middle East, amid Gaddafi's brutal mercenary militia killing more protesters in Libya.

Press TV interviewed International Lawyer, Franklin Lamb from Beirut regarding the uprisings in the Middle East.

Press TV: I would like to welcome Dr. Franklin Lamb from Beirut now. Thank you so much for being with us. Now yesterday was an interesting day Mr. Lamb. We saw more protests of course in Yemen, in Libya, in Bahrain and in Jordan. We also saw a revisiting of the previous two revolutionary countries meaning Tunisia and Egypt. What do you say about the state of affairs in the region? Do you think what we are looking at is something that is going to evolve into permanent change, or is there concern that right now as the Tunisians and Egyptians seem to be expressing that there is just figureheads changing, and not enough significant changes? What direction do you see the region going? Are we seeing total change?

Lamb: Thank you. This regional revolution, this standing up or uprisings, I think it has got legs and it's broadening and deepening and unlike what Condoleezza Rice said here about in 2006 regarding a new Middle East, it's a new Middle East and probably the opposite of what she had in mind. That is where we are and yes, I think it will sustain. I think the danger is lessening of hijacking this revolution.

I site as evidence of that the committees of the different countries particularly in Egypt. They are calling it a coalition to protect the games they achieve. That means when they meet the military that they hold them to their words. They cite the demands for progress and verification of real change. Of course, it's in the hands of the people. We cannot help them other than to encourage this historic movement. I have confidence from your footage, and other reports that these people are serious. It is fundamental. It is a deep endemic revolt after years of oppression. I disagree with my colleague Robert Fisk who says there is no religious aspect. I think the justice and equality that is inherent in Islam and its practitioners is a factor not the Wahabbie -Salafee sort of extremist versions, but the quest for justice is a factor in here. I don't think these people are going to allow this to be hijacked. It may take more time.

Press TV: You said Islam is very much a part of these movements. Why do you think this is the case with much of the mainstream media? It is more human rights or equal rights that the protesters are demanding. Why is it that the international media present it as if Islam would be exclusive of that?

Lamb: Well I think it's just fundamentally ignorance. We are a long way away, and we have so many of our own problems in the West for the last hundred years with our own culture. We just do not understand Islam. I can tell you here in Beirut when Westerns come here and see Islam in practice. The beauty of Islam is that it's a way of life and it's not some sort of jihadist that are media likes to identify with. Part of the problem is we have been a little lazy in the West. We have not had respect of others enough to study Islam. Of course, there will be no revolution without Islam because the essence of Islam is of course the quest for justice. Therefore, I think that is our problem. We have to catch up. We are going to catch up in the sense that we are not in control.

I believe the beliefs of these people and these images are going to be sustained. It's not going to be easy and we are worried about certain aspects of that. However, I think the leadership will come and the way of life and the culture of resistance are too strong. The idea is too powerful to be turned to the side. There will be efforts to hijack it. The paradigm of the West has been three things: Put in a despot or someone who represents stability, make sure that they are compliant in terms of military means and as you know, we have those 800 bases in 130 countries, and then finally support our foreign policy with respect to Israel. The despots were happy to do that. Are these people going to be satisfied with the occupation of Palestine? Of course not. Is it at the forefront right now? No, but is it fundamental? Yes, so I am optimistic.

I don't see that the West has the power to turn this thing aside. I think the region is changing dramatically. It's a fundamental change and the most the West can do is to respect these new governments on the basis of equality, and apply the tenets in the United Nations charter such as principals of equality and I think there can then be peace and good relations. I know that sounds a little idealistic, but I have confidence that these people are going to demand that. I hope that the American people will also demand that.

Press TV: They are saying, “Down, down Hamad!” in reference to the Bahraini King. Mr. Lamb, how significant is this chant, as it seems they are not only asking for a change in the government but total regime change in Bahrain.

Lamb: Yes, and these images are enormously powerful. Who is going to hijack [this uprising]? We are all worried about hijacking the revolution. I don't think these people will easily be hijacked. Hamed was considered a special case. You know the little reforms he did. He is a favorite of the Americans because not only [his country is home to the US] fifth fleet but [because] of his connection with Saudi Arabia etc…

As a King, he will likely start to blame the problems on the government, make some changes and survive. The presidents will fall in the Middle East ... The monarchs are in a better position some say but they may not be the case with Hamad. I mean the family has been I think you said 300 years or something. He is in danger now with his kind of persistence in resisting. That is the key to success and all of this is simply persistence and persistence. Thus, I think it's very significant. It has to be of enormous concern to Saudi Arabia and Washington. The big question is can he survive? The images suggest that he may not survive.

Press TV: On that note I would like to thank you International Lawyer, and Middle East Analysis, Dr. Franklin Lamb from Beirut.

NM/PKH

Laugh till you cry

Who says Muslims can’t be funny? Two films I watched recently disprove the popular media image of dour, bearded men and veiled women who take themselves and their religion far too seriously. One light-hearted (“The Infidel”) and the other a dark comedy (“Four Lions”), both released in 2010, show that nobody makes a better comedic subject today than British Muslims, who are caught between insulation and integration and are smart enough to know how to mine that predicament for laughs.

“The Infidel” requires you to suspend belief just a little bit. Even if you discovered your birth parents were Jewish, it wouldn’t change how you had been raised and what you believed all your life – at least that’s the logical way of looking at things. But writer David Baddiel and director Josh Appignanesi use this as a jumping-off point, taking it in hilarious (and sometimes extreme) directions, to explore what religion, faith, and identity really look like in the end

     
           

The premise of “Four Lions” doesn’t sound terribly funny, but it’s the way filmmaker Chris Morris sets up the situations that induces the laughter – and not all of it is guilt-free. Omar is a security guard at a mall with a wife and son who not only know about his plans for martyrdom but support him as if he were the star player on a football team

Mahmud Nasir has been raised a Muslim, and he lives as one - more or less - in London’s East End, home to Muslims of all varieties and degrees. His beloved eldest son wants to get married to the stepdaughter of a radical Muslim cleric, who will only give his blessings to the marriage if Mahmud and his family are “Muslim enough”. Mahmood is willing to go along with the plan to act just a little more devout than he usually is - no sacrifice is too great for his family, right?

But then, after his mother’s death, Mahmud finds out that he was adopted and that his birth parents were Jews. This discovery plunges him into a sea of confusion. He tries to locate his true identity by trying to decide between the two faiths, and makes a total mess of his life in the process.

This is the premise of “The Infidel”, a funny, thought-provoking comedy that stars Omid Djalili as Mahmud Nasir, Archie Panjabi as his devoted wife, and Richard Schiff as Mahmud’s provocative Jewish neighbor. The film requires you to suspend belief just a little bit. Even if you discovered your birth parents were Jewish, it wouldn’t change how you had been raised and what you believed all your life - at least that’s the logical way of looking at things. But writer David Baddiel and director Josh Appignanesi use this as a jumping-off point, taking it in hilarious (and sometimes extreme) directions, to explore what religion, faith, and identity really look like in the end.

“I’m a fan of body swap movies - Trading Places, Big, Freaky Friday etc. - and I thought this was a modern and unusual take on them,” says writer Baddiel. “It’s not one I think could have been done fifteen years ago, as I think Muslim and Jew have only started to be thought as cultural opposites fairly recently. And of course part of what happens in this film is that they turn out to be somewhat less opposite than Mahmud first imagines. At the end, it’s a plea for tolerance, although I’m happy to have lots of comedy arguing on the way to tolerance.”

Djlalili is the lead of the movie but he’s also the star, as the easy-going, foul-mouthed, ordinary Muslim bloke who has to confront issues of identity and belonging when he discovers his “dirty” secret. Djalili, a British comedian of Iranian and Bahai origin, is famous for his stand-up comedy, but he’s made appearances in feature films playing serious roles: Picasso in “Modigliani” and various villains in “The Mummy” and “Gladiator”. Rotund and bald, with a comically rubbery face, a roaring voice, and large, expressive eyes, Djalili displays cockiness, uncertainty, sadness and ham-handed ridiculousness with equal confidence.

The part was written with Djalili in mind, says Baddiel. “He’s perfect for it in so many ways - and not just because he looks like he could be Jewish as well as Muslim. He’s such a naturally funny person, and he’s got a lot of innate lovability, which really helps when a character starts sailing into troubling waters, as Mahmud does. He’s also, I think, a really fine actor.”

At first Mahmud goes into denial, trying to be extra devout, but his curiosity gets the better of him, and he hides in his bedroom trying on a yarmulke and a fedora, just to see what he’d look like as a Jew. His shame and confusion over his newly-discovered origins drives him to his American Jewish neighbor, Lenny Goldberg, who tutors him in “Jewishness”, feeding him chicken soup and matzoh balls, taking him to a bar mitvah, and teaching him how to say the perfect “oy”.

When asked why Mahmud doesn’t simply ignore his new discovery, Baddiel responds, “For two reasons: one, he’s just not that sort of person. He’s a Homer Simpson type, he overreacts to things, gets into scrapes, etc. - so he was always going to do that with this information. And then, of course, there is a plot reason why he cannot ignore it, which is to do with his parentage, but I don’t want to give that away.”

Eventually Mahmud makes some grievous errors in his double act, and the secret’s let out in the most public, embarrassing way. But Mahmud redeems himself in the end by boning up on his religious knowledge with the help of both the Quran and the Torah, and manages to come to terms with his unusual identity, winning back the respect of his neighbors and his family.

The film, shot on a shoestring budget of just over £1 million, is side-splittingly funny, and though the premise can get silly from time to time, Djalili carries the role endearingly, making you appreciate his dilemma while enjoying it at the same time. Though the film touches on serious subjects, it does so in a light, unthreatening way, taking the stereotypes both of Jews and Muslims and turning them on their heads. Baddiel says, “It was important to me that if there were going to be jokes about Jews and Israel, there had to be jokes about Muslims and Pakistan. Part of the whole point of the movie is to say that being frightened about making jokes about a culture is a type of racism. All cultures should be allowed into the realm of humour. “

So it was with reluctance that I watched the second film on my list, “Four Lions”, a farce on the idea of British jihad, because only the night before terrorists had attacked the CID building in downtown Karachi, starting off a gun battle before using a thousand kilograms of explosives to destroy the entire compound. After such an event, what could possibly be funny about terrorism? And why would you really want to watch a movie that treats terrorists as anything other than monsters?

But “Four Lions” is a movie by the inimitable Chris Morris, the British satirist behind cult hit shows “Brass Eye” and “The Day Today”. Morris is known for delivering boldness, honesty, and controversy, and for those reasons his films are not to be missed. If you’ve got the stomach for it, that is, because Morris spares no one and nothing in this movie that incorporates screwball comedy, dark humor, blistering dialogues, and hilarious set pieces to show that “jihad isn’t just about ideology, sometimes it’s about idiots”.

The movie is based on Morris’s own research: he spent three years talking to terrorism experts, police, the secret service, and imams, as well as ordinary Muslims. “These cells have the same group dynamics as bachelor parties and five-a-side basketball teams. Plans are upset by arguments, egos, testosterone and idiocy,” says Morris on the official Web site for Drafthouse Films. The ensemble cast is utterly convincing as cold-blooded would-be murderers who like pop music and buxom women. The film’s brilliance, we soon see, lies in how it weaves together farce and tragicomedy.

The film covers four would-be British Muslim jihadis, ordinary lads born and bred in Sheffield, complete with broad Yorkshire accents, roots in the community and loving families. Omar (Riz Ahmed) is the smartest one, and the ringleader; Waj (Kavyan Novak) and Faisal (Adeel Akhtar), infinitely stupider, trust him and follow him blindly. The loose canon in the set is Barry (Nigel Lindsay), a British Muslim convert, who goes by the name of Assam Al-Brittani and wants to usurp control of the group from Omar.

The four of them plan to attend a training camp in Pakistan with the aim of becoming true Mujahideen, then returning to Britain and blowing something up for the cause. What? They don’t know. Why? Well, they’re not too clear about that either. How is the only thing they seem to have down: after Omar and Waj come back from Pakistan, having failed spectacularly at their Mujahideen training, they gather bottles of peroxide and bleach and make plans to suicide bomb the London Marathon.

The premise doesn’t sound terribly funny, but it’s the way Morris sets up the situations that induces the laughter – and not all of it is guilt-free. Omar is a security guard at a mall with a wife and son who not only know about his plans for martyrdom but support him as if he were the star player on a football team. Waj is handsome but stupid, while Faisal borders on the mentally handicapped, but both are endearing in the way they put all their faith in their mission, even if they don’t understand it: Faisal spends his time training crows to be suicide bombers and Waj needs to take pictures of his face with his mobile phone to figure out what he’s feeling.

They manage to attract a fifth member, Hassan (Arsher Ali), a smart media studies student who specializes in impromptu performance art with a jihadi twist. While they argue over who’s in control of the mission, they show varying degrees of idiocy, lunacy, loyalty and brotherhood. But it’s Barry’s character who keeps doggedly pushing them towards their goal when they waver. His pronouncements of how jihadi mentality is of the pick’n’mix variety, with hideous inconsistencies and contradictions: “Your father ever buy a Jaffa orange, mate? Yes? Then he’s funding nukes for Israel. He’s a Jew.”

The jihadis’ insistence on making a statement through violence contrasts with the Muslim prayer group in the same neighborhood, whose leader keeps trying to convince Omar that terrorism is unIslamic. Omar shows contempt for this peaceful message, supported by hadiths and Quranic verses that Omar dismisses out of hand as being solely for wimps and losers (although his language is much more colorful than mine when making this point).

But there’s no moral relativism here: anyone and everyone can end up a target or a victim of jihadists, including the jihadists themselves. The film moves towards its conclusion, which I won’t give away here, but I will say this: it stops being funny when people start dying, and becomes strangely poignant, especially when you realize the people you’re feeling sorry for are the ones that you think have no morals, no religion, no humanity.

Also low-budget at £2.5 million, “Four Lions” has so far taken in £3 million at the British box office. Still it had a tough time finding a US distributor because of its “controversial” nature, despite a strong showing at the Sundance Film Festival. It is now being released in the US by Draft House Films through a 10-city promotional screening tour which began in mid-October.

In the final analysis, “The Infidel” is harmless entertainment while “Four Lions” leaves you with the taste of ashes in your mouth. Don’t watch either if you’re convinced that Muslims know it all: only watch these movies if you are ready to face the fact that we’re as foolish, flawed, and ultimately confused as the rest of humanity. And then, too, only if you’re brave enough to laugh about it.

Bina Shah is an author based in Karachi