Roger L Simon on PBS's "Islam v. Islamists" Ban

In the New York Post (ht RogerLSimon.com) :

I HAVE to admit the first thing that attracted me to Martyn Burke's "Islam vs. Islamists" was that PBS had suppressed it. As is now well known, the network rejected Burke's documentary - produced with Frank Gaffney and Alex Alexiev for the network's "American Crossroads" series - on the film's completion. PBS's initial explanation was that the film was not good enough, aesthetically.

Well, yes, I thought, that could be. Most things aren't. As a filmmaker, I know that well. Only one of the films I have written - "Enemies, A Love Story" - can I even watch today. Most PBS documentaries I find so stultifying I'd rather read the phone book.

So I assumed the criticism of Burke's film was valid. Still, I was curious. I had not been entirely satisfied with previous documentaries I had seen on related subjects - "Islam: What the West Needs To Know" and "Obsession" - because, like Al Gore's global-warming film, they were made in the old-fashioned, didactic style of the conventional documentary that always teeters on the edge of propaganda or special pleading. I assumed "Islam vs. Islamists" would be like that.

Boy, was I wrong. Burke's doc is a riveting and creatively made film about the most important subject of our time: What to do about radical Islam?

It confronts this dilemma in a sly, novelistic manner, inter-weaving the stories of good, moderate Muslims with the imams and supposedly "true Muslims" who, not surprisingly, accuse the moderate Muslims of not being Muslims at all.

Soon enough we learn these imams are apologists for terrorism and for the worst kind of medieval religious sadism. (One of them enthusiastically endorses the stoning to death of adulterers by holding up a Koran. "I didn't make this up," he says proudly. "It is written here.") The mostly mild-mannered moderate Muslims are shown to be at risk for their lives, some of them accompanied everywhere by bodyguards.

All this is done with the people talking about themselves and revealing themselves (including the imam responsible for the bloody Danish Cartoons riots). There are no so-called "terrorism experts" or other talking heads interpreting reality for us.

In other words, this is a film, not another one of those didactic docs referred to above...

...I hereby call on my fellow Motion Picture Academy members, whatever their political leanings, to protest this cowardly and un-American act of censorship. As artists, we should be appalled by such blatant disregard of our First Amendment rights. Public funding of PBS should be reconsidered if such reactionary behavior continues.