The Clarion Fund (now the “Clarion Project–#1 news site on the threat of Islamic extremism“) rides again. After producing three classic Islamophobic films, Obsession, Third Jihad and Iranium, T-H-E-Y’R-E B-A-C-K with a new one, Honor Diaries. The new project focuses on honor killings and Islam’s supposed hatred of women. One has to ask why a film about the purported abuse of Muslim women was produced by Jews, and ones with a distinct ideological agenda at that.
Honor Diaries calls itself a “woman’s film” (it was launched on March 8th, International Women’s Day) when its focus is decrying the alleged backwardness and misogyny of Islam. Here is the blurb from the film’s website in which you can see the sly manipulation of feminism for the purpose of Muslim-bashing:
The film gives a platform to exclusively female voices and seeks to expose the paralyzing political correctness that prevents many from identifying, understanding and addressing this international human rights disaster. Freedom of movement, the right to education, forced marriage, and female genital mutilation are some of the systematic abuses explored in depth.
Spurred by the Arab Spring, women who were once silent are starting to speak out about gender inequality and are bringing visibility to a long history of oppression. This project draws together leading women’s rights activists and provides a platform where their voices can be heard and serves as inspiration to motivate others to speak out.
More than a movie, Honor Diaries is a movement meant to inspire viewers to learn more about issues facing women in Muslim-majority societies, and to act for change.
The words “Arab Spring” above are the “hook” for the film. Its producers erroneously saw the Arab Spring as a revolt against Islam. So they devised this film as a wedge to further divide the mass of westerners against Islam. If the Arab Spring represented democracy, feminism, and turning toward western values, then it offered a perfect tool to discredit traditional Islam. Of course, this analysis of the Arab Spring is totally wrong. It did represent a turn toward populism and even democracy in some national contexts, but it in no way rejected Islam.
Another aspect of the marketing of this film is quite devious and sophisticated. Instead of taking on Islam head-on as it did so outlandishly in the previous three films, here the trash-talking is downplayed. It doesn’t preoccupy itself with terrorism or claim that all Muslims are terrorists as the earlier films did. Instead, it embraces a subject as American as apple pie: women’s rights. We all agree that oppression of women is wrong. So if Clarion can paint a picture of Islamic societies as oppressing women, then it’s achieved it’s goal of discrediting Islam, but done it through the back-door as it were.
Behind the film are the usual cast of characters including Rabbi Raphael Shore, formerly (according to him) of the settler-linked Aish HaTorah and Israel media-advocacy group, Honest Reporting. Alex Traiman, who wrote the previous films is back for another reprieve. But there are some intriguing new figures, Ayan Hirsi Ali, one of the early African female of assailants of Islam, who is a visiting fellow at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. Another “expert” interviewed extensively is Dr. Qanta Ahmed, a Manhattan sleep disorder specialist, who’s transformed herself into a feminist Muslim and darling of the pro-Israel world. She celebrates Israel’s achievements as an unapologetic voice of Arab hasbara.
A member of the film’s advisory board is Christopher Boughey, a detective in the Peoria, AZ police department. Though his work involves investigating crimes against women, he has no particular expertise in Islam. His claim to fame is that he was the lead detective investigating an alleged honor killing. Which now makes him an expert in the entire field of women’s rights and Islam.
A writer and producer of the film, Paula Kweskin, has penned anti-Palestinian articles in the Jerusalem Post arguing that Israel does not occupy Gaza. Despite Kweskin’s claim of special interest in international humanitarian relief and the plight of Arab women, her NY Times wedding announcement proclaims that she is an employee of Clarion Fund (not just an independent producer of the film). She and her husband appear to be Orthodox Jews. So rather than a feminist filmmaker, she’s little more than a hasbara professional.
There may be genuine, sincere feminists involved with this film. There may even be some legitimacy to the issues offered. But under the auspices of an Islam-hating outfit like Clarion, whatever good might’ve been possible in this project has been completely undermined. The participants have either been used without their awareness, believing they were doing good; or they’ve participated out of sharing the values of Shore and Clarion.
One of the latter is one of the nine subjects of the film, Reza. Here is her spin on the matter:
“I thought this project was the most brilliant thing I’d ever heard of, and I say hats off to Clarion for having done this and allowing us to speak. We were not paid and it was not scripted,” Reza told Haaretz in a phone interview.
“The term Islamophobia is being used today to ward off any criticism of Islam and to silence people. Moreover, this is not really a film about Islam, it’s a film about human rights,” she said. “Those who are apologists will have an issue with that.”
I’ve got news for Reza, either she’s lying and she knows it; or she hasn’t seen any of the previous Clarion films and hasn’t reviewed Raphael Shore’s credits or bio. Clarion is an overtly anti-Muslim organization and all of its projects share that goal.
Clarion represents not just a pro-Israel agenda, but an Islamophobic one. Think Progress compiled a list of the group’s largest donors and they are some of the most pro-Israel, Islamophobic funders in the U.S. They include the Irving Moskowitz Foundation ($60,000), the San Francisco Jewish Federation ($75,000), the Jewish Communal Fund (NY, $30,000), and the William Rosenwald Fund ($25,000). Moskowitz is one of the most generous donors to the radical settler movement, the S.F. Jewish federation’s largest donor is the Islamophobic Koret Foundation. The Rosenwald Fund is controlled by Jewish Islamophobe, Nina Rosenwald.
Clarion’s board members and analysts like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, Frank Gaffney and Ryan Mauro are frequent guests on FoxNews shows in which they decry the threat of Islam to U.S. society. Clarion is almost a wholly-owned subsidiary of the GOP, especially the Jewish neocon variety.
Clarion’s films are hyperbolic, histrioinic and senationalist. Tens of thousands of copies of Obsession were mailed to voters during a presidential election at a cost of $18-million, an expense secretly borne by a Chicago Jewish pro-Israel donor, Barre Seid. Before they removed it, one of the websites overtly championed the candidacy of John McCain. Clarion has paid GOP political consultants to promote its previous films.
The movie bills itself as “interfaith” in order to inoculate itself from claims that its sole target is Islam. But as near as I can tell the sole interfaith aspect of the project is that Jews funded a project to bash Muslims.
The producers have located nine women, only one of whom lives in the Arab world, and most of whom appear privileged, wealthy and secular. Some of the subjects haven’t lived in the Arab or Muslim world for decades. One of the interviewees is an Arab Christian, who would have a plethora of prejudices against Islam. Another is an Indian Sikh, who is neither Arab nor Muslim.
If the producers had wanted to make an honest film they would’ve created a project that explored the subjugation of women in the Third World, not just in Arab or Muslim lands. This would’ve enabled them to explore conditions for women throughout the world, rather than in one relatively small piece of it. But then, of course, they wouldn’t have fulfilled the agenda of the producers to bash Israel’s Arab and Muslim “enemies.”
Nor did I see in the movie trailer any commitment by any of them to engage in work in the Arab world to liberate women and girls from their alleged straits. The only call to action asks viewers to support the International Violence Against Women Act, which has failed to gather enough support in past Congresses to become law. It also offers a “Wall of Honor” to which you may nominate a respected man or woman.
The film does offer video clips of young girls speaking of their suffering. But the girls were rarely identified and it wasn’t clear what, if any, connection they had to the nine main subjects of the documentary.
The film’s style is agitprop. It juxtaposes a heartfelt girl-power session with numerous videos showing women who’ve been hung, whose faces have been disfigured by acid attacks, and who’ve been murdered in honor killings. There is little sociological analysis of the problem or suggestions about how to end it other than general consciousness raising. The only clear enemy suggested is Muslim men and society.
One example of the sloppiness of the film is the denunciation of female circumcision. This is not a rite of Islam. Nor is it a religious rite in the cultures where it is practiced. Though genital mutilation is a barbaric practice, it cannot be associated with Islam. This distinction is not made clear in the trailer I viewed. Another glaring distortion has an interviewer claiming honor killings are an alarming phenomenon even in the U.S. and “increasing” in occurrence. I’d challenge this claim, which is never buttressed with any evidence. In yet another segment, an Iranian-American woman says:
Muslim women are deprived of their humanity.
There are tens of millions of Muslim women who would disagree with this statement. A statement, I might add, which is never supported with any evidence other than news clips of U.S. honor killings. There is a presumption that the men who committed these heinous crimes did so out of some allegiance to Islam. Another unfounded assumption.
An example of the naivete of Paula Kweskin, the public face and producer of the film is that she closes the clip above by soliciting $10,000 to have the film translated into Arabic so it can be shown in Muslim countries like Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Why in God’s name would any Muslim society be willing to screen a film that disparages virtually all of its adherents?
Though they would deny it, one of the end results of this film will be a spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes. The tone of this film encourages the acts of the imbalanced haters in our communities. It empowers them to engage in anti-social behavior like shooting into mosques (which occurred several days ago near Chicago). So instead of liberating women from the shackles of Islam, it’s liable to put Muslims in harm’s way.
What’s unprecedented for a Clarion film is the level of co-optation they’ve managed with the feminist and human rights community. Haaretz claims Amnesty hosted a London screening and that the UN Human Rights Commissioner received a copy of the film in Geneva. The film has been screened at film festivals all over the western world. Their stealth marketing strategy earned them a screening at the University of Michigan Dearborn, right in the heart of the Arab-American community. When asked by naive campus administrators to participate in a panel discussion both CAIR and the ADC refused wisely. They didn’t want to give the film any further credibility by appearing. Surely, their participation would’ve been used by the producers to claim even they saw it as a legitimate portrayal of Muslim attitudes toward women. I understand the screening was wisely “postponed” by campus officials.
If you are a feminist or human rights activist on campus or elsewhere, beware any attempt to bring this film into your organizations as a documentary worthy of screening. I am sure there are legitimate films that discuss this issue without the animus inherent in this one.
Another dubious development is that Haaretz liberal Zionist blogger, Ilene Prusher published a credulous profile of the film which actually treats it like a real documentary, rather than a piece of Islamophobic agitprop. I’ve noted here previously Prusher’s tendency to diminish or discredit the achievements of Israeli Palestinian cultural figures at the expense of Israeli Jewish artists. Now, Prusher champions an overtly Islamophobic film and propaganda outlet. She does so while barely acknowledging the reams of online published research exposing Clarion’s ideological biases. Haaretz too becomes a tool to promote these wares before its liberal Zionist audience.
thank you for very insightful and helpful article! as a muslim and longstanding women’s/human rights activist, i am constantly coming up against the argument that muslim women can’t be feminists unless we reject our faith. and this film-i use the term loosely- is more and more being used as ‘valid’ evidence for this viewpoint by well-meaning feminists in the mainstream, who want to ‘rescue’ women from islam, not realizing that the quran gave us many rights not established in the west for women until the 20th century- voting, property rights, inheritance rights, etc.
i would like to ask permission to link to it, when discussing this film and the co-opting of women’s rights issues by persons and groups for anti-islam purposes?
[comment deleted for major comment rule violation. Lies about Islam and Islamophobia will NOT be published here]
[Comment deleted: no further comments will be published by you until you admit that you have no UN source confirming that 90% of honor killing victims are Muslim]
I thought liberals were champions of women and free speech. Yet they advocate censoring critics who stand up for women’s rights.
No, that was actually FoxNews which invited me on a show to criticize the film & then lied saying I’d refused to appear. THAT is censorship.
Clarion isn’t “standing up” for women’s rights. It’s standing up for Islamophobia.
[comment deleted: read the comment rules. Islamophobic comments are not acceptable. Since you’re already moderated, the next step is a complete ban if you cannot respect the rules.]
Here’s the main issue Rocky. When people want to bash Islam, they use “Freedom”, “Free Speech” and other cliche slogans such as “Women’s Rights”, but their real intent and purpose is to bash Islam; they would never take such a stand if the so-called “perpetrators” were not Muslim.
Take this “Honor Diaries” for instance. All the people defending this piece of Hate-mongering, are looking to bash Islam and Muslims, they are not concerned about women’s RIGHTS on this issue, across all groups. The video, as far as i can ascertain, does not talk about Honor Murders committed by Hindus and Sikhs or by other races and faiths. These defenders are talking about how repressive Islam and Muslims are, and how the Quran tells them to kill or oppress women (it does not). Nowhere does this video…from the trailer that I have seen…talk about acid attacks on women, about gang-rapes as a punishment, as murders to “defend honor”, about cutting off noses and ears, BY PEOPLE OTHER THAN Muslims.
You go and bring your friends and the people from the Clarion Fund/Group/Project and Ms. Kweskin and talk about REAL women’s rights and oppression of women BY ALL, not just by the targets du jour (Muslims) and I will guarantee to stand with you and will bring dozens of Muslims with me.
Until that time, do me a favor and take your superior attitudes where someone agrees with you and have a great Muslim-bash session.
By the way, while I understand the colloquial understanding of the two words, there is no such thing as a “Liberal” or a “Conservative”.
Liberals are conservative on a lot of things, Civil Rights and a woman’s right to choose, for instance and Conservatives are liberal on a lot of things, giving to the rich and having lots of guns, for instance.
[comment deleted for comment rule violations]
[comment deleted–when you find a UN report that shows 90% of honor killings are by Muslims, then comments may be approved. Till then don’t bother commenting here.]
Richard, I applaud you calling out the Clarion Project for exploiting the horror of honor killings to slam Muslims as a whole. However, you really should not have thrown the word “Jew” into your critique here — it’s being slung as ammo against CAIR, as we saw these past couple nights on The Kelly File. (link to video.foxnews.com)
And yes, I am fully aware that “Richard Silverstein” doesn’t exactly sound like the name of an Islamist jihadist. Of course, that’s a detail that Fox News conveniently left out, much to the detriment of CAIR’s public sympathy.
@Crap detectr: I stand by my reference to the Jewish funders, producers & directors of this project. Muslims don’t need Jews telling them their alleged vices. Would I accept a Muslim producing a film telling me about the vices of Judaism? No it’s ludicrous & racist.
By referring to them simply as “Jews,” don’t you do the same harm as when the Clarion Project refers to honor killers simply as “Muslims?”
@Crap Detectr: There is nothing ever “simple” about this subject, nor was my use of the term in context “simple.” Here is what I wrote:
Anyone, whether you or Megyn Kelly who elides the last phrase in that sentence does a grave disservice to me and those who legitimately criticize this film & the pro-Israeli Islamophobe Jews instrumental in its creation..
I was at a recent screening of the film in Jerusalem and it was very unsettling. The audience was largely young, Aish Hatorah students cheering for their friends who were involved in this poorly done propaganda documentary. I went home and researched the internet and found that all my suspicions were confirmed. I agree with everything in Richard’s article. And then some. When one woman from the audience tried to speak to the wider issues and mentioned Jewish inequality for women she was silenced. And later when I wrote on the Honor Diaries wall (where there is not a single critical remark) my comment was quickly deleted, even though it was rather mild considering my real views on the matter. The intent of this film is clearly not to promote a dialogue of any kind about women’s rights, but merely to bash Islam. It’s disgraceful.
@ Judith Posner: Thanks for your comment. You were brave to see the film with all those True Believers. I’m wondering if Paula Kweskin, the director, comes out of the Aish HaTorah environment as well, since Clarion & Aish are kissing cousins.
I just read for about an hour a lot of the postings and cannot understand why none of you seem to be able to differentiate, or discern the need to identify radical, extremist, evil, etc. doctrines. How else can we explain or talk about the “bad” Muslims, the “bad” Jews, the “bad” Christians vs the “good” ones if we are not allowed to use those “words” to identify them. These people exist in all religions. I don’t get why we can’t call them out on their evil practices?
Anita. Let me see if I may be able to help you understand this better.
First of all, as I said earlier, the suffixes and prefixes applied ti Islam and to Muslims, are (in todays usage) code to taking bashes at islam and Muslims yet still appearing “civilised”.
Let us take an example of some members of the Taliban cutting off the heads of some people. That is indeed a terrible event and must be condemned, but the labuage used may be critical. To refer to them as extremists, violent, cruel, satanic, murderous, would all be fine. But then to turn the definitions and stating that this is an example of “Violent Islam”, “extremist Islam” or, “Islam has been hijacked”would be unacceptable; one does not take bashes at an entire population.
similarly, terms such as “Violent Muslims”, “extremist Muslims” etc., would also be unaccpetable because that suggests that “Moderate Muslims” are better; one is either Muslim or not, there are no degrees of Muslim-ness except in the eyes of God and He aint sayin!
I suppose terms like “Violent Muslims” etc., MIGHT be acceptable if current usage also allowed for similar prefixes for other people such as Blacks, jews and other minorities, but today’s culture frwons upon that. Papers have a hard time even mentioning the faith of some criminal…unless of course, s-he is Muslim!
When was the last time you heard about extremist Jews who had vast caches of explosives in Florida? No, you heard about a doctor and his wife.
Violent Jews who plotted to blow up 50 Muslim buildings in California? No. “Crazed” JDL member.
Murderous Christians who had 18 Cyanide bombs to deploy in large shopping malls? No. Violent cult members.
Butchering Christian Black Sailor who murdered 12 of his own fellows in a Naval Yard? No. Contractor gone crazy kills 12 people (vs. Maj. Nidal Hassan, the murderous Muslim).
I agree, it is sometimes, a fine line, but if you keep honesty and fairness in mind, you should have no trouble discussing horrible deeds by horrible people, without getting entangled in the language of the bigots.
I have to disagree with this analysis. I consider myself to be a “liberal” Christian, but I do not reserve the right to deny that label to another person with whose views I disagree. I may believe that a conservative Christian has views that are antithetical to the message of Jesus; but I am not the arbiter of her sincerity or “salvation”. Likewise, if an individual says she is Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim, I do not believe I can ignore that label. To my knowledge, each religion has factions/doctrinal disagreements/sectional differences which will seem conservative or liberal in relation to the beliefs of an individual. So I might believe someone is an “extremist” or “zealot” based on my understanding/learning about the basic tenets of the religion and/or a comparison with my own. But I would never say a member of the Taliban is not a Muslim, though I may find his version of Islam distasteful.
Sorry to be long-winded, but to call someone a conservative, extremist, or orthodox of any religious stripe is not an indictment of that faith as a whole, but a comparative and descriptive label which can be negative or not depending on the context.
@ Laura in LA: This is wrong on so many levels. Of course, there are different doctrinal strains in every religion & political ideology. It is very dangerous to attempt to delegitimize someone as a member of such religions or political movements. But when belief becomes so divorced from the consensus of religious belief and verges into homicidal or genocidal mania, then one certainly has not only a right, but obligation to declare such belief to be a violation of religious doctrine.
Al Qaeda no more represents mainstream Islam than settlers represent mainstream Judaism. Though followers of Al Qaeda are Muslims, that doesn’t mean that their extremist ideology is kosher (sorry for the inapt metaphor) as Muslim theology.
If you are interested, please see my response to Jafar below. I believe your opinions and mine share common ground.
@ Laura in LA:
If so, it’s a very small sliver. I do not believe in dialoguing or attempting to sway hostile, fanatical, genocidal members of any religion whether it be Judaism or Islam. Once they turn their inclination to violence into real harm to real human beings I’ve pretty much done with them. There is nothing to be said to or gained by dialogue with Hirsi Ali or Osama bin Laden (were he alive) or Baruch Marzel or Meir Kahane (were he alive). Too many have died & too much blood has been shed for that.
To engage in real discussion with someone requires some commonality. Some shared value, shared humanity. People who would kill others or even just advocate doing it as Hirsi Ali does are beyond the Pale.
Laura, I believe you are misunderstanding me. I would NEVER suggest we get in the game of pronouncing who is or isn’t, Muslim, Jew, Christian or whatever; that is between him and his Maker.
Thus, Taliban and Al-Qaeda folk can say they are Muslims and we could nto dispute it although we coulddefinitely say, they are breaking every Quranic injunction. Smililarly, we could not deny the Christianity of Milosevic, Karadzic ot the Lord’s Resistance army, but we can condemn their actions as very un-Christian.
So on for people of every stripe and faith.
What I am saying is that we may not use the professed faith of a criminal, to generalize all people of that faith. Thus, terms such as Extremist Islam, Violent Islam are out, as are temrs with the same prefixes for Muslims.
I am willing to consider the prefixes for Muslims when we start seeing the same prefixes for Christians, Jews, Blacks or other groups.
My sensitivity on this point stems from the usage of “Extremist Muslims” vs. “Moderate Muslims”, suggesting that one is either on one side or the other. While I am not a violent or extremist Muslim, I reject being called a “Moderate Muslim”; I am Muslim and that is all there is to it.
I greatly appreciate your kind response, Jafar. As a Jewish/Muslim/Christian teacher and the product of a multi-faith/cultural education, my colleagues and I may use the adjectives “extremist”, “misguided”, or “apostate” to refer to Christians, Jews, or Muslims (or Buddhists, Hindus, etc.) who believe that they may use violence to enforce their views on others. We generally call such individuals “fanatics” and often discuss the reasons for their insecurity and persecution (factual or perceived). We discuss these movements in comparison to the “mainstream” of a given religion (including liberals, moderates, and conservatives). I completely understand the defensiveness (for example) my fellow Christians may feel when abortion clinic bombers or abused women like Andrea Yates are referred to as members of our faith. But rather than isolate or deny them, we prefer to work to bring them into the fold. And in our experience, it has not served well to carve out exceptions to this rule — we don’t choose to judge “extreme” Buddhists more harshly than their Jewish counterparts, but aim to give everyone the same benefit of the doubt. Our goal is that our students and their peers will inhabit and create a world that is less prejudiced in this way (at least).
This is not a discussion limited to Islam; there is an ongoing debate about the place of Mormonism within Christianity, with some choosing to disown it and others seeking to include it in the “mainstream” of the religion.
Arab springs sparked from Tunisia and spread all over Arab world,against autocratic western approved regimes and threatening the most to oil rich kingdoms,which were created by west in gulf at first place.When Egyptian over throw the blood sucking US approved 35 years old forced upon them by west as liberal Mubarak rule,and elected democratically president Mursi, it was Hillary Clinton first, who visited the military head, instead of congratulating the elected president.what happened within year was self explanatory, how proven convicted murderer in court with 70 billion dollars stolen saved in Swiss bank,biggest money-laundry bank in the world. Mubarak who was taking last breaths,were smirking on departure and elected president after bloody coup was going in bogus charges, together with intentional criminal western silence, sponsored by oil rich states and state department.Western double standards are so corrupt, that even genuine democracy in Muslim world is undigested,let alone islamophopic preaching on the name of freedom.
I haven’t seen the film and I probably wouldn’t bother even if I had the opportunity, but it’s curious (not) that an Islamophobic film targets (among other things) female genital circumcision when male genital circumcision is perpetrated on Jewish boys.