You might wonder, How can one battle Islamic extremism without embracing violence? You could also ask how one engages in discourse on a religion which its followers have often abused and put into violence, (only among other religions though) while those followers are seemingly ready to issue ‘fatwa’ or violence towards any infidel that speaks against it.
This movie describes the effort of a British born Muslim extremist and an American Atheist towards reshaping oligarchy and their friendships. The movie collates their efforts towards fostering debates and friendships which may serve to ameliorate the problem.
This particular conflict, especially between religions has caused pain for a lot of people. It isn’t easy to solve and that is where the film breaks the conversation in. The various experts speaking in the film bring forth every side to the conflict and provide their take in a very friendly manner.
Maajid Nawaz is a British born writer and former Islamic extremist who, together with an atheist and a philosopher by the name Sam Harris, released a book in 2014 that is the basis of this documentary. The title of the book is “Islam and the Future of Tolerance” and both of them in a very awkward way tried to communicate with each other back in 2010 but relaxed their stance by 2014.
The film uses various talking heads including public and TV speakers to capture each person’s story and how they were able to connect with each other in order to prevent intimidating violence against one another.
Nawaz strongly believes that Islam’s interpretation has been ‘hijacked by the Bin Ladens of this world,’ this stance weakening the supportive arguments made by militant Islamists. This argument stems from him being a polished public speaker as a student activist, even campaigning Hiab Ut Tahrir and running for student body president. He touches on domestic violence when he advocates for breaking ‘this blasphemy taboo,’ which in context translates into breaking the silence surrounding domestic violence. In short, he believes that there is nothing wrong with opposing faith.
In contention with all these claims, he believes that there is nothing inherently wrong with opposing the faith either. After demolishing Islam, he adds that people are free to do whatever they want to one as devout as him. It would be an alien experience for Muslims, what psychologists call ‘cognitive dissonance.’ He compares it to being fed to lions; they would pray to not get fed to fished out of a cliff a thousand feet in the air. Not to mention, there is no request one can place in a head but a gauntlet claims.
Harris, author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Search for Reason makes the argument for the complete removal of supernaturalism and religion, He came to claim that Islam and ‘Harris’s bloody religion’ was the hardest to deal with, as was proved during the Australian debate with Nawaz.
This exchange proves the reason as to why Harris laments, ‘we live in perpetual choice between conversation and violence,’ while his capitalistic mindset remains intact and saves Muslims the international shame and outrage.
Moving away from those beginner steps, there’s an image of a man trying to balance on a tightrope. In a lengthy telephone conversation recording made in 2014, everyone seems to agree that “texts do not interpret their meanings for themselves” and “Islam is not Islamists” as well as “Islamists are a minute fraction” of a religion that, indeed, has a deeply rooted intolerance towards women, gay rights and other religions. Unfortunately, there are a few exceptions that exist in the religion.
As he narrates a simplified version of his life sketch, he highlights the fact that he grew up with prejudice in Essex, where there was plenty of “Paki bashing” going on, and eventually got radicalized. Consequently, the individual joined a group and went on a recruitment spree all over the country.
During this attempt of recruitment, he was in Egypt on 9/11. Along with many other members of diverse religions, he was imprisoned and charged a couple of days later. The 4 year sentence (*for him*) encouraged him to delve deeper into his ideas and aspirations. Most importantly, amnesty international labeled him ‘a prisoner of conscience’ and took on the cause which made it easier for him. What he couldn’t grasp, however, was how all of the departed Israelis questioned this during the length of his sentence.
It is reminiscent of ‘We will bury you’ from Khrushchev in regard to free speech in America, “We would exploit the left multi culturalist” to try and make an impact in the Western region.
He incited a coup in the college students’ body, distributed hostile and inflammatory brochures, called for outrageous proclamations, and misogynistic women oppression. While on campus, his bodyguard decapitated a Non-Islamic Nigerian with a machete.
Harris engages in an uncomplicated quarrel with actor Affleck while on the set of “Politically Incorrect” where he recalls how people have had a hard time trying to understand the underlying violent dogma and history of the Islam religion. As an atheist liberal, during speeches, he gets ridiculed for focusing on Islam nation.
In her books ‘Heretic: Why Islam Needs Reformation Now’ and ‘Infidel’, activist and author Aayan Hirsi Ali loudly reprimands Nawaz in discussions on where the fault lies for rendering Islam a violent attack on world peace. She states that simply getting him to accept that there is a “menace”, is a start.
Based on the broad range of opinion, devotion and fanaticism in the Muslim world, Nawaz and Harris try to unpack the vast domain of concentric circles, starting with the faint fraction of ‘jihadists’. This then transcends through layers of conservative Islam into the more liberal parts of Islamic society which may be more receptive to ‘reform’.
Yasmine Mohammed, the author of “From Al-Qaeda to Atheism”, is astonished by the ability to “build the nuance in the debate” and “stop that polarization” which is to opposing sides, decently far apart.
Ali Rizvi, whose book is “The Atheist Muslim”, preaches the two scholars’ gospels: “Honor the freedom of people to hold whatever views they decide to, but that doesn’t mean we extend courtesy to those beliefs.”
That’s a conspiracy of sorts, true enough, and all of these references to conservative “bible belt” America being no less radicalized than intolerant conservatism of global Islam puts the red ink icing on the cake.
Finally, this may not be accepted in many areas just like “Islam and the Search for Tolerance” may not be accepted by Christians on television or within Fox news in America.
As such, however, Desh Amila and Jay Shapiro have not completely taken away hope from us, launching a furious complex of ancient debate more often contested with violence as a civilized discussion that people can argue through concepts and reasoned answers.
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