Excellent PBS Show on Islam

I found the documentary very objective, and very unbiased. I recommend everyone to see it on PBS

December 19, 2002, 9:10 a.m.
Islam Soft and Hard
PBS's whitewashed commercial for Islam.

By Robert Spencer



In a stunning move designed to "counter the negative image of Christian
Fundamentalists," PBS officials announced today that they're beginning
production of a lavish two-hour feature, Jesus: Legacy of a Messiah.
Produced by a convert to Christianity and featuring interviews with gentle,
introspective Fundamentalist Christians, the production is designed to offset the
widespread representation of Christian Fundamentalism as harsh, vindictive,
and unforgiving. "Christianity is really a soft thing," says one of the preachers
interviewed. "It's not a hard thing."

The production tells the story of Jesus from his virgin birth
through his crucifixion and miraculous resurrection,
highlighting the truth and miraculous character of these
events and showing how each of them has significant
impact on the lives of believers today. The New
Testament, says one participant, "is the most
extraordinarily beautiful discourse." Of the angel Gabriel's
appearance to the Virgin Mary to announce her mission
as the Mother of God's Son, the same expert observes,
"This is how the ineffable, incomprehensible, utterly
transcendent, indescribable God makes itself known to
us."

Don't check your PBS schedule just yet. The Corporation
for Public Broadcasting would no doubt be the first to tell
you that such credulity and proselytizing has no place on
public television. And the idea that they would plump for
Christian Fundamentalism is, of course, laughable.

But the above is not made up out of whole cloth. The
quotations above all appear, in reference to Islam and the
Koran rather than Christianity and the Bible, in
Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet, the real-life PBS
production running during this Christmas season. In this
handsome Christmas present from the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting, elements of Islamic faith such as
Muhammad's prophetic claim and miraculous journey to
Jerusalem (for which journey there is no evidence
whatsoever except the word of Muhammad himself, who
never went to Jerusalem in any ordinary manner) and the
court of Heaven are presented without question or
challenge from skeptics. Attractive Muslim believers show
the positive impact of their faith in their lives. Common
challenges to Islam — that it encourages the oppression
of women, as well as violence under the banner of jihad
— are examined, found wanting, and dismissed.

Muhammad, one commentator exclaims, "is the kind of
person who combines political and military and social and
religious and intellectual dimensions of life in ways that are
important for those of us in the 21st century who are
struggling to put together complete lives ourselves." I
haven't heard a more open and direct evangelistic call
since a man on 34th Street in New York handed me a
Gospel tract and said, "Read this, brother. It could
change your life."

But that street-corner preacher didn't have an endowment
from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Indeed,
Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet presents such an
appealing picture of Islam that it has become the best argument yet to cut off
PBS's public funding.

This "documentary" is just a small element of the broader multiculturalism
movement, but against the backdrop of terrorist attacks all over the world it
takes on an even more disquieting cast. Take, for example, its treatment of the
concept of jihad. To hear PBS tell it, Muslims are just Methodists with hats and
beards. "Jihad is misused," one expert informs us. "There is absolutely nothing in
Islam that justifies the claim of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda or other similar
groups to kill innocent civilians. That is unequivocally a crime under Islamic law.
Acts of terror violence that have occurred in the name of Islam are not only
wrong, they are contrary to Islam."

Very well. But here the producers of Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet had a
real opportunity. Instead of flatly stating that terrorism cannot be justified by
Islam, they could have explained why misunderstanding jihad isn't a faux pas
restricted to the benighted Falwells and Robertsons of the world. They could
have informed viewers why millions of Muslims endorse the violent jihad
preached by Islamic organizations spanning the globe — from Hamas,
Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Jemaah
Islamiah in Southeast Asia, Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya in Egypt, the Armed Islamic
Group in Algeria, Al-Ummah in India, the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines,
and so many others.

The documentary reports the views of Mohamed Zakariya, who is described
by another Muslim as being among "the mildest people in our community."
Zakariya states that "revenge, suicide bombing, things of that kind, they have no
place in Islam." This is simply stated as fact. The producers pass up the
opportunity to clarify opposing views held by quite prominent figures in the
Islamic world, such as Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, the prestigious and
respected Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Tantawi was quoted
by President Bush last Fall at the United Nations as saying that "terrorism is a
disease, and that Islam prohibits killing innocent civilians." But according to the
Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), last spring the same sheikh
declared that suicide bombing was "the highest form of Jihad operations," and
that "every martyrdom operation against any Israeli, including children, women,
and teenagers, is a legitimate act according to [Islamic] religious law, and an
Islamic commandment."

They could have answered the question that has gone conspicuously
unanswered by Muslim organizations since September 11: If Osama and his ilk
are so clearly misusing the concept of jihad and committing acts that are plainly
contrary to Islam, why are all these terrorist groups able to win so many
adherents among Muslims? Why is Islamic terrorism not the province of a few
disenfranchised and desperate fanatics, but a worldwide phenomenon,
everywhere capable of commanding the loyalty of its adherents even unto a
bloody and violent death?

A breezy dismissal of the Islamic bona fides of suicide bombers, terrorists, and
terrorist sympathizers is inadequate and, given that the threat to the civilized
world has not abated in the least since September 11, cravenly misleading.

This glaring omission is compounded by the fact that the production deals
explicitly with Muhammad's notorious massacre of the Jewish Bani Qurayzah
tribe — an exercise of seventh-century warrior brutality of the kind that Muslim
terrorists today invoke to justify their actions. But we would never know that
from PBS. In the documentary, the well-known American convert to Islam
Hamza Yusuf, clearly uncomfortable with the subject, notes that "uh,
approximately 700 men, uh, were killed. Uh, they were executed. So, this
definitely occurred." But to his rescue rushes Karen Armstrong, author of
Islam: A Short History and indefatigable apologist for all things Islamic: "All
that can be said is that this cannot be seen as anti-Semitism, per se. Muhammad
had nothing against the Jewish people per se, or the Jewish religion."

Adds another expert: "On the Jewish side, they have used that [massacre] as a
way of saying, well, you see, the Muslims hate the Jews and they kill them."

Ah. Muslim anti-Semitism is all a misrepresentation by the Jews. Surely it could
have nothing to do with Koran verses such as the one that declares that the
"People of the Book" (i.e., Jews and Christians) "incurred the curse of Allah
and His wrath" so that "some He transformed into apes and swine" (Sura 5:60).
[Editor's note: See David Klinghoffer.]

Muslim apologists such as Armstrong and the others involved in this
documentary might charge me with taking this verse "out of context." Let them
then explain why radical Muslims today so often refer to Jews as "sons of pigs
and monkeys," as USA Today reporter Jack Kelley found Muslim
schoolchildren doing in the West Bank. Let them elucidate why Muslim clerics
in Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere routinely note, in the words of
Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi of the Palestinian Authority, that Jews are "the enemies
of Allah, the nation accursed in Allah's book. Allah described [them] as apes
and pigs."

What would Karen Armstrong, or the "mild" Mohamed Zakariya, say to
Ibrahim Mahdi or any of the other clerics who claim that Muhammad indeed
had a great deal against the Jewish people and the Jewish religion? Armstrong
also notes that "the Qur'an continues to tell Muslims to honor the People of the
Book." What would she say to the Saudi Sheikh Marzouq Salem Al-Ghamdi,
who recently preached in a Friday sermon at a mosque in Mecca that "the Jews
and Christians are infidels, enemies of Allah, his Messenger, and the believers.
They deny and curse Allah and his Messenger… How can we draw near to
these infidels?"

Sure, he's just a fanatical Wahhabi. But why do so many Muslims of all sects
echo his words around the world? No answer is forthcoming from PBS.

For many, if not most, of its adherents, Islam may indeed be, as Mohamed
Zakariya calls it, "a soft thing . . . not a hard thing." But for so many Muslims
their religion is so clearly a "hard thing" that PBS could have performed a great
service by explaining this dichotomy and elucidating the conflict within the
Islamic world between the "soft" Muslims and the "hard" ones. Instead,
Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet is nothing more than misleading
propaganda. It's an abject failure as a source for the whole truth about Islam
and a clarification of the bewildering features of the contemporary scene.

It would be wonderful if PBS's attractively packaged, sanitized version of Islam
were the only Islam. But I'm not sure that Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi or
Marzouq Salem Al-Ghamdi would even recognize it as their religion.

— Robert Spencer is an adjunct fellow with the Free Congress
Foundation and the author of Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About
the World's Fastest Growing Faith.

... i watched the entire two hours with my own eyes, and i can ensure you, and everyone else, that everything you just said spencer, is total bullshit. so you can fuck off now, and stop telling me what to think.

I was going to watch it, but some damn muslim stole my TV, so I went to my neighbors and watched Bowling For Dollars. Be on the lookout for him, the damn thief. Had a damn rag on his head, you can't miss him.

... o.k. "steel". don't start crying or anything, alright? and your racist whining is really helpful. "thanks", and f' off.

Akmed was a rolling stone
Whereever he laid his turbine was his home
And when he blew himself up
All he left us was the Qu'ran

... why don't you just say what you're really trying to say? no need to beat around the bush. what, are you afraid? afraid i might figure something out?.....

hating muslims, or jews, or african americans is real easy on a computer, isn't it. "fun" too, ain' it? but then, when the chips are down, you piss your weak little boy pants when it comes to hating them face to face, don't you...

racists and chicken shit cowards go hand in hand. birds of a feather.

You forgot white people. I hate them too. I'm an equal opportunity hater.

... "thanks" for sharing. does anyone else have any more useless comments?

trolls... what can you do?

anyways, i'm glad i watched the 2 hour program, because i learned a lot. that much less ignorance in the world. what's the world coming to, when people can learn something from t.v. every once in a long while...

It was a shallow, uninformative and misleading presentation foisted by two recent converts to Islam and funded by the delusional Saudi's broadcast at taxpayer expense.

Only someone willfully ignorant of the facts and unwilling to actually read the Quran would think anything else...

http://www.unn.ac.uk/societies/islamic/index.htm

Read it and grow up...

you're still just beating around the bush. why don't you come out and tell the world what you really think of muslims and islam as a religion? i mean, why be polite? why hide behind a mask of civility? why not just be an open racist? go on...

"anyways, i'm glad i watched the 2 hour program, because i learned a lot. that much less ignorance in the world."

Unsubstantiated Allegation

Although it dragged it bit here and there, or maybe because I was tired, it is definately a worthwhile documentary.

There should be more dialogue and sharing in these troubled times that promotes understanding and tolerance and no double standards.

If racism is wrong against Jews, it is wrong against Muslims!

Nothing, but NOTHING, can justify the ethnic cleansing and persecution of the Palestinians in Israel. We must speak out, all of us Americans, because our money is being used for the Zionists' dirty war.

http://www.cactus48.com for more info.

I go to the TV last night, and what's on? "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet". And PBS pre-empted my favorite show "10,001 Ways To Use Hemp" for that crap?????

If, the documentry was really about mohammed, it would be R rated, as mohammed was a mass murderer. rapist, slave trader, pilager. How is it none can read about true islam, and mohammeds history? it's there for anyone to read, and it isn't a lie, it's straight from the islam scholars themselves. here is a site mohammed 101, go from there to the next link
http://www.thequran.com/imk/index.html#intro

http://www.faithfreedom.com

god help us all if our young believe islam sponsored crap on tv

I really have to wonder how much some people must hate Islam for them to be angry that Muslims get to say something nice about themselves and their prophet. There are tons of programs out there on Jewish and Christian history. Many may have tip-toed around some stuff too, but that does not make them any less worthwhile and informative. The bottom line is that this program offered a different view on Islam and Muslims than the hate-mongers prefer and that pisses them off. They obviously hate 1.3 billion people so much that they can't take it when something other than violence is associated with them on TV. Grow up, and take a look in your own closets as well. We have a chance to build bridges and these ignorant, self-righteous, delusional bigots are running to get the gasoline and matches

As long as this stuff keeps happening there will be a rift between islam and the west.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/12/20/kashmir.violence/index.html

mainstream islam needs to control these people. It is not hatred to view the treatment of women as crap as unacceptable.

Is the public broadcasting service for sale?


Anyone this week viewing the PBS "documentary" titled "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet" might think so. The program combined an entirely positive history of the founder of Islam, whose 1.2 billion adherents comprise one-fifth of humankind, with enthusiastic testimonials by many smiling, warm-hearted Muslim-Americans, including converts from Jewish and Christian families.

It was, in short, an Infomercial for Islam, an entirely one-sided piece of propaganda crafted to sell a product and a particular religion. PBS still operates in large measure using taxpayer money. Is the ACLU too busy burning city hall nativity displays in rural towns at this time of year to raise its voice against this other violation of the separation of church and state?

When Saudi Arabia recently began buying 30-second TV spots on commercial stations to promote its "friendship" with the United States, several stations and some cable networks refused to air them for love or money. Why did PBS provide two hours and more for this Infomercial promoting a faith whose political and lucrative center of pilgrimage is Saudi Arabia?

One apparent PBS motive is money. At the show’s top and tail, PBS credited a long list of funders, most with links to Saudi Arabia, and then notified viewers that its list of other bankrollers of the program – too numerous to list on air – is available upon request.

PBS in recent years has begun to look more and more like a ‘For Profit" network, putting on spots for the corporations subsidizing its shows that appear almost indistinguishable from TV commercials.

Despite the old truism that "He who pays the piper calls the tune," PBS used to claim that it never allowed a funder to control or even influence the content of its programs.

How, then, do we explain that "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet" obeyed the Islamic proscription against showing the Prophet’s image, said not a single negative word about the Muslim faith or its founder, and discussed narratives in the Koran such as Muhammad’s "Night Journey" to Jerusalem and from there to heaven as indisputable historic events?

"When," asks Wall Street Journal Assistant Features Editor Collin Levey, "did PBS become a for-prophet network?"

This "documentary" obviously took care to say nothing that could offend Muslim sensibilities, and to present as positive an image of Islam as it could.

PBS, fearful of funding restrictions from a conservative Congress, should issue a simple press release totaling up how many millions of dollars they received to produce this program.

As America’s network of Political Correctness, PBS might have been motivated by a desire not to offend the religious sensitivities of its audience. But as scholar Daniel Pipes notes, no such fastidiousness restrained PBS in its 1998 documentary "From Jesus to Christ" from including skeptical scholars such as John Dominic Crossan and others who used taxpayer money via PBS to tell viewers that the Christian Gospels are full of lies and deceptions.

The charter of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the political body that controls PBS and National Public Radio, requires its programming to give a fair, balanced, even-handed view of issues. By airing documentaries that attacked Christianity and praised Islam, PBS violated this charter and mandate – as it has on almost all other social and political matters.

This government television network has from its birth justified itself as a vehicle of education, Sesame Street, Big Bird, and documentaries. It has failed here, too….presenting left-over helpings of BBC costume soap operas given legimacy only because they are based on the words of name authors of past centuries.

But if PBS is supposed to be educational, writes Pipes, then it "has betrayed its viewers by presenting an airbrushed and uncritical documentary" that "ignores an ongoing scholarly reassessment of Muhammad’s life that disputes every detail…."

By failing to carve up Islam with critical scholarship as it did Christianity, PBS produced what Pipes calls "an Islamic Sunday school class" version of this world faith designed only to win converts and reinforce Muslim true believers. It is a picture of Islam painted only with happy colors, no blacks or grays or shadows. This is not education, unless we define propaganda as education.

During the four years when I worked as a reporter and commentator for the West Coast Production Center of PBS, we were not even permitted to mention the name of any commercial product on air – unless we were reporting some evil in it. PBS sold things back then, of course, but what it marketed were ideas and ideologies.

A residue of the anti-American, anti-Western ideology always prevalent at PBS might have helped them rationalize this documentary. Islam might restrict human rights in general, the rights of women in particular, and even worse might promote the idea that there is a God. But much the same could be said for the pseudo-religion of Marxism.

What matters more to PBS Leftists is that Islam is a rival power to American and the West. And as the documentary emphasizes, among the biggest values Muhammad taught were to help the poor and redistribute the wealth (as today’s oil sheiks and sultans have done so faithfully).

Unspoken in all this is that the PBS "Muhammad" documentary is a victory for Osama bin Laden, an Islamist who wants the entire world converted to his Muslim faith. Would this documentary exist, especially in the one-sided pro-Islamic form it has taken, if bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda terrorists had not flown airliners into the Pentagon and World Trade Center towers? Almost certainly it would not.

Terrorists kill people and blow up things largely to grab the eyes of the world – to in the surrealist aphorism "grasp the eye by the monocle," our network television cameras. When they succeed, this reward encourages yet more terrorism.

PBS might have aired its "Muhammad" documentary to gain millions of Saudi dollars, for mercenary as well as ideological motives. It might have decided to air this and the whole series "Islam: Empire of Faith" between Channukah and Christmas as a way of sticking a thumb in the eye of devout Christian and Jewish taxpayers.

But what PBS has done is to reward Osama bin Laden for acts of terrorism and mass murder, giving to his religion an infomercial worth many millions of dollars. Will this help win American converts with blue eyes and blond hair, a few of whom decades hence will take up the scimitar against America and the West? Time will tell.

If PBS has become just another commercial network, up for sale program by program to the highest bidder, perhaps we taxpayers should reduce the national debt by privatizing it and selling off its multi-billion dollar broadcast frequencies in markets such as New York City. Why should it remain the playground of Leftist ideologues like Bill Moyers, who has made tens of millions of taxpayer dollars by using his insider PBS connections while promulgating his own extremist ideas?

Let’s sell PBS before its value to the U.S. Treasury is further diminished in the dawning world of 500 cable channels. Let’s privatize PBS so that Saudi Arabia, Fidel Castro and Bill Moyers can no longer use it as a vehicle for their own true believer ideologies.

Please don't use the Zionist's favorite excuse that just because some Muslim countries have cultures that subjugate women as a "reason" to "justify" Israel's continual persecution of the Palestinian people.

I am an American woman, and I am a feminist and I am a pro-Palestinian activist!

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

In a stunning move designed to "counter the negative image of Christian Fundamentalists," PBS officials announced today that they're beginning production of a lavish two-hour feature, Jesus: Legacy of a Messiah. Produced by a convert to Christianity and featuring interviews with gentle, introspective Fundamentalist Christians, the production is designed to offset the widespread representation of Christian Fundamentalism as harsh, vindictive, and unforgiving. "Christianity is really a soft thing," says one of the preachers interviewed. "It's not a hard thing."

The production tells the story of Jesus from his virgin birth through his crucifixion and miraculous resurrection, highlighting the truth and miraculous character of these events and showing how each of them has significant impact on the lives of believers today. The New Testament, says one participant, "is the most extraordinarily beautiful discourse." Of the angel Gabriel's appearance to the Virgin Mary to announce her mission as the Mother of God's Son, the same expert observes, "This is how the ineffable, incomprehensible, utterly transcendent, indescribable God makes itself known to us."

Don't check your PBS schedule just yet. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would no doubt be the first to tell you that such credulity and proselytizing has no place on public television. And the idea that they would plump for Christian Fundamentalism is, of course, laughable.

But the above is not made up out of whole cloth. The quotations above all appear, in reference to Islam and the Koran rather than Christianity and the Bible, in Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet, the real-life PBS production running during this Christmas season. In this handsome Christmas present from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, elements of Islamic faith such as Muhammad's prophetic claim and miraculous journey to Jerusalem (for which journey there is no evidence whatsoever except the word of Muhammad himself, who never went to Jerusalem in any ordinary manner) and the court of Heaven are presented without question or challenge from skeptics. Attractive Muslim believers show the positive impact of their faith in their lives. Common challenges to Islam — that it encourages the oppression of women, as well as violence under the banner of jihad — are examined, found wanting, and dismissed.

Muhammad, one commentator exclaims, "is the kind of person who combines political and military and social and religious and intellectual dimensions of life in ways that are important for those of us in the 21st century who are struggling to put together complete lives ourselves." I haven't heard a more open and direct evangelistic call since a man on 34th Street in New York handed me a Gospel tract and said, "Read this, brother. It could change your life."

But that street-corner preacher didn't have an endowment from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Indeed, Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet presents such an appealing picture of Islam that it has become the best argument yet to cut off PBS's public funding.

This "documentary" is just a small element of the broader multiculturalism movement, but against the backdrop of terrorist attacks all over the world it takes on an even more disquieting cast. Take, for example, its treatment of the concept of jihad. To hear PBS tell it, Muslims are just Methodists with hats and beards. "Jihad is misused," one expert informs us. "There is absolutely nothing in Islam that justifies the claim of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda or other similar groups to kill innocent civilians. That is unequivocally a crime under Islamic law. Acts of terror violence that have occurred in the name of Islam are not only wrong, they are contrary to Islam."

Very well. But here the producers of Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet had a real opportunity. Instead of flatly stating that terrorism cannot be justified by Islam, they could have explained why misunderstanding jihad isn't a faux pas restricted to the benighted Falwells and Robertsons of the world. They could have informed viewers why millions of Muslims endorse the violent jihad preached by Islamic organizations spanning the globe — from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Jemaah Islamiah in Southeast Asia, Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya in Egypt, the Armed Islamic Group in Algeria, Al-Ummah in India, the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines, and so many others.

The documentary reports the views of Mohamed Zakariya, who is described by another Muslim as being among "the mildest people in our community." Zakariya states that "revenge, suicide bombing, things of that kind, they have no place in Islam." This is simply stated as fact. The producers pass up the opportunity to clarify opposing views held by quite prominent figures in the Islamic world, such as Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, the prestigious and respected Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Tantawi was quoted by President Bush last Fall at the United Nations as saying that "terrorism is a disease, and that Islam prohibits killing innocent civilians." But according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), last spring the same sheikh declared that suicide bombing was "the highest form of Jihad operations," and that "every martyrdom operation against any Israeli, including children, women, and teenagers, is a legitimate act according to [Islamic] religious law, and an Islamic commandment."

They could have answered the question that has gone conspicuously unanswered by Muslim organizations since September 11: If Osama and his ilk are so clearly misusing the concept of jihad and committing acts that are plainly contrary to Islam, why are all these terrorist groups able to win so many adherents among Muslims? Why is Islamic terrorism not the province of a few disenfranchised and desperate fanatics, but a worldwide phenomenon, everywhere capable of commanding the loyalty of its adherents even unto a bloody and violent death?

A breezy dismissal of the Islamic bona fides of suicide bombers, terrorists, and terrorist sympathizers is inadequate and, given that the threat to the civilized world has not abated in the least since September 11, cravenly misleading.

This glaring omission is compounded by the fact that the production deals explicitly with Muhammad's notorious massacre of the Jewish Bani Qurayzah tribe — an exercise of seventh-century warrior brutality of the kind that Muslim terrorists today invoke to justify their actions. But we would never know that from PBS. In the documentary, the well-known American convert to Islam Hamza Yusuf, clearly uncomfortable with the subject, notes that "uh, approximately 700 men, uh, were killed. Uh, they were executed. So, this definitely occurred." But to his rescue rushes Karen Armstrong, author of Islam: A Short History and indefatigable apologist for all things Islamic: "All that can be said is that this cannot be seen as anti-Semitism, per se. Muhammad had nothing against the Jewish people per se, or the Jewish religion."

Adds another expert: "On the Jewish side, they have used that [massacre] as a way of saying, well, you see, the Muslims hate the Jews and they kill them."

Ah. Muslim anti-Semitism is all a misrepresentation by the Jews. Surely it could have nothing to do with Koran verses such as the one that declares that the "People of the Book" (i.e., Jews and Christians) "incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath" so that "some He transformed into apes and swine" (Sura 5:60). [Editor's note: See David Klinghoffer.]

Muslim apologists such as Armstrong and the others involved in this documentary might charge me with taking this verse "out of context." Let them then explain why radical Muslims today so often refer to Jews as "sons of pigs and monkeys," as USA Today reporter Jack Kelley found Muslim schoolchildren doing in the West Bank. Let them elucidate why Muslim clerics in Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere routinely note, in the words of Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi of the Palestinian Authority, that Jews are "the enemies of Allah, the nation accursed in Allah's book. Allah described [them] as apes and pigs."

What would Karen Armstrong, or the "mild" Mohamed Zakariya, say to Ibrahim Mahdi or any of the other clerics who claim that Muhammad indeed had a great deal against the Jewish people and the Jewish religion? Armstrong also notes that "the Qur'an continues to tell Muslims to honor the People of the Book." What would she say to the Saudi Sheikh Marzouq Salem Al-Ghamdi, who recently preached in a Friday sermon at a mosque in Mecca that "the Jews and Christians are infidels, enemies of Allah, his Messenger, and the believers. They deny and curse Allah and his Messenger… How can we draw near to these infidels?"

Sure, he's just a fanatical Wahhabi. But why do so many Muslims of all sects echo his words around the world? No answer is forthcoming from PBS.

For many, if not most, of its adherents, Islam may indeed be, as Mohamed Zakariya calls it, "a soft thing . . . not a hard thing." But for so many Muslims their religion is so clearly a "hard thing" that PBS could have performed a great service by explaining this dichotomy and elucidating the conflict within the Islamic world between the "soft" Muslims and the "hard" ones. Instead, Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet is nothing more than misleading propaganda. It's an abject failure as a source for the whole truth about Islam and a clarification of the bewildering features of the contemporary scene.

It would be wonderful if PBS's attractively packaged, sanitized version of Islam were the only Islam. But I'm not sure that Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi or Marzouq Salem Al-Ghamdi would even recognize it as their religion.

The Arab position is that Jewish settlements on the West Bank and Gaza are "illegal" because they interfere with the right, usually articulated with vague references to international law, of the Arabs to create an all-Arab state west of the Jordan. In addition, over 50% of the Arab population on the West Bank and Gaza, according to a recent poll, support the idea of Arab control over all of "historic Palestine" which is to say they support Israel's destruction. History stands witness to the falseness of these claims.

The fact is that the international community, including the emerging Arab nations, recognized Israel at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference which was held by the victorious Allies in order to settle international questions after the 1918 Armistice ended World War I. An official Arab and Zionist delegation, as well as delegations from nations and groups from around the world, were invited to attend the conference. The head of the Arab delegation, Emir Feisal, great-grandfather of Abdallah, the present King of Jordan, agreed that "Palestine" would be the Jewish homeland.

Feisal accepted the British Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917, which afforded recognition to a Jewish national homeland, and agreed with the Zionist delegation stating, "All such measures shall be adopted as we afford the fullest guarantee of carrying into effect the British Government's Balfour Declaration." Emir Feisal confirmed this determination in a March 3, 1919 letter to Harvard Law Professor and later US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter with whom he wrote: "Our deputation here in Paris is full acquainted with the proposals submitted by the Zionist organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as modest and proper. We will do our best, insofar as we are concerned, to help them through. We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home."

In exchange for Arab recognition of Israel, the allied powers, in 1919, agreed to the eventual sovereignty of almost 20 Arab States, covering vast oil-rich lands, after a period of mandatory oversight by European powers. The Europeans would proceed to draw the borders of their respective mandates and, in essence, create the system of Arab States that would emerge out of the remnants of the old Turkish Ottoman Empire. In 1922, a couple of years after the Conference, in a land for peace deal, the British would split Mandatory Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish Mandate using the Jordan River as the line of demarcation. The Arabs were granted East Palestine, or Transjordan, which would later become Arab Jordan while West Palestine, or Cis-Jordan, would become the Jewish National homeland of Israel.

In 1948, upon Israel's declaration of Independence from Britain, Jordan and Egypt, by use of aggressive military force, illegally occupied portions of the internationally recognized Jewish State. The Arab occupation continued until Israel reasserted its sovereignty, June 1967, after defending itself against an aggressive military campaign launched by combined Arab forces. Following the June 1967 war, UN Resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from "occupied territories." Israel proceeded to fulfilled the letter and spirit of UN Resolution 242 when, in 1978, it concluded a peace treaty with Egypt and withdrew from the only territory that was, in fact, occupied by Israel which was the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. Since that time, Israel has existed within borders that are, and have been since 1919, recognized by the nations of the world, including the Arab nations.

In light of the seditious opinions of over 50% of the Arab population on the West Bank and Gaza, and the murderous campaign that has been launched from that territory against Jewish citizens, its time for Israel to stop playing along with the charade and re-assert its legitimate sovereignty over its internationally recognized territory. While it would be reasonable for Israel to consider the establishment of a regional elected Arab Authority on the West Bank and Gaza, Israel would be acting entirely within international law and custom if it did what any nation would do in similar circumstances. Try those involved in conspiring to overthrow the state by violent means and expel them

I prefer to smoke other more agreeable things. I don't give a shit about israel or the palestinians. They are pawns in a bigger game. If that makes me a racist zionist abortionist sado-masachistic(sp) pig so be it.

Not all muslims treat their women like shit. Not all muslims think that expoding themselves on the bus will defeat the evil oppressor and win them a state. Not all muslims support palestinians, several "islamic" states have killed plenty of them.

Hey your here in the US so no one will put you on your knees at a soccer match and blow your brains out your eye socket for your oppinion, congrats. I wonder if you would get stoned for getting stoned in the progressve islamic emerate states. Don't take your self so seriously.

In the modern pantheon of terrorists, no other figure has had the resilience of Yasser Arafat. His anti-Semitic career spans from the 1940s to the present. No other major terrorist has survived this long – much less continued to mastermind increasingly more deadly terrorist attacks – while at the same time become recognized as a world statesman. Even though he is an evil man, his life is the stuff of which legends are made.
Arafat has a long history of cheating death. He has survived assassination plots, an air crash and several bids to unseat him during more than 30 turbulent years of rule.

Arafat's murderous career actually began in Cairo, the city of his birth. Beginning there as a teenager in the late 1940s, he has ordered the murder of thousands of civilians while waging war against the Jews.

He first came to international prominence after Israel defeated the combined Arab armies during the June 1967 Six Day War. His Fatah terrorist organization led guerrilla attacks against the Israelis from bases in Jordan. He rose to chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1969.

His first "great escape" came in 1970 when, after Palestinians hijacked three airliners to Jordan, King Hussein ordered his forces to attack Palestinian strongholds. After nearly two weeks of heavy fighting, the PLO withdrew and he left Amman in disguise.

During the decade of the 1970s, Arafat formed a "state within a state" in southern Lebanon. He took advantage of the country's bitter civil war and set up a network of hardened thugs who bullied the native Lebanese, especially the Christians. His ruthless reign came to a bloody end when Ariel Sharon, then Israel's Defense Minister, launched an invasion of Lebanon that ended with the siege of Beirut. With Arafat and his military surrounded, the United Nations-led international community once again came to his rescue.

Defiant as ever, he survived numerous attempts by the Israelis to kill him and eventually was allowed to leave Beirut in 1982 with his men under a deal brokered by Washington. Interestingly, during the siege of Beirut, an Israeli sniper actually had Arafat in his sights, but Sharon decided not to have him shot.

Within a year, in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, the Palestinians were forced out once more by Syrian forces. Arafat continued to rule in exile from Tunis and survived several attacks launched by Israeli agents who managed to get close enough to assassinate Abu Jihad, his long-serving deputy in 1988.

In 1993, Arafat decided upon a new strategy. He pretended to opt for diplomacy instead of guerrilla warfare. This led to the signing of a peace agreement with Israel at the White House by the year's end. He was rewarded with a hero's welcome in Gaza the following year.

Several years later, after being offered an almost unbelievably generous peace deal at Camp David, Arafat revealed his true intentions. He launched the most vicious terrorist campaign to date against Israel as a response. Arafat showed that nothing less than the complete destruction of Israel will satisfy him.

From where did Yasser Arafat get such enduring hatred of Jews? Even more important, where did he get such expertise in killing Jews? Certainly there is an endemic hatred of Jews perpetuated within Islam. But Arafat is a breed apart even among the Islamic radicals.

I believe David Bossie revealed the most important key to understanding Yasser Arafat:

Mr. Arafat's mentor, Haj Amin Al Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, indoctrinated him with hatred toward Israel. The grand mufti led Palestinian Arabs from 1920 until Mr. Arafat succeeded him in 1967. The mufti encouraged Arab terrorism against Jewish immigrants to Palestine between the two world wars and, like Mr. Arafat today, the mufti piously disclaimed any responsibility for terrorist acts committed by his followers.

In 1929 and 1936, the mufti personally led large-scale riots against Jewish settlers. During World War II, the mufti journeyed to Nazi Germany where he personally begged Adolph Hitler to invade British-ruled Palestine and rid it of Jews. The mufti received sympathy, but no help, from Hitler. Nevertheless, he broadcast radio tirades approving Hitler's "final solution" of the Jewish problem.

The mufti barely escaped trial for treason by fleeing to Egypt in 1946. There he made young Yasser Arafat, then living in Cairo, his protégé. The mufti secretly imported a former Nazi commando officer into Egypt to teach Mr. Arafat and other teenage recruits the fine points of guerrilla warfare. Mr. Arafat learned his lessons well – the mufti was so proud of him he even pretended the two of them were blood relations.

Yasser Arafat is a murderer of Christians, Jews, Israelis and Americans – including U.S. diplomats, tourists, innocent women and children. Yasser Arafat is an unrepentant terrorist – the modern-day inventor of Arab terrorism, an inspiration for Osama bin Laden and others. Yasser Arafat is an exploiter of his own people, keeping them in squalor and perpetuating their hatreds while padding his own Swiss bank accounts.
You might think that track record would be enough for Arafat to be targeted for termination or at least relegated to political obscurity once and for all as America and its allies wage an international war against terrorism.

For some reason, it has not been enough. Arafat is continually resurrected politically by Americans, Europeans and Israelis. So let me offer one more bit of Arafat's sociopathic history for consideration.

Arafat is a Nazi sympathizer.

In an interview last week, published in Al Sharq al Awsat, a London Arabic daily, reprinted in the Palestinian daily Al Quds, Aug. 2, and translated by Palestinian Media Watch, Arafat called the Arab leader and Nazi ally, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, "our hero." He drew an analogy between himself and al-Husseini who survived as a leader despite world pressure against him because of his Nazi ties.

"We are not Afghanistan," said Arafat in the interview. "We are a mighty people. Were they able to replace our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini? There were a number of attempts to get rid of Hajj Amin, whom they considered an ally of the Nazis. But even so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his troops."

Arafat seldom tells the truth, but, in this case, his facts are correct.

Hajj Amin al-Husseini was the grand mufti of Jerusalem leading up to World War II. He supported the Nazis. He met with Adolph Hitler. He was a strong proponent of the Nazi program for mass murder of the Jews.

In fact, Arafat's hero became a German agent, and the British tried repeatedly to arrest him as a spy.

Perhaps the mufti's "greatest achievement" was the recruitment of tens of thousands of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania to the German SS. His Arab Legions later participated in the massacres of thousands of partisan Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.

On March 1, 1944, Arafat's hero was in Berlin making a dramatic radio broadcast: "Arabs! Rise as one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion. This saves your honor."

The Nazi mufti visited numerous death camps and encouraged Hitler to extend the "Final Solution" to the Jews of North Africa and Palestine. In fact, his only condition for recruiting the Arab Legions in the Balkans was a promise from Hitler to wipe out the Jews of the Middle East after the war.

In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the mufti as a war criminal for his role in the massacres. He escaped from French detention in 1946. He then traveled to Egypt where he lived until 1974.

The grand mufti was not just Arafat's "hero," as he says. Arafat was, in fact, so close to al-Husseini that the young terrorist called him "uncle." Arafat's real name is Rahman Abdul Rauf el-Qudwa al-Husseini, though his actual blood relationship with al-Husseini is in question. His entire career was sponsored by the dreaded Nazi mufti. He was, indeed, Arafat's mentor, his inspiration for 40 years of terror, murder, hatred and international duplicity.

The world's people are too forgetful. This history is well-documented. Now Arafat, in his own words, has reminded us once again about the bloody ties between his movement and the Nazi monsters. He even reminds his own people of why the mufti was scandalized. He knows his own people have no ill feelings toward the Nazis. He knows his movement and the Nazis still share a common goal – the death of all Jews. He knows this history can't haunt him among his constituency.

But why do decent people, freedom-loving people, Christians and Jews, Americans and Europeans, even Israelis, allow Arafat to escape accountability for his words and his deeds?

Yasser Arafat is a murderer of Christians, Jews, Israelis and Americans – including U.S. diplomats, tourists, innocent women and children. Yasser Arafat is an unrepentant terrorist – the modern-day inventor of Arab terrorism, an inspiration for Osama bin Laden and others. Yasser Arafat is an exploiter of his own people, keeping them in squalor and perpetuating their hatreds while padding his own Swiss bank accounts.
You might think that track record would be enough for Arafat to be targeted for termination or at least relegated to political obscurity once and for all as America and its allies wage an international war against terrorism.

For some reason, it has not been enough. Arafat is continually resurrected politically by Americans, Europeans and Israelis. So let me offer one more bit of Arafat's sociopathic history for consideration.

Arafat is a Nazi sympathizer.

In an interview last week, published in Al Sharq al Awsat, a London Arabic daily, reprinted in the Palestinian daily Al Quds, Aug. 2, and translated by Palestinian Media Watch, Arafat called the Arab leader and Nazi ally, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, "our hero." He drew an analogy between himself and al-Husseini who survived as a leader despite world pressure against him because of his Nazi ties.

"We are not Afghanistan," said Arafat in the interview. "We are a mighty people. Were they able to replace our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini? There were a number of attempts to get rid of Hajj Amin, whom they considered an ally of the Nazis. But even so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his troops."

Arafat seldom tells the truth, but, in this case, his facts are correct.

Hajj Amin al-Husseini was the grand mufti of Jerusalem leading up to World War II. He supported the Nazis. He met with Adolph Hitler. He was a strong proponent of the Nazi program for mass murder of the Jews.

In fact, Arafat's hero became a German agent, and the British tried repeatedly to arrest him as a spy.

Perhaps the mufti's "greatest achievement" was the recruitment of tens of thousands of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania to the German SS. His Arab Legions later participated in the massacres of thousands of partisan Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.

On March 1, 1944, Arafat's hero was in Berlin making a dramatic radio broadcast: "Arabs! Rise as one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion. This saves your honor."

The Nazi mufti visited numerous death camps and encouraged Hitler to extend the "Final Solution" to the Jews of North Africa and Palestine. In fact, his only condition for recruiting the Arab Legions in the Balkans was a promise from Hitler to wipe out the Jews of the Middle East after the war.

In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the mufti as a war criminal for his role in the massacres. He escaped from French detention in 1946. He then traveled to Egypt where he lived until 1974.

The grand mufti was not just Arafat's "hero," as he says. Arafat was, in fact, so close to al-Husseini that the young terrorist called him "uncle." Arafat's real name is Rahman Abdul Rauf el-Qudwa al-Husseini, though his actual blood relationship with al-Husseini is in question. His entire career was sponsored by the dreaded Nazi mufti. He was, indeed, Arafat's mentor, his inspiration for 40 years of terror, murder, hatred and international duplicity.

The world's people are too forgetful. This history is well-documented. Now Arafat, in his own words, has reminded us once again about the bloody ties between his movement and the Nazi monsters. He even reminds his own people of why the mufti was scandalized. He knows his own people have no ill feelings toward the Nazis. He knows his movement and the Nazis still share a common goal – the death of all Jews. He knows this history can't haunt him among his constituency.

But why do decent people, freedom-loving people, Christians and Jews, Americans and Europeans, even Israelis, allow Arafat to escape accountability for his words and his deeds?

Mr. Arafat first shed Jewish blood during terrorist raids in 1947 and has kept it up ever since. He also became a leader in Palestinian politics and was the first Palestinian nationalist to declare, "Violence is the only solution," that "Liberating Palestine could only take place through the barrel of a gun." During the 1950s, Mr. Arafat lived and worked as an engineer in Kuwait. There, he recruited followers for Fatah, his Palestinian guerrilla group. Mr. Arafat also raised funds from rich Persian Gulf oil and construction millionaires in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. These Persian Gulf millionaires remain Mr. Arafat's main financial backers a half-century later. They also comprise the al Qaeda terror network's primary source of funding.

Mr. Arafat's Fatah terror network began conducting murder raids into Israel from Syrian bases in 1964. Mr. Arafat's raids triggered the 1967 Six Day War between Israel and its hostile Arab neighbors. Despite causing this disastrous defeat for the Arabs, which lost them strategic territory in Egypt, Syria and Jordan, Mr. Arafat emerged as a hero. The "Arab street" lauded Mr. Arafat for the purity of his hatred for Israel; they could have cared less that his actions resulted in military disaster. Mr. Arafat used his popularity to merge Fatah with the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1968. Since then Mr. Arafat has been on a mission, a man wholly dedicated to destroying Israel in order to replace it with a Palestinian state.

While Mr. Arafat's anti-Israel terrorism is popular with Arab peoples, it is less beloved by their Arab rulers. Cheering for PLO terrorists who murder Israelis is much easier than controlling its murderous, undisciplined thugs. Mr. Arafat and his ruthless PLO terrorists were violently expelled from three different host countries: Syria in 1968; Jordan in 1971; and Lebanon in 1982. From 1982 to 1994, Mr. Arafat and the PLO resided in Tunisia. Mr. Arafat returned to world attention when he supported Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1990-91 Gulf War. This foolish move temporarily turned his Persian Gulf financial supporters against him. Mr. Arafat now seemed discredited.

The Palestinian Intifada uprising against Israeli rule beginning in 1987 rescued Mr. Arafat's career. At first Mr. Arafat tried to stop the Intifada since it threatened his dictatorial control over the Palestinians. Mr. Arafat, a control freak, pays only lip service to democracy. PLO elections are always rigged. But the uprising in the Palestinian occupied territories continued, so Mr. Arafat began lending it military assistance. Israel tried everything to quell the Intifada, but nothing worked, so Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, cut a deal with Mr. Arafat in 1993. In return for limited autonomy by a Palestinian National Authority ruled by him, Mr. Arafat promised to renounce terrorism and accept Israel's right to exist.

Mr. Arafat soon broke his promise to the Israelis. Palestinian terrorist bombings murdered 256 Israelis between September 1993 and September 2000. Mr. Arafat oversaw the assassinations of any Palestinian opposed to his one-man rule. Bill Clinton, vainly seeking a legacy for his disgraced presidency, assisted Mr. Arafat's terror strategy. He convened an Israeli-Palestinian peace conference during the summer of 2000. Mr. Clinton's bullying of Israel encouraged Mr. Arafat to step up terrorism.

Mr. Arafat is 72 now, an old man in a hurry. He is using American pressure on Israel to undermine the Jewish state in favor of a Palestinian state. We must beware of his past lies and broken promises. As President Bush says, Mr. Arafat must be replaced with a democratic Palestinian leader committed to peaceful coexistence with Israel.