Last weekend I saw 2 movies that, each in their own way, illustrated how good people suffer when the forces of extremism dominate the dialogue of society. The first, Islam vs. the Islamists: Voices From the Muslim Center, was actually intended to be a television documentary as part of the PBS series America at the Crossroads, which aired a few months ago. However, before airing PBS decided not to include it, citing...
...vague reasons of lack of balance, though there also was suspicion that its point of view may have offended the political sensibilities of TPTB at PBS (and here). In any case, I call foul. PBS of all places should be airing controversial viewpoints, but whatever.
The film interviews 4 moderate Muslim community leaders: a member of the Danish parliament; a neurologist from Orange County, CA; and journalists in Paris and Toronto. Each has used his platform to speak out against Islamic extremism, which they see as contrary to the values of Islam. And not just flat-out terrorism: they also speak out against the "Islamists:" the inflammatory exhortations of Wahhabist Imams in local mosques, groups that choose to incite Muslims to violence, and Imams who insist that a good Muslim cannot live by the laws of Western societies and who advocate for separate Muslim communities, following the rule of Sharia religious law, within each of their adopted nations.
The moderate Muslims interviewed in the film, on the other hand, believe that Muslims can honor their faith best by keeping it private and apolitical, and leading lives guided by their beliefs within the laws where they live -- as Catholics, Protestants, and Jews before them have done. For this belief, these moderates have been denounced from the Mihrab of the Wahabbist mosques as "leftist radicals." Not to mention threatened with death, various fatwas, and -- in France and Denmark, requiring 24-hour police protection from these threats.
The film left me thinking that the majority of Muslims, who I believe -- hope -- are moderate, therefore remain silent, going about their lives and preferring not to get involved in speaking out against the dangerous idealogues. I say, hello 1930s Germany. If the moderates don't take back the dialogue between Islam and the West, they will lose the war within their own faith to the extremists, and only unhappy endings can ensue.
As to balance, the Islamists were given a great deal of time to state their views on moderation, religious freedom, and their adopted Western nations; they used it to denouce all three as contrary to Islamist values and cited co-existence as the extremist view. PBS may not have liked what they said, but these Islamists were not ashamed to state their point of view, which must be understood in full as the intolerant, nonnegotiable ethos that it is.
We all must support the moderate elements in our societies, or we shall be swept aside by extremism from every direction, and our principles and societies will suffer for it.
And that brought me to Akamas, a Cypriot film screened at the recent 1st-ever Los Angeles Greek Film Festival. The film uses the love of a Greek Cypriot girl and Turk Cypriot boy to tell the story of the battle for Cyprus' independence from Britain and subsequent partition into Greek and Turkish quarters. The girl's first love is a Cypriot Che Guevera, fighting an insurgent war against the British with the [patriotic or violent or both] EOTA. He is killed, she falls in love with the Turk shepherd whom she has known since childhood, but their love must be secret because her family disapproves (and I'm sure his does, too, but being less powerful, they were a bit more accommodating). They are separated and eventually find their way back to each other, all across the backdrop of the disintegration of Cypress into warring camps.
Eventually, of course, the British release Cypress after WWII, whether because of EOTA's insurgency or just Imperial exhaustion. And as by now seems to be the way of the world post-British Empire, the Cypriots don't take long to divide themselves into separate camps. As in Pakistan and India, as in Iraq today, neighbors are deemed enemies, societies fracture, and hatred and mistrust take root and grow in the cracks in between.
The more powerful Greeks take advantage of the Turks, who turn to the Turkish government in Ankara for support, who lend some force, and --Boom! -- another war, another victory for extremism, another group of innocent bystanders, perfectly happy to live with their Turk or Greek neighbors, forcibly relocated from their homes, killed or tortured or worse, and left on an island divided between two hostile factions.
No one is allowed to live in the gray area between these extremes; everyone is forced to take sides, and sadness is the only possible outcome. In this setting, the efforts of the lovers to be together, through heck and border guards, disapproving parents, and forced migration is a tribute to their determination and, when given the chance, our capacity to look beyond what separates us to find what links us in our common humanity. It is the heart and hope of the movie that they end up together, having outwitted both the Greek and Turk efforts to uproot them.
If Islam vs. the Islamists is any indication, the forces that aim to separate continue to wield too much power. I mean, we share about 99% of our DNA with mice, for goodness' sake, so how different can any 2 humans really be? As they say on Battlestar Galactica, "all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again." Until we learn to break that cycle -- and heaven help us if we need genocidal Cylons to finally make us get along -- peace will elude us, and tragedy will continue to invade our world.