Just got the DVD today, and it’s a very smartly executed documentary.
The absence of music was a smart move. For such a criticism of Islam you don’t need to draw accusations of trying to put an emotional spin on the material by adding a soundtrack.
The million dollar question: What are we supposed to do about it? I think it’s important to consider this from a multitude of perspectives.
From a secular perspective, it’s no contest, the obvious answer is to recognize that orthodox Islam has declared war on the rest of the world, and begin seriously to fight back.
From a religious perspective, many Christians have probably considered how Islam might fit into the final sequence of events described in the Revelation. It is therefore tempting to adopt a nihilistic theology assuming that since Islam is apparently the instrument of Satan’s final move against humanity, we can’t do anything about it except wait for God to personally come and make everything better, so we might as well sit tight and not worry too much if most of us end up becoming martyrs (Christian martyrs being of course, notoriously nonviolent), because it’s all going to end with the saints going to 1000 years of blissful jury duty. I would ask if this is really what God intends, if one takes the entire history of the world from beginning to end into perspective.
The message that I think the entire story of humanity, in the Bible and beyond, is about — is that of the power of liberty. A certain amount of law is required to sustain liberty, those which protect the individual and his self-determination — but that is an enormous difference from trying to regulate people into behaving correctly all the time. People have tried to understand this throughout history, and often have failed. You can’t make people better with laws, not by adding more laws, nor by more draconian enforcement. And I don’t think the divine ideal of perfect behavior involves adhering to a long list of rules as such. Righteousness cannot exist without freedom, because the most righteous of deeds is the act of creation, just as the most descriptive word to use regarding God is “Creator”. To build, invent, and educate are among the greatest things a person can aspire to do, and to become obsessed with more than a few laws threatens to destroy that urge. Compare that to the message of Islam, where jihad in the way of Allah and obedience to an exhaustive list of rules in the Shari’a is the most glorified. Indeed, we might even be approaching perfect opposition.
I think there will be a time and a place to exercise that opposition, and I think only by seriously endangering the human forces of evil in the world will the rest of Satan’s forces be compelled to make their final move, because that will be the only thing they can do then. Only then will it prove too much for us to handle, I think, and time to start seriously examining that last book in the Bible. I think it will work out this way, because I believe humanity has a part to play in terms of the grand scheme of things and the causal chain of events that will eventually lead to the conclusion of this era, and are not just along for the ride in a predetermined schedule.
