Baghdad Hospital: Inside the Red Zone --HBO Documentary

http://www.hbo.com/apps/schedule/ScheduleServlet?ACTION_DETAIL=DETAIL&FOCUS_ID=653065

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/baghdadhospital/synopsis.html

Grim, grim, grim ... But at least only Iraqis appear. There are no U.S. military talking heads, no U.S. politicians with their photo ops. The narrator, Dr. Omer Salih Mahdi, does a good job of not injecting his narration into the film.

A interview with Dr. Omer was published in the Muncie, Indiana, USA newspaper where he currently lives.

Last updated 2008 Jan 28.

A Son's Sacrifice, Musa Syeed

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/sonssacrifice/

http://www.sonsacrifice.com/about.html

Check this out if you can. It was shown on PBS's Independent Lens.

I think an excellent feature of the film is the protaganist's being an ethnically "mixed" Muslim. The father is a Bengali immigrant, and the mother is Puerto Rican.

American Made by Sharat Raju

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/americanmade/film.html

http://www.americanmadethemovie.com/

Today I watched the movie "American Made" on PBS's show "Independent Lens", written and directed by Sharat Raju, who also participated in Divided We Fall.

Excellent half-hour movie. Check it out next time it's on PBS, or get the DVD.

I think the older son's role is somewhat shallow. But I think it was an attempt at some comedy.

The younger son's acting really reflects genuine conflicts and responses among the demands of a minority religion and culture on the one hand and the demands of the majority culture in the United States. Reading from the Sikh scriptures a passage condemning religious ostentation, he questions why his father should maintain his turban and beard despite the difficulties society imposes on them as a result. This questions is not satisfactorily resolved in a short 30-minute film, but it does present clearly and attractively the dynamics of the family's interaction.

Updated 2008 Jan 28.

"Hamas" by Khalid Amayreh

The January-March 2008 Volume 41, Issue 1 of The Link (www.ameu.org), published by Americans for Middle East Understanding, has an excellent article by Khalid Amayreh describing why Hamas is a legitimate political actor. http://www.ameu.org/getattachment/29eebc14-c1f8-4a5b-a779-d92affe5a3d2/Hamas.aspx

Updated May 3, 2015 to fix a broken link.

Wall Street Journal's "The Lost Archive"

As an addendum to my review of Anouar Majid's A Call for Heresy, there's an article on the front page of the January 12-3, 2008 Wall Street Journal entitled "The Lost Archive," by Andrew Higgins. It summarizes the story of photographs of manuscripts of the Quran believed to have been lost in Germany in World War II, but which have recently resurfaced.

Divided We Fall - Film on Hate Crimes in U.S. post September 11, 2001

I encourage people to participate in the promotion of the film Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath. The producers of the film also have a MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/dwf_film. Valerie Kaur made the film with her cousin Sonny. The film is not released yet, but the producers are arranging screeings and programs around the country. You can also work to arrange a screening in your area.

If you are interested in arranging a screening in Augusta, GA, please e-mail me at [e-mail removed].

Islamic Science Rediscovered - Traveling Museum Exhibit

An article in my local paper mentioned (for some reason the paper's web site does not carry the article) mentioned the Islamic Science Rediscovered exhibit at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, NJ, USA. (This exhibited ended on January 6, 2008.) It is produced by MTE Studios of South Africa and Dubai. More detailed information can be found at http://www.sultans-of-science.com/. I don't yet have information on where the exhibit will be next.

Recommendation: Film "Road to Guantanamo"

While not "Muslim media", I have decided to post some comments on things which might interest readers of this blog. If not comments, pointers to things they may not know about yet.

The film Road to Guantanamo is worth seeing. I saw it at an Amnesty International/World Can't Wait screening in Atlanta yesterday. This morning I saw that the film was released in 2006, and I had no idea it existed until I saw it on the GeorgiaPeace.org web site calendar.

While you can read about the horrifying things in the movie, and if you're sensitive to violence and profanity skip this movie (but still go do something about this Bush regime's embrace of torture), I thought I'd mention a few funny things from the movie.

These four British Muslims are generally hapless in a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern kind of way (and we know how they ended up). When they're talking about going to Afghanistan, one of them motivates the others by talking about the big naan in Afghanistan. I started laughing, but no one else was laughing. Kind of like when I saw I'm Gonna Git You Sucka in a theater in South Chicago, and everyone would be laughing and I did not know what was going on.

Another funny scene is one of the British Muslims rapping to a decent U.S. soldier.

But really, the humorous scenes in this moview are few and far between. Of course there's a lot of information out there about the U.S.-operated detention facilities where torture is practiced, but don't neglect James J. Yee's book For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire. For more information on James, visit http://www.justiceforyee.com/.