Review of CNN’s “The war within” by Christiane Amanpour

I just finished watching this documentary, produced by Christiane Amanpour.

My interest was especially piqued as I just finished reading Mark Steyn’s “America Alone” after seeing Michelle Malkin interview him on the book on Hot Air. You can still access her excellent interview here.

Originally I believed that it was going to explore the tensions between the Muslim community and the rest of English society [including other minorities as well], but I was wrong. Instead the documentary focuses on rifts within the Muslim community itself. There seemed to be a fair balance between interviews with both moderates and radicals, although I sincerely missed “man on the street” interviews with non-Muslims. There were only two of those that I counted.

There does indeed seem to be a lot of conflict between the radicals & moderates within the Muslim community; this was gotten across very well. However, statistics in the segment were severely lacking, and it was hard for me to get a sense of who was in the majority, the radicals or the moderates. The moderates shown included a comedian, two Muslims teenagers, a spray-paint muralist [ nice wall !] , and perhaps an architect although this is up for grabs as he only describes his mosque.

And this brings me to what I consider the focal point of the program, and indeed the only small sense of what non-Muslim Londoners must feel, with plans on the drawing board for a 40,000 (seat? prayer rug?!) mosque to be built near the East End of London. Christiane shows us the almost obligatory “door to door” action taken by the local councillor to stop the mosque from being built, a couple of East-enders were shown being asked what they thought of such a large Muslim edifice going up (it’s already too crowded).

For really, if you are going to erect an enormous building of this size, it makes a couple of statements. A building of this size almost shouts, “Well you’ve got cathedrals for the Christians, and this large new beautiful mosque for the Muslims”. It implies equality. Which is what the Muslims desire, and perhaps the rest of London is not too sure about. Another statement implied, is that “We’re here, we are many, and we are not going anywhere”. I strongly suspect as well, that there are NOT enough Muslims nearby to fill this gigantic temple of faith, and this brings up yet another implied social statement: “If we cannot yet fill the mosque, we will bring more people until it IS filled”. Which is all very well, if you are Muslim. Or if you are not Muslim, and have no reservations about filling the mosque to capacity.

I think these social questions relate very well to the larger question of what British society will ultimately be like [ although I think the segment was supposed to speak for all the U.K., there was only 1 short segment in Dublin, the remainder all within London]. I think this was an important [ or at least interesting ] documentary, though it wasn’t at all what I expected.

As the mosque questions reveal, and Christiane herself asked, what happens next [post-London bombings] bear a great deal on how Muslims in the West assimilate [ or not ] as a group, and how they will be accepted. Be sure that here in the U.S. we will be following this situation closely. Again, as Christiane pointed out, things being what they are in the West, it will mostly be up to the Muslims themselves to police their radicals. If not,well, the English will also have their tipping point.

~ by unixxstar on January 21, 2007.