Documentary on Islam set to speak to uninformed West

By Mehru Jaffer

NEW YORK (JP): The possibility that Megawati Soekarnoputri, recently declared the most popular leader by voters, may still not make it to the top job in Indonesia is a puzzle to most Americans.

That the largest Muslim country in the world is not ready even at the turn of the century for a woman head of state is something that is baffling to people in contemporary Western societies where the equal status of women is taken for granted. After all, women make up half the work force here and have nearly equal access to all educational and occupational opportunities. Many economists even argue that this is the secret to the West's economic and social development.

Why is it that values of sexual equality have not been widely accepted in many Muslim-majority countries? Instead, Muslim women are seen navigating through a thicket of legislation that, whatever its intention, actually restricts their lives in ways many in the West find difficult to imagine.

"This is because the Muslim world's attitude toward women is far more complex than it appears to Western eyes," said Prof. Maristella Lorch of Columbia University. Examples also are cited of Muslim women soldiers fighting alongside men, women parliamentarians in Iran, doctors, economists, engineers and filmmakers around the world and heads of state in Pakistan, Turkey and Bangladesh.

In the search for answers to many other such contradictions within Islamic societies, yet another film is planned for an in- depth exploration of the diverse ways adopted by Muslims to the challenges of modernity. The idea is to try and understand all over again the political and social forces operating in the Muslim world.

A group from the William and Mary Greve Foundation contacted the International Conflict Resolution Program at Columbia University three years ago to help create a television documentary series that would introduce Islam to a largely uninformed Western audience.

The film will try to dispel the common Western association of Islamic fundamentalism with violence and intolerance.

"It is our hope that this program will aid the process of reconciliation by helping to demystify this powerful religion practiced by a billion people, one fifth of all humanity, but which is demonized today by headline-grabbing acts of violence committed by a small minority of its followers," explained Alvin H. Perlmutter, producer of the project who is a former NBC news vice president and has made more than 100 documentaries for public and commercial television.

Columbia University's International Conflict Resolution Program is a research-based program, operating both in the classroom and the field, working toward a better understanding of international conflicts and the factors that cause them.

Lorch feels that a large television project on Islam at this point in time is not only feasible but highly desirable. Aghast at the gravity of tension brewing between Muslims and Christians in countries like Indonesia, the filmmakers will trace the common root of Islam and the other two monotheistic faiths of Judaism and Christianity. It will emphasize the way all three faiths are struggling to define themselves in the modern world.

What is most frightening is the reductive view that has taken hold on both sides. A recent Roper poll reveals that 50 percent of those polled believe all Muslims to be inherently anti- American, and/or supportive of terrorism. For their part, many ordinary Muslims strongly feel that Western powers are bent upon undermining their cultures, their governments and their religion. Many Westerners view Islam as a rigid, reactionary, even medieval faith.

The relationship between Muslim and Judeo-Christian worlds can best be described in this day and age as one of alienation, hostility and suspicion. The need is to understand the political forces operating in the Muslim world and to puncture the stereotype image of Islam by portraying it in its vast diversity, from those who resist change, to those who have accepted, even embraced secular modernity.

Islam does have a core of set beliefs that are the same for all Muslims but around this core there is a swirling diversity of nationalities, races, politics, customs and social conventions. The film will search out the forces of both unity and diversity in Islam that are always at odds, causing ebbs and flows of cohesion and conflict.

To prove that Islam has not one mind but many, the four-hour, two-part program will be shot in seven countries around the world, including Indonesia where Islam is seen to blend beautifully with the country's pre-Islamic culture.

Perlmutter was struck in Indonesia by the fact that none of the news stories about the downfall of the Soeharto regime put the focus on religion. In Malaysia, the film will explore the concept of modernizing without secularizing, where fundamentalism will be studied for existing without the violence so often associated with Islam in the Western mind.

In contemporary American jargon the term fundamentalism is taken to mean something foreign and threatening. The film attempts to refine the definition of Islamic fundamentalism, to use it along with revivalism, to mean the reawakening of the Islamic ideal and its rising influence in most Muslim countries from Indonesia to Bosnia. It is important for the West to understand that this movement is not simply an expression of rage against the West, but a complex reaction to the challenges and pressures of post-colonial and post-Cold war politics in Muslim societies and outside.