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The
Hits
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| “Muslims”
was a “Hit” for PBS this week |
PBS’s
Frontline: Frontline rarely disappoints; and with it’s airing
of “Muslims” this past week, the award-winning investigative
series scored another win. The episode sought to paint a picture of
Islam using the personal stories of Muslims from all over the Muslim
world. From America to Southeast Asia, Muslims were shown as the
people they are, not the mythical fanatics some reporting suggests.
One
of the episode’s executive producers, Anisa Mehdi, worked
tirelessly to bring this project to fruition; and “Muslims” caps
more than two years of extensive travel and research. Frontline,
unlike so many other news programs, is often willing to make this
kind of longitudinal time commitment to the subject matter it
tackles. Hats off once again to PBS.
HBO:
Who says HBO is only good for bad movies and overly-explicit
television series such as The Sopranos, Oz and Sex and the City? On
May 12, HBO debuted Telling Nicholas, a wrenching documentary about
loss in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Filmmaker
James Whitney shot the footage for Telling Nicholas in the 10 days
following the 9/11 tragedy tracking the Lanza family and its
preparation for telling 7-year-old Nicholas Lanza that his mother
Michelle was killed in the WTC collapse.
While
the Lanza’s are the main subjects of the documentary, Whitney also
introduces viewers to the Ahmad family, which also suffered a 9/11
loss. Shabbir Ahmad worked as a waiter in the Windows on the World
restaurant atop the WTC. He never had a chance for survival as only
a handful of people above the impact zones made it out alive that
day. His son, 16-year-old Thanbir, is left behind with the rest of
the mourning family. Devout Muslims, the Ahmad family members
provide a strong voice for Muslims and Thanbir is especially
poignant in his perspectives on 9/11.
Whitney
eventually has Thanbir and Nicholas meet; however, not before some
very human emotions and reactions surface. Certain members of the
Lanza family harbor some fairly harsh feelings towards Muslims, and
these issues serve to create some tension in the film.
In
all, Telling Nicholas is very real. It deals with real tragedy, real
people and real outcomes. As such, it is a commendable effort in
that it is one of the few works to reach a broad audience with the
message that Muslims suffered on 9/11 as well.
The
documentary will re-air on HBO throughout the coming week. Check
local listings for times.
The
Miss:
Bahrain
Banning Jazeera: Not so much an entertainment “miss” as it
is a media “miss”. Last Friday, the Gulf nation of Bahrain
announced that Al-Jazeera satellite news would be banned from
reporting in that country. The injunction came just as Bahrainis
were going to the polls for the first time in three decades.
The
reason for the ban? According to Nabil Al-Hamr, Bahrain’s
information minister, as quoted by Al-Jazeera, “We believe [Al
Jazeera] is suspect and represents the Zionist side in the region.
We will not deal with this channel because we object to its coverage
of current affairs. It is a channel penetrated by Zionists.”
I
suppose in the news business you just can’t win. In America, Al-Jazeera
is seen by many as being nothing more than a mouthpiece for
terrorists and political Islam. So how Bahrain arrives at the
conclusion that Al-Jazeera is some kind of operative of Zionist
forces isn’t quite clear.
Maybe
closer to the truth is a May 10 BBC report in which the news service
cites sources that say Bahrain was angered at Al-Jazeera’s airing
of anti-U.S. protests that sprung up in the wake of the recent
Israeli aggression against the Palestinians.
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