By Govindini Murty. There’s a welcome new development giving me some hope that the cultural battle over the War on Terror may finally be tipping over on the side of democracy. A number of British Muslim and non-Muslim filmmakers are making films satirizing Islamic radicalism. The most successful of these right now is the new film Four Lions, a comedy about four bumbling Muslim terrorists in England that – astonishingly – showed at Sundance this past January and was picked up for distribution in the U.K. Directed by Chris Morris and featuring Riz Ahmed, Kayvan Novak, Arsher Ali, Nigel Lindsay, and Adeel Akhtar, Four Lions opened a little over a week ago in the U.K. and has been doing terrific business. As the UK Guardian reports, Four Lions had the highest per screen average of any new release in the U.K. when it opened over the May 7th weekend, beating out even Iron Man 2 in per-screen average.
The bumbling terror cell from "Four Lions."
The hilarious trailer for Four Lions is posted above, and you can find out more about the film here and here. I’m very heartened by this new development. The extraordinary thing is, Four Lions isn’t the only such film satirizing radical Islam. Jason and I have discovered an amazing number of recent new films by English and European filmmakers, many of them Muslim, who are openly questioning the tenets of radical Islam. Stay tuned as we post more about these films in days to come. As numerous media commentators have noted, Islam has never gone through a Reformation as Christianity has, but if films like Four Lions and numerous others show, that process of questioning within the Muslim community may now be underway.
In the struggle for freedom, one can never write off an entire people or an entire religion. There are many moderate Muslims who want to embrace democracy and fight terrorism, and these films are a powerful sign of that. We should support the brave filmmakers and actors who make films like Four Lions. There’s no U.S. release announced yet, but with the film’s success in the U.K., let’s see if a U.S. distributor picks this up.
You had me until your line about “numerous media commentators” repeating the line that Islam is distinguished from Christianity in that it has never had a Reformation. Actually, what Islam has never had is a pope or a Magesterium – it’s been a protestant movement, with a small p, from inception. Because there is no central authority in Islam, no preferred interpretation of scripture or right and wrong or “true Islam,” there is no pinning it down and coming to grips with it. If one cleric proclaims a fatwa, no other cleric can negate that fatwa for the first cleric’s followers – all he can influence are his own followers. It would be like expecting the Archbishop of Canterbury or Billy Graham to be able to prevent David Koresh or Eric Rudolph from indulging their personal versions of “true Christianity.”
It’s difficult to image how an even further “Reformed” – i.e. schismatic, less centralized, even more open to individual interpretation – Islam would fit better into the modern world than Islam currently does. No, as Edward Feser’s post-9/11 piece in TCS a while back explicated, what Islam needs is a pope.
Hi Patrick – thank you for your comment. First of all, I was referencing that it is a commonly held belief amongst media commentators – including Middle East/radical Islam experts such as Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, Robert Spencer, and many others – that one of the problems with Islam is that it has never had a Reformation. Whether or not it is structurally possible within Islam to have an exact counterpart to the Reformation is beside the point. Even in a decentralized religion, leaders can step forward and inspire their followers to go in different directions. I was simply pointing out that I was glad to see that in the Muslim community there is a greater process of questioning going on over radical Islam than I had previously realized, and that this is being expressed artistically in film. I think when you see the number of films we will be discussing over the next few days that are made by Muslims or that feature Muslims and that take a very critical stance toward radical Islam, you will see where I’m coming from. This simply wasn’t happening a few years ago. Moderate Muslims are obviously taking a stand for freedom and democracy, and it’s a heartening thing to see. Stay tuned because we will be posting about many more such films in the next few days.
It may be a less pointed satire, but I’m reading that “The Infidel” is doing good business in the UK as well. I hope someone decides to release it here. http://infidelmovie.com/
Thank you – we have posted about “The Infidel” and you can watch it right now on Amazon video download.
[...] in their midst. The reborn Libertas (LFM) web-journal has posts about two such projects, Four Lions and The [...]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaKN-3NyHmA
This is a link to a music video about a suicide bomber. The song is called Lonely Boy. I think it has a lot to say.