June 23, 2005, - 10:56 pm
Morgan Spurlock’s Supersized Islamist BS
By Debbie Schlussel
Morgan Spurlock got famous from his Oscar-nominated documentary, “Supersize Me.” He ingested supersized McDonald’s meals three times a day for thirty days, then blamed McDonald’s for his changed physique and health.
Now, he’s using his thirty-day premise to get Americans to ingest his bloated version of radical Islam on cable’s F/X Network.
Last year, I received a request to appear in Spurlock’s new reality show, “30 Days.” The six-episode series began Wednesday Night. The episode for which I was being recruited, “Inside an American Muslim Family,” airs next Wednesday. It features Spurlock’s childhood friend from West Virginia, David Stacy, spending thirty days “living as a Muslim” in the Detroit area.
While he is often referred to as a “journalist,” and Spurlock touts “30 Days” as a “documentary,” the outcome of the show was already decided before production began.
A show summary sent to me before taping began said, “This process aims to deconstruct common misconceptions and stereotypes . . . . [O]ur character will learn firsthand about Islam and the daily issues that . . . Muslims in America face today. The viewers will witness our character emerge from the immersion situation with a deeper understanding and appreciation for the Muslim-American experience. . . . The potential is great for this program to enlighten a national television audience about the Muslim American experience and increase their compassion, understanding and support.”
I asked the show’s executive producers–all of whom worked for Michael Moore–how this could be a documentary when they’d already decided the outcome. Wasn’t it possible, I asked, that the subject of the program, Stacy, would come out seeing that there isn’t Islamophobia to the extent that the Muslim community claims? Might Stacy see that there is disturbingly strong support in the Detroit area Islamic community for terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah–a fact regularly documented in the normally pliant Detroit media?
No, producers told me. “Morgan wants the show to demonstrate to America that we are Islamophobic and that 9/11’s biggest victims are Muslims.” With this in mind, I agreed to be filmed only with final approval of my appearance, which I never gave.
When I met David Stacy, I was amazed at how ignorant and uninformed he was. This newly-inducted “expert” on Islam never heard of Wahhabism–the extremist Sunni strain of Islam that now dominates the religion. He was unfamiliar with terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. He did not believe me that Hezbollah murdered hundreds of U.S. Marines and civilians in Beirut and elsewhere. He seemed mystified to learn that President Bush shut down American Islamic charities, like the Holy Land Foundation and Global Relief Foundation, for funding Hamas and Al Qaeda. He hadn’t a clue about taqiyyah, the Koranic principle allowing deception of non-Muslims.
He told me and a Detroit radio show that Muslims are no more representative of Qaeda and Hamas than Timothy McVeigh is representative of Christianity. Actually, McVeigh was an atheist.
Spurlock planned the outcome of this “immersion” show and he found the perfect tabula rasa in Stacy. Spurlock also found the perfect “experts” and “key members” of Detroit’s Islamic community to propagandize their easily swayed dupe.
Paul Findley is listed as an “expert” consultant for the show. A non-Muslim with no special knowledge of Islam, Findley’s real expertise is having been an anti-Israel congressman who was defeated when he was targeted by Jewish groups. Another “expert” is Muqtedar Khan, a faux moderate professor with close ties to Muslim extremist group, Al Muhajiroun, as documented by Militant Islam Monitor. Khan criticized the Dalai Lama for opposing forced conversion to Islam, and got angry when I exposed it in a column I wrote. His columns urged understanding of how devout Muslims can be driven to commit terrorism because of the West’s economic alliances. He justified Iraqi suicide attacks against U.S. soldiers as acts of frustration.
Stacy was taught by Imam Hassan Qazwini of Dearborn’s Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in North America. Qazwini’s mosque hosted Louis Farrakhan, who was introduced as “our dear brother” and “a freedom fighter.” I was there and wrote about it for The Detroit News. I watched Qazwini cheer on Farrakhan’s attacks on America and descriptions of Jews as “evil” and “forces of Satan.”
Stacy’s Muslim family was selected with the help of Haaris Ahmad, an activist in , which two former FBI counterterrorism directors have described as “a Hamas front-group.” CAIR got its seed money indirectly from indicted Hamas political director Moussa Abu Marzook. Ahmad called my Detroit radio show to defend indicted, alleged Islamic Jihad terrorist leader Sami Al-Arian. He said Al-Arian’s successful plans and fundraising for bus bombings which killed, among others, American Alisa Flatow, were an exercise of his “free speech.”
When I told Spurlock’s executive producer that I felt David Stacy was a moron, she replied that Imam Husham Al-Husainy, a prominent–if Ayatollah Khomeini-revering–Dearborn Shia cleric, “said the same thing” and refused to continue teaching him about Islam for the show.
The biggest morons, though, are not Stacy, but the TV critics and viewers who fall for this supersized phony “documentary.”
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I would have done anything, maybe even kissed one of those WNBA chicks, to have seen Debbie in a true documentary living the Muslim experience for 30 days in Detroit.
I’m not surprised to read this seeing it’s from the brilliant mind who made the SHOCKING!!! discovery that eating at McDonalds every day will make you a big, fat slob.
Jeff_W on June 24, 2005 at 9:22 am