Bonjourno!

Hi, I'm back after spending my holiday inhaling the beauty of Lake Garda. We even went to Venice for the day. It was lovely, thanks for asking.

Anyway, my contribution upon my return is this: a review of the documentary, "Islam: What the West Needs to Know", which I saw just before I went out to Italy.

What a waste. It is tremendously boring. This documentary could not have been any less inspiring if it tried. The editing and pacing are chronic. Rather than flit about between details in a fast-paced and interesting way, the whole documentary is esssentially just a series of interviews with the various experts, interlinked occasionally with overlong archived news clips. The edits between each interview clip, rather than straight cuts, always slowly fade to black and then slowly fade back in again. It all moves at a complete snail's pace.

It's almost as if they TRIED to make it boring. The film offers nothing to hold the interest; just people talking at you for an hour in their most boring voices. Bat Ye'or, as brilliant a historian as she is, is intolerable. Her voice is witchlike and her English is so broken that all of her scenes have subtitles just so we can make it out...if we haven't lost the will to live already. Similarly, passages from the Qur'an and hadiths are read out by a man with probably the most atonal voice I have ever heard. It's just diabolical.

Once again, don't get me wrong. I have awarded the documentary two stars because its message is so important. Westerners really do need to know that Islam commands Muslims to wage war on non-Muslims, that these laws have never been revised by any Islamic authority, and how Islam spread by the sword. But this film will not persuade anyone of that. Of course, many people wouldn't have listened anyway, but I envision people being so bored while watching this that they will just lose interest and not listen.

This film, which features some brilliant and brave scholars of Islam, as well as ex-Muslims who as apostates are putting their lives on the line by being featured in it, is a huge disappointment. I want everyone to know and understand the film's message, but even so I would never encourage them to watch it. It's just too painful.

Normal blogging should resume tomorrow.