Tom Robbins at The Village Voice reports on what kind of training the NYPD are getting regarding Islam:
The film is called The Third Jihad. It is 72 minutes of gruesome footage of bombing carnage, frenzied crowds, burning American flags, flaming churches, and seething mullahs. All of this is sandwiched between a collection of somber talking heads informing us that, while we were sleeping, the international Islamist Jihad that wrought these horrors has set up shop here and is quietly going about its deadly business. This is the final drive in a 1,400-year-old bid for Muslim world domination, we're informed. And while we may think there are some perfectly reasonable Muslim leaders and organizations here in the U.S., that is just more sucker bait sent our way.
"Americans are being told that most of the mainstream Muslim groups are moderate," says the narrator, "when in fact if you look a little closer you'll see a very different reality. One of their primary tactics is deception."
The message here is that lurking behind those veils and prayer caps is a secret plan to impose a religious order out of the Dark Ages here in the U.S. The favorite image in The Third Jihad—shown over and over—is an enormous black-and-white Islamic flag flying over the White House.
This is pretty toxic stuff, the kind of film likely to spark a picket line at a local theater. In this case, however, the impact is somewhat more sinister, since the audience was law enforcement officers attending a mandatory prep session on what to know about the terrorist threat.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne told Robbins that it was a "wacky movie" that should never have been shown and won't be shown again, but others have been more impressed by the "anti-Muslim horror flick." The film was narrated by M. Zuhdi Jasser, whom Rep. Peter King has raised as a potential witness to his hearings on domestic radicalization.
The question is, if the NYPD, which bears the daunting responsibility of protecting millions of Americans against terrorism finds this sort of material "wacky," one wonders why its proponents could be presented to members of Congress on "experts" on Islam and domestic radicalization.
