The American Movie Production company “Paramount” has surrendered to pressure exerted by the Moslem lobby in the United States and adjusted the scenes of a movie currently filmed in Montreal, Canada. The film is about a group of Islamic fundamentalists attempting to threaten the final American Soccer “ Super Bowl, “ which is the biggest and most popular sport’s event in the United States. The Islamists, according to the film, will use an unexploded atomic Israeli weapon they found in the Golan Heights.
Paramount, one of the leading companies in Hollywood, has agreed to making adjustments in its film after the Islamic American Relations Council had made many contacts with them for two years regarding the contents of the movie ”Sum Of All Fears”. The production cost of the film are estimated in the tens of millions of dollars. Some of the film scenes are said to deliberately defame Islam and Moslems. In a letter sent to the Islamic American Relations Council, Paramount agreed to make adjustments in the film in a manner that satisfies the Moslem’s demands.
The original plot derived from the novel of Tom Clancy “ Sums Of All Fears” tells the story of a group of terrorists who threaten the most popular sport’s events, a baseball final, which tens of millions of Americans are waiting to see. In the view of the Islamic American Relations Council’s quoted in a “Middle East” newspaper yesterday, the choice of a Moslem identity for the film’s evil characters defames Islam and will lead to Moslems in the United States being threatened and also foster the wrong impressions of Moslems by the American film audiences. This is due to the fact that the film shows Moslems as terrorists attempting to threaten the safety and security of American citizens.
The council has been explaining its point of view to the producing company and the former director, Mas Noveld, and the present director, Phil. Elden Robinson over the past two years stressing that the film harms the image of Moslems inside and outside the United States of America. Paramount agreed to the Council’s demands and decided to substitute the identity of the evil characters in the movie by another identity “The New Nazis”. In a letter forwarded to the Islamic American Relations Council, Phil claimed that he did not intend to insult Moslems. “I hope that you make sure that I have no intention to promote any negative image of Moslems and Arabs and I wish you all the best in your continuous attempts to fight apartheid”, Phil said.
Omar Ahmad, Managing Director of the Islamic American Relations Council expressed his delight with Paramount’s attitude and said, “that the film in its original form would give the American citizen a bad idea about Islam; we are happy to have succeeded in changing the identity of the movie’s evil characters“. He pointed to the report released annually by the council on the status of American Moslems and said that there had been a number of assault cases against them as a result of the negative impression which the American media spread about Moslems and Islam. The film “ Sum Of All Fears” is not the first film that negatively portrays Moslems and Islam as other previous films such as “ Rules Of Engagement”,“ True Lines” and “ Executive Division” did the same.
The Moslem lobby in the United States launched a public campaign in 1998 to protest against the negative and insulting content of the film “ The Siege “ produced by Fox Century about the interference of the American Army and FBI in fighting against Moslems and Arabs in New York for their alleged conspiracy of bombing the City of New York.
It is noteworthy to mention that there are 6 million Moslems in the United States and that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the country
