His ground breaking and often controversial documentaries have been the template for an entire generation of reality drama, most keenly felt in Paul Greengrass’ work on “United 93.” Now Broomfield seems to have once again found a subject that will divide the public and tap into the collective zeitgeist of the moment.

His “Battle for Haditha” is the true story of a small engagement between a Marine patrol and two local men who have been paid 1000 dollars by al Qaeda to detonate an IED. The chaos that ensues after the explosion which kills a Marine Captain quickly develops into a massacre of the local population by the surviving Marines. In all 24 people died, but this is no crucifixion of the U.S. forces or a condemnation of the insurgents, but rather an even-sided account of one terrible day.

In fact, “Battle for Haditha” is an internal struggle of conscience for all concerned; Marines, civilians, and insurgents alike.

Broomfield develops a Truman Capote “true fiction” account of life in Iraq. His documentary style is present and correct but he is also adept at opening this canvas wider through his excellent use of music; most notably the thrash metal soundtrack which constantly accompanies the exhausted and bored Marines through their daily lives.

The young Marines are played by ex-servicemen which further ads to the personal tragedy of the film. Corporal Ramirez, our main focus, is devastating in an emotional scene where he breaks down shortly before the massacre takes place. It is all the more poignant because we know Elliot Ruiz has experienced this battle fatigue for real, he knows Ramirez because Ramirez is him and every other Marine.

Broomfield also picks up on the class and background of the young soldiers. Ramirez is from Philadelphia, “the murder capital of America” and has traded that place for “the murder capital of the world” as one Marine puts it. It is as if America has a ready trained multitude of urban warriors to send into 21st century war zones, and perhaps this is their government’s grand design: not to develop those inner-city projects so men will enlist and kill foreigners, rather than each other. “Battle” could well be a companion piece in this sense to the documentary “Rampage,” which featured a young soldier from Miami returning from Iraq to his equally violent American city.

However Broomfield’s film also dwells upon the local population. The bomb planters are small businessmen, one sells DVD porn to the very soldiers he will attack, and the other drinks alcohol and has to hide this fact from al Qaeda who pay them to attack the Americans. Perhaps the greatest irony is that al Qaeda pay them in dollars, thus funding a capitalist society they wish to eradicate, and using the very symbol they so despise.

The most gut-wrenching scene is where the initiators of the violence stand with an al Qaeda member watching the carnage unfold beneath them. They realise too late what they have unleashed on their own people, only for the al Qaeda representative to calmly explain how it will be used for propaganda. Later back with his family, one of the insurgents collapses in grief, the audience in no doubt of the hideous burden he has brought upon himself.

The massacre of the civilians is a stunning piece of film making. Their homes are attacked with military precision and it is that professionalism of arms which leaves the audience spellbound when seeing its effect on defenceless women and children. Once the Marine attack is finished we are lost for words but also at a loss for whom to blame.

The Marines are the obvious choice, bred on a diet of al Qaeda propaganda DVDs and pounding music, but then again is their leadership to blame for not allowing Ramirez to see a doctor when he was clearly suffering from post traumatic stress disorder? The insurgents planted the bomb but they were at the mercy of al Qaeda. Or were the civilians to blame as they did not reveal the IED to the authorities even though they saw it being planted?

“Battle for Haditha” is the first remarkable film about the unique situation in Iraq and it will take some beating, such is its emotional depth, and scope of its intelligence.

Further reading: “Battle for Haditha” premieres in Dubai.

The visiting celebrities were eager to talk about their experience at a workshop in Jordan’s SAE Institute, a media technology training institute, pointing out that the country has a lot of local talent just waiting to take off.

One SAE student later told me that he personally wasn’t impressed with the workshop at all, though I immediately wondered how much of the negativity stemmed from simple inertia: the lingering idea that nothing with artistic or entertainment value could possibly be created in Jordan, ever (the same student told me he despises the recent Jordanian film “Captain Abu Raed,” a ground-breaking movie I adored).

I have heard repeated statements that Jordan in particular is an “anti-intellectual” environment, as opposed to, say, Lebanon or Egypt. I asked Waleed Zuaiter, whose parents divide their time between Amman and Ramallah, what he thought about said claims of anti-intellectualism:

Waleed, who co-produces the New York Arab American Comedy Festival besides working as an actor, told me: “I don’t think there is anything “anti-intellectual” about Jordan at all. Amman doesn’t need to “import” culture, it is full of culture and history. When it comes to Comedy, which is an Art form as all the other Arts, I would recommend that Jordan not solely “import” comedy from the West, but to really focus on creating a home-grown practice and following where comedians and audiences can enjoy stand-up comedy in their own native language.”

Born in Sacramento, California, Waleed spent most of his childhood in Kuwait and, as a native Arabic speaker, highlights the importance of understanding a culture from within.

Maysoon Zayid, whose recent role in Adam Sandler’s “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” has garnered much attention, is another native Arabic speaker, despite having grown up in New Jersey. It was refreshing to hear Maysoon speak about working with Adam Sandler at the press conference, because many of my earnest friends had quickly dismissed the film, which aims to poke fun at conflict in the Middle East, as racist clap-trap.

Maysoon, and others, argued that Adam Sandler was in fact very sensitive to the subject matter and wanted to make fun of both Jews and Arabs in a manner that was entertaining. Maysoon is a woman with agency, and then some, and she strikes you as a person you don’t want to piss off under any circumstances. The idea of her taking on a demeaning role seems ludicrous, all pious hand-wringing on the subject be damned.

When I asked Maysoon what’s next for her, she spoke of performing at the upcoming Democratic National Convention and working on another comedy project, “Little American Whore,” as well as translating said project into Arabic. Will the word “whore” be kept in the Arabic title? Of course it will.

And that’s the thing about Maysoon – she’s bawdy and fresh and brash. I’ve corresponded with her for an interview before, but seeing her in the flesh is a rare treat.

Interacting with Maysoon made me think of how many women in the entertainment industry are still expected to be not fully human, with sculpted hairdos and on-call stylists and the cool appeal of sirens. It is comedy, a genre generally overlooked by cultural gate-keepers in the world, which often allows more women to freely act out the livelier, messier sides of their actual lives.

Meanwhile, having remembered that Maysoon once spoke of being accused of anti-Semitism, I wondered if “Axis of Evil” Aron Kader, whom I last saw in Dubai, had ever encountered such accusations in his professional life. Aron said no, but he also mentioned that he knows where the sensitivity comes from.

In the U.S., it is very hard to have a rational debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So hard, in fact, that it seems as though laughing about it may be the only way for all sides to start talking.

Meanwhile, Dean Obeidallah, “Axis of Evil” star and co-founder and co-producer of the New York Arab American Comedy Festival, noted that many people had told him that Jordanians do not laugh. He was pretty emphatic when he said that he didn’t believe this was the case. Jordanians laughed hysterically when Dean and Maysoon gave live comedy performances in Amman, for example.

I have to testify that one could hear said hysterical laughter from blocks away. The cats on the trash-bins perked up their ears, and the neighbourhood, lively by all standards, felt as though it was brimming with fizzy good energy.

It’s no wonder. Like Maysoon, Dean is incredibly funny, with precise timing and an impish smile. He also comes off as incredibly, disarmingly sincere. This was his second time in Amman and he spoke highly of its growth and development, even if the Ammanites’ practice of parking on the sidewalk left him bewildered (growth and development isn’t making those streets any wider).

When the inevitable question along the lines of “aren’t you afraid of becoming too mainstream?” sounded forth at the press conference, Dean grinned widely. On one hand, money for his projects is important, that much ought to be obvious to all, even the most radically anti-establishment among us. On the other hand, he spoke about the notion that there are plenty of generic comedians out there, and being an Arab-American comedian means that one cannot aspire to be generic, lest one loses one’s audience.

Waleed Zuaiter told my fellow journalist that the group’s talent “ does not end with being Arab.” The performances are not gimmicks that will simply lose their flavour once an even greater audience catches on.

Waleed struck me as the youngest of the group. I was shocked when he told me he was thirty-seven. He has an Arab Errol Flynn quality to him, something that Hollywood, in its infinite wisdom, has to take a closer look at.

We spoke about racism in the entertainment industry; I recalled the time that actor Kal Penn came to Duke while I was an undergrad, and sparked a pretty sobering discussion on what it means to be “too ethnic” in Hollywood. Waleed told me that he feels fortunate that he hasn’t experienced what Kal Penn spoke about directly. He said he just preferred to focus on the art – “art” is a word that gets bandied about with some ease, but coming from Waleed, you think its invocation to be genuine.

Interacting with this group makes you wonder what it would have been like to see George Carlin young, at the height of his potential. Wandering over to Aron Kader, I asked him to comment on Carlin’s recent passing, since I was aware of Aron being a fan.

“He was the greatest.”

Damn straight. And you may be too.

The other story in the news on the very same day was the gun attack at the Roman Amphitheatre in Amman, where a deranged Islamist opened fire at the audience of a musical concert. How the two stories are closely connected, I shall reveal after I share with you the totally new kind of emotion that enveloped me as I followed the parade of the liberated men on TV (alongside the coffins of the fallen fighters, inside one of which lay Dalal Mughrabi, whose corpse Ehud Barak personally mutilated in 1978 and invited the cameras to record his primeval act).

As I watched this historic event, I didn’t know how to define the overwhelming jolt of elation that swept my own sun-mutilated corpse. Why did it seem so unusual to belong to a nation that gave birth to a dedicated group of fighters who refused to abandon their captured comrades, I asked myself? Why was I so surprised to feel that way? Indeed, the extraordinary nobility of those who persevered and offered their lives to twist the arms of the captors of their brothers-in-arms was a manifestation of military valor and gallantry in combat that I have not witnessed in recent memory from my own nation folk. Then I realized what this sensation was like

The only people in this region who have always lit a candle of solidarity for their missing sons and daughters were not the Arab countries. Finally, I could feel as privileged as Jews do. For the first time in my life, and although I never wished for it, I felt like an Israeli. Indeed, one of the reasons the Israelis have always conquered their Arab adversaries was because their soldiers go into battle knowing that their leaders and their people shall never rest until they return them to their families, whether living or dead.

And now, this most honorable trait with its noblest values of gratitude to your fighting brethren combined with the solemn vow to leave no man or woman behind, is no longer monopolized by our enemies. The sweltering Aqaba sun became cooler all of a sudden as the refreshing breeze of redeemed dignity penetrated my soul.

But some people want to snatch that pride away from us, using the most ridiculous and shameful of arguments to tarnish the only bright spot of hope across a demoralized and defeated nation. They keep shedding their crocodile tears over the wanton destruction that Israel inflicted upon Lebanon in its aggression two summers ago, and never cease to blame Hizbullah for inviting such a war on that beautiful Mediterranean nation. But how can Hizbullah be responsible if an irrational beast chose to punish all of Lebanon for no justifiable reason? What would the Cypriots have said if Israel decided to bomb Cyprus in July 2006 because there is a substantial Lebanese community living there? Would you imagine having one single Cypriot clown coming out and blaming Hizbullah for such unprovoked attacks by Israel?

Did Britain blast Ireland to smithereens to fight the IRA? Did Spain flatten the Basque country to avenge the actions of ETA? Nevertheless, you have rabid local columnists – the ones who still insist that Israel did not lose the last war despite Israel’s own admission of defeat – who took it upon themselves to advocate the US stance in demonizing anyone connected to the new public enemy no. 1, the evil Persians.

To perform their new dirty role, these agitators must, against all evidence and reason, keep undermining the role of Hizbullah in Lebanon, despite the fact that this Shiite group is allied in an unprecedented manifestation of national unity with the majority of Lebanon’s Christians against a gang of war criminals and warlords who still have not been held to account for their cruel devastation of their entire nation during 15 years of civil war. Hizbullah is implementing a Shiite Iranian agenda in Lebanon, these quasi-journalists would tell you, and not a whimper you would hear from them about the sponsors of the Fateh Al Islam Sunni group that burnt down Nahr Al Bared refugee camp last year (for a full exposé of the parties behind the funding and arming of Shaker Al Ibsi and his followers, read Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s article in the New Yorker magazine, March issue, 2007).

It is no longer acceptable not to speak out with outrage against this nauseating vilification of Iran’s role in our region, for the Wahabist alternative we are asked to swallow is downright horrendous and, frankly speaking, absolutely indigestible. And let me begin here by reminding everyone that I am not a fan of any group that proclaims religious values in its earthly endeavors, whether it be Sunni or Shiite, Judaic or Christian. I have in fact risked myself several times in the past by taking a public stand against the excesses of religious zealotry, and have endured my fair share of defamation in the process.

But in this case, I sense there is something profoundly perverse in the current campaign to denigrate all Shiites as subversive agents of an expansionist Persian empire, as it serves only one divisive purpose obvious for all. The latest blatant exaggerations of this off-beat circus band betrayed its members when one usual suspect wrote recently that moving the exhumed bodies out of Israel in the latest prisoners swap was deplorable in his opinion. This columnist, who shifted in his late life to the extreme right wing ranks, and in order to score a cheap point against Hizbullah, suddenly proclaimed that those buried in Israel, meaning the land occupied in 1948, were in fact laid to rest in “Palestine”, because “Israel never demarcated its borders”, and therefore the dead should have stayed there (although this shifter would never even be heard referring to land occupied in 1967 as Palestine, let alone to now deny Israel’s existence in order to make his sanctimonious argument).

For the shifter who made a career for himself out of his daily Iran-bashing rants to claim that Dalal Mughrabi was dignified in her unmarked Israeli grave is quite astonishing, since he knows too well that Dalal was displayed by the mutilators of dead corpses in a glass coffin at the Judicial Institute of Autopsy for Zionist students to peek at her before she was dumped without ceremony in an anonymous graveyard in what Israel termed the “Enemy Combatant Cemetery”. To pretend now that the fact that her family can finally afford her a proper burial is somehow lamentable, defies all human norms of decency and simply beggars belief.

But let me get back to the imaginary Iranian threat being propagated by the scaremongers in our midst. As I said, I have absolutely no interest or desire to defend the Iranians or what their revolution stands for, but we owe it to ourselves to examine in depth what the ideological counterpart that is being offered on the menu for our children’s future is all about.

If it’s going to be the reinforcement of the Wahabist stranglehold of the Sunni sect of madness that produced the likes of Bin Laden and Zarqawi; if it’s going to be the stream of insanity that wants to ban all aspects of beauty, art and splendor in Islam; if it’s going to be the deformed version of our great religion that prevents women from driving cars and has a grudge against all elements of refined civilization; if it’s going to be the cult of hate and death that declares all Shiites, Christians and Jews as apostates who must be killed; if it’s going to be the same ignorant hordes who have bulldozed and erased every single physical remnant of Islam’s history in Mecca and Medina; and, finally, if it’s going to be the uglification brand of Islam that brainwashes our youth to become cold-blooded murderers by opening fire at a musical concert in downtown Amman on a peaceful summer night, then without a doubt, I salute the glorious brigades of Hizbullah in this battle of ideologies.

To be totally honest, I am not too concerned to take sides in an historic squabble that took place more than fourteen centuries ago, and don’t particularly enjoy the sight of bloody chest-beatings today by those who still can’t get over the outcome of that dispute. But if I am seriously asked today whether I would stand with Mu’awiya or his enemy in that ancient battle, then by all means I solidly stand with the Hashemite household of the Prophet Muhammad, the Shiites of Ali and his sons, as any human being with any sense of justice would.

And today, despite all its shortcomings that I would be the first to denounce, Iran is still a country that at least has a cinema industry competing in Cannes and Venice, and its Tehran Philharmonic Orchestra leaves a lot to be desired in the Sunni dominated world. They not only allow their women to drive, but they have women Ministers and women Members of Parliament, and you would never hear that an Iranian woman would get sentenced to one hundred lashes after she was gang-raped by seven men, or that little school girls would be forced back to their deaths inside a burning school to avoid them exposing their hair in public.

Iran never invaded any Arab country, nor has it facilitated the invasion of an Arab country, and if its only crime is in supporting the first and only Arab party to give Israel its first taste of defeat and humiliation, then I smell a rotten rat in all this dubious war-drumming, Persian-punching extravaganza.

May all our martyrs rest in peace, wherever in God’s earth they may be resting.

Take care, and if you ride, do it safely.

The upheaval in my head was about the human tendency which we all share when in dire times of trouble: to plead for salvation to what is supposed to be an omnipotent force that holds our fate in its hands – without ever questioning the meaning and purpose of this instinctive exercise. Why, the question kept haunting me, do believers need to implore God for an intervention to save an innocent little girl like Madeleine, if they believe that He has the power to do it anyway.

Does a most merciful father need us immortals to beg him to do the right thing? Does He need the Pope to intermediate to end a grief-stricken family’s plight?

This dilemma has no comfortable answer for someone like me who has reached his belief in a Creator through an arduous process of rational thinking and reasoning rather than by indoctrinated fear of torture in hell fire.

That’s why all the other believers with whom I tried to share this philosophical issue were unwilling to come near the question of how far God is involved in our daily lives, and whether He is responsible for the inexplicable incidents of pain and suffering that plague humanity. They were too afraid to confront the eternal taboo of whether our misery and unnecessary anguish are man made or God made.

Personally, I want to convince myself that only an evil criminal intentionally causes misery, such as causing the disappearance a young girl, and then expect her parents to beseech him for mercy, while keeping them hanging for a verdict of life or death. No, in my book, the party responsible for abducting Madeleine McCann is the sick individual who took her away. God has nothing to do with it. If He did, Madeleine would have long been in her parents’ arms. This is the only God that my mind can fathom, and is the only one worth worshipping for that matter.

Nor can God have anything to do with causing – or preventing – the crushing under tons of concrete of the thousands of families in the latest earthquake in China. Only a sick joker, let alone a compassionate supreme being, would look at our planet one morning, and then decide to give the earth a little shake underneath the province of Schezuan so that 70,000 souls would expire in the most excruciating and slow manner.

I can sense that this topic is already too much to handle for the unsuspecting reader, so I will shift to another, hopefully lighter, aspect of this tragedy (as if anything can be light in dealing with a disaster of this magnitude – but here it is anyway). I noticed something else while following the earthquake story, something we are all guilty of, but we do it subconsciously without too much thought.

Average Jordanians tended not to focus too much on the vast human toll of the Chinese earthquake because deep down in the unexplorable alleys of our minds, we think China is a massively overpopulated country whereby a few thousand less inhabitants are not a cause for spectacular mourning this side of the Asian continent. Don’t get me wrong; the key word here is ‘subconsciously’.

I am not saying that when we switched on the news of the Chinese earthquake, as we all did, and flicked away so swiftly to another channel, as we also did, we acted this way because we are heartless and indifferent monsters. Apart from the deceptive numbers game (there are over a billion Chinese people, the logic goes, so they can afford it), it is also this overwhelming media conditioning we are all subjected to that sets our priorities of what is newsworthy for precious airtime and what is mundane and lame stuff.

We are under the spell of organizations who direct us towards what should amount to a grieving moment, such as the loss of a beautiful Princess in a car accident in a Paris tunnel, as opposed to the routine loss of a few hundred lesser people in a train crash outside Bangalore, where we yawn and switch off. Of course we don’t do it because we have a grudge against the Indian people, but it is still worth pondering why and how we manage to behave like that; how we turn away as if nothing has happened when thousands die in a flood in Mexico, and how we get glued to the TV when, say, Madeleine McCann goes missing.

And let us admit, in the rat race that is life today, we are all equally guilty in this inclination to be too apathetic and oblivious to the news that really matters. We developed a lazy conscience and just cannot be bothered to determine for ourselves what warrants our attention and sympathy, so we have subcontracted that task to amoral news merchants who are too happy to pick and select on our behalf.

In the case of China, I may personally be adversely influenced by them being the nation who invented fireworks, something that has always been very close to the heart of the child in me, until, of course, Amman became the world capital for the gratuitous daily use of these explosives, smack in the heart of sleepy, residential neighborhoods. Sarcasm aside, there is something seriously twisted in the law enforcement agencies that permit the uninhibited detonation of these bombs right in the middle of our peaceful backstreets, every single night of the week, while having the audacity to pull me over for not wearing a helmet while riding my motorcycle.

Do I have to wait until one of these missiles lands in my balcony before any Jordanian official visualizes the criminal aspects of allowing Amman to resemble, on a nightly basis, West Beirut in the summer of 1982? I just find it insane to live in a society that does not waste a breath without complaining about sky-rocketing prices, but co-exists happily under the constant barrage of another ludicrously money-wasting form of sky rockets.

But I will not go down (or blow up) without a fight. I shall create my own loud bang and will be heard in my own way: by immediately writing to the Guinness World Records institute and get Jordan a new footprint in history books for being the nation that sets off the biggest number of individual fireworks annually in the world (and while I’m at it, for having more mobile phone shops than any other nation).

And the people of Jordan dare to complain about how expensive life has become? And to top that, the government dares to single out motorcycles and ban them in Jordan?

Speaking of the global inflation phenomenon, it is most ironic that only after just more than a decade since the collapse of communism, the whole capitalist system has not yet had the time to take a triumphant breath and yet is itself on the brink of total collapse. And it is happening all because of the incurable human sin of pure and utter greed.

I’m not talking only about the price of gasoline and diesel here. Analysts studying the financial crisis in the US and Britain have warned that the Great Depression of the 1930’s could be a walk in the park compared to the inferno brewing under the ashes of the world’s financial systems today, and that the recent US housing loans crisis is only the tip of a giant iceberg looming behind the façade of cooked books and sugarcoated profit and loss statements.

But why is capitalism doomed to these endless cycles of booms and recessions? Let’s see what’s taking place with the oil markets as an example of my point.

As OPEC and other oil experts would confirm, there is absolutely no shortage of oil in the world today, despite the surge in demand by our friends the Chinese (a fact that every learned economist and taxi driver would tell you these days to explain away why the whole world is sobbing at the gas pumps). So why are prices continuing to climb as I write, and as the head of Russian Gazprom predicted, would reach US$250 a barrel by the end of the year?

The way this humble observer sees things, the unprecedented surge in oil prices is purely caused by greed and speculation by a bunch of unscrupulous global players who can’t get enough profits to feed their insatiable and extravagant lifestyles. Supply and demand as a price-setting formula has just become a tired magical potion used to justify the unjustifiable when suppliers want to con the demanders. There is absolutely no reason why the supply taps cannot be re-opened to relieve the crisis, except for, again, pure, unadulterated, and crude greed, to borrow an oily adjective.

Back in small and oil-less Jordan, what are we to do? I can assure you that no amount of prayers to the Lord can save us from the unspeakable scenarios of steeper rises in oil prices anymore than it has helped to save poor Madeleine McCann or succeeded in undemolishing a single school in China.

All I can advise is that if we all get on our bikes, as the saying goes, no one will feel the weight of the soaring price tags as these machines are very economical, and all of Jordan would then be, just like me, writing their own happy and totally incoherent motorcycle diaries, under the illuminated skies of our nightly 4th of July celebrations.

Take care, and if you ride, do it safely.

This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine.

Each comedian profiled has their own angle on both the entertainment business and the experiences of Muslims in the United States. Maysoon Zayid talks about being a Palestinian-American Muslim woman who doesn’t cover her hair, a virgin, and a disabled person aspiring to become an actress.

Dean Obeidallah shares the story of how he initially stopped using his Arab last name when performing in the aftermath of 9/11, then had a change of heart and a change of direction.

Azhar Usman, who is shown praying in his dressing room at one point, discusses going through a conservative phase before realizing that his path in life ultimately lay elsewhere.

Many viewers will relate to Ahmed Ahmed’s anxiety in regards to air travel, except that in Ahmed Ahmed’s case there is the added “bonus” of traveling while Muslim and enduring extreme suspicion. And Tissa Hami’s account of enduring prejudice both from non-Muslims and Muslims (some of whom have told her that she is “going to hell”) is not exactly a laughing matter.

Yet, staying true to its subject matter, the special manages to be light-hearted as well. The featured jokes could probably make even David Horowitz laugh, or so I’d like to believe.

Prior to the premiere, I was given an opportunity to interview several of the comedians, and here is what we talked about:

Natalia: Can you tell me more about the PBS special?

Dean Obeidallah: The one-hour special is the brainchild of producer Glenn Baker who first approached us almost four years ago with the idea of shooting a documentary about Muslim and Arab-American comedians. The documentary begins with us performing before any of us had appeared on any major US TV networks. However, by the end of the documentary many of us had appeared on Comedy Central, ABC, CNN, NBC and on numerous other TV networks, so viewers get a chance to watch us move up the entertainment ladder.

Maysoon Zayid: I am so blessed to be involved in this project with such extraordinary talent, including my brother from another mother, Dean Obeidallah. Glen and Omar [Naim - the co-director] were invisible. They made it so easy for us. I’m amazed with the end product. Omar is truly genius. It’s funny. And no one gets shot. AND you get to see my Dad. That alone is worth TiVo-ing.

Natalia: What’s it like to be a Muslim American working in the entertainment industry in the year 2008?

Dean Obeidallah: The entertainment industry is very competitive and is a struggle for everyone, regardless of race or religion. [Being] an Arab-American comedian who talks about my heritage in my act, has set me apart from many other typical comedians because I have a point of view that has not been heard from too often in the past. In the last few years, the entertainment industry has increasingly been supportive of our comedy.

Maysoon Zayid: I don’t know. No, just kidding, I do. I find it very difficult not only being a Muslim but a disabled female Muslim who doesn’t fit the stereotype shown by mainstream media of what a Muslim woman should look and sound like. Nearly all of my experience comes from the entertainment side and I found that, once someone takes a chance on casting me, its been a great opportunity for people who know very little about my culture to learn. In those instances I’ve had a wonderful reception from the majority of my colleagues as well as the Muslim community itself. Oh and the Italian Christians love me too.

Natalia: What are your audiences like nowadays, do lots of Muslims come to see your shows? Are there Jews in the audience?

Dean Obeidallah: When I’m not traveling for shows, I’m in NYC performing nightly at the major comedy clubs so the audiences are a cross section of every race and religion. When we do the Middle Eastern themed shows then the audience is probably 60% Middle Eastern. I am fortunate to have supporters of all different backgrounds

Maysoon Zayid: I don’t make it a policy to check what religion my audience members are, so I cant answer that. Because its not really something I think about nor do I care. Religion is personal. It doesn’t matter to me what religion anyone in my audience is.

I do know for a fact however that I’ve had a Mormon in the audience because she happened to be my best friend.

Natalia: This is just a stab in the dark, but, as an American, I get the impression that there is this sense of discomfort between Muslim Americans and Jewish Americans, and I see comedy as something that has the long-term potential to repair this situation. Am I naive to think this way?

Maysoon Zayid: Please don’t use the word “stab” in the same sentence as “Muslim Americans” and “Jewish Americans.”

Dean Obeidallah: I truly believe that comedy can be used to foster understating between Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and [people of] all different backgrounds. In fact, I have toured colleges for four years in a show I co-created called “Stand up for Peace” with Jewish comedian Scott Blakeman. Our shows are generally co-sponsored by Arab, Jewish, and Muslim student groups.

The goal is to bring together people of different backgrounds and religions (especially Arabs/Muslims and Jewish-Americans), to foster understanding through laughter as well as to attract support for a peaceful, negotiated resolution to the Middle East conflict. I can promise you that our show is much more fun than the events featuring speakers on the extreme right who appear on college campuses with the goal of dividing people through their hate-filled rhetoric.

Natalia: “Axis of Evil” was a success in the Middle East . Would you say that this success is indicative of the way that Muslim American comedians are perceived in Muslim majority nations overall?

Dean Obeidallah: I actually didn’t go with the Axis guys for that tour. However, I have performed in the Middle East before on my own and am returning for shows in late May/early June with Ahmed Ahmed and Maz Jobrani.

Comedy does not have geographic barriers. The Internet, TV shows and films have brought the world closer together. I can also tell you that I learned that we have one big thing in common: Jokes about President Bush get big laughs both in the US and in the Middle East!

Maysoon Zayid: Whether you’re part of the Muslim community or not, if you appreciate good comedy, you’re gonna love our shows. I’ve done shows in Beirut, and I’ve done shows in Tennessee, and I can honestly say the audiences I’ve encountered have been equally enthusiastic on both sides of the globe. Masha’allah.

Natalia: I recently interviewed a Muslim American author, Dilara Hafiz, and one of the most interesting things we talked about was her idea that Islam has a great future in the United States, because it can thrive more alongside democracy. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Maysoon Zayid: First of all, I want to give respect to Dilara Hafiz. I think what she did is such a cool idea and I love the fact that she collaborated on it with her own children. That being said, I heartily disagree.

Being Muslim in America, I feel put in jeopardy. Growing up in Cliffside Park, New Jersey I never felt as if I was an “other,” and I definitely was never attacked for my religious beliefs. But, during the George W. Bush Presidency, I, as well as my nieces and nephews, started to feel overwhelmed by the pushing of his distortion of Christianity on our daily lives. I started feeling a lot less comfortable in my own country, because of this.

If, by the grace of God and the Diebold machines, we get a Democrat in office, Islam may have a slim chance of thriving, but if we end up with that dude McCain, I got two words for my fellow Muslims: “Move to Canada”. OK, sorry, that’s three words.

Natalia: Would you like to share more thoughts on this year’s election?

Maysoon Zayid: I am super-proud to say that I am actually going to be ATTENDING the Democratic National Convention, as both a delegate from the great state of New Jersey and a performer with my arab-boy-comic-harem, aka “Axis of Evil” and Dean Obeidallah.

I am so excited for this election because it means no more Dick and Bush (forgive me for not being halal, but those are their names), and I’m thrilled at the prospect of having either Hilary or Barack Obama for president (as long as Hilary shuts it about obliterating Iran).

Ideally I’d like to see them on the same ticket. But more than anything else, I want Bill back! I know he’s itchin’ to get back in the Middle East peace process/ circus. The one other thing I will say, is Michele Obama is frickin’ awesome.

Dean Obeidallah: This election has both inspired and distressed me. I have been inspired by that fact both a woman and an African-American have a realistic chance of being the next President. I am personally supporting Senator Obama, but I am confident that Senator Clinton would still be a far better president that John McCain.

I have been distressed by some people’s use of Barack Obama’s middle name “Hussein” and the word Muslim as a slur in this campaign. I believe strongly that most Americans will reject these attacks – which I view as not anti-Muslim, but as anti-American, since our country was founded on the principles of religious tolerance. Let’s hope that these haters’ voices will be drowned out by the voices of mainstream America.

Natalia: I have to ask, what’s the most ridiculous thing that’s anybody ever said to you in regards to your brand of comedy?

Tissa Hami: “Are you only doing this to get a husband?”

Dean Obeidallah: I have been asked several times: “Are you really Arab?” As if I’m going to make up an ethnic background.

Maysoon Zayid: People call me anti-Semitic all the time which is completely ludicrous, because first and foremost I am a Semite and definitely not self-hating. Also, of you look at my catalog of work I defy anyone to find an anti-Jewish comment. They don’t exist.

A funnier misconception that always shocks me is when people accuse me of pretending to be disabled. All I can think is wow. I must be the best actor ever, because I have never broken character, EVER. I always get a kick out of that one.

Natalia: And what’s the best thing?

Maysoon Zayid: The best comment I’ve ever gotten was when a really well known actress came up to me at the end of my show, and said “I never knew Palestinians had children!”… In that moment, I had introduced humanity to a people who often see Palestinians as being very far from human. So that moment really validated me.

I also absolutely love it when [people with cerebral palsy] come up to me and are like, this is dope. I can totally do whatever it is they were dreaming of, that they didn’t think they could do. That gives me the warm fuzzies except for when I remember that 98% of them wont make it.

Dean Obeidallah: By far the best comment I have heard is from people – and it’s usually from Middle Eastern-Americans and Muslim-Americans – who after a show, or in an email, say: “Thank you for doing the type of comedy that you do.” I like this so much because it means they appreciate that my comedy is not just intended to make people laugh, but also intended to challenge the way we are often defined in mainstream media and present us in a positive, likable, and accurate light. The support of our community has inspired all of us to continue talking about these issues.

Tissa Hami: When a young boy came up to me after a show and said, “You were the best comedian on the show, by far.” He didn’t tell me that I was the best female comedian on the show, or the best ethnic comedian, or the best female ethnic comedian, if you see what I mean. He just saw me as a comedian.

On a related note, check out my interview with “The Axis of Evil” comedians in Dubai. For more, please read the interview with Maysoon Zayid and Tissa Hami at Muslimah Media Watch.

This thought visited me again most recently when I travelled to attend a conference and unpacked my favorite navy blue suit out of my suitcase, the one I usually put on when I am about to meet a bunch of very serious people.

Mankind, I said to myself as I examined the state of my official uniform, was able to squeeze billions of documents and complex data inside a tiny microchip, retrieve them at will, save them back and then retrieve them again in mint condition. All inside a piece of silicon the size of a finger nail. Mind-boggling stuff, almost like magic, we all agree.

However, we have not yet figured out a way to place a business suit inside the common suitcase and retrieve it at our destination without creasing the hell out of it. If that task is physically impossible, why can’t the federation of world manufacturers of travel bags come together and decide to rename the famous suitcase to something else, like underwearcase or sockscase, since it has been forensically proven that the worst item you can fold into a suitcase is an actual bloody suit?

You try to fix the problem.

Some hotels often leave you an ironing kit inside your room, assuming that you have just arrived in a luxury hotel and would want to start performing a tedious manual task, one you have not even considered attempting when you were a broke student, let alone the guest of a five star hospitality institution. This makes me wonder even more.

Mankind was able to invent machines whereby you insert a thin disc into an automatically sliding compartment and a crystal clear moving picture comes out on the screen. We perfected machines where you throw in a small sack of plastic, press a button, and a nice cup of espresso comes out of the other end, with a choice range from Bourbon Amarelo to Decaffeinato Intenso. Yet, we still cannot fix the creased shirts dilemma; we cannot invent a machine in which to throw all those garments with the nasty wrinkles and receive them crisp and silky at the other end.

Blindfolded, I’ll put my money on the inventor who starts drawing the designs for the next big thing: The Decreasinator, the portable device that is certain to outsell the entire world’s output of DVD players, suitcases and coffee machines, combined.

Such is the folly of scientific achievement in our world today, which is only a reflection of the inherent deficiencies in the evolution of our brains. We can send a rover light years away to reach and photograph planet Mars, but we still cannot reach out to each other to resolve our differences back on Earth. We can discover DNA and map the human genome, yet we are unable to find a cure for the common cold. We can peek at other galaxies with giant telescopes and google-earth our houses and backyards, but we still cannot locate Osama bin Laden’s hideout in the mountains of Terroristan.

We can remove a human heart and replace it with an artificial or even an animal equivalent, yet we cannot get rid of simple bad breath. We can afford to spend trillions on building enough bombs to turn Earth into dust in seconds, yet we cannot allocate a small fraction of our nations’ wealth to fund research to cure cancer.

We can invent technologies that enable us to talk to each other across continents at the press of a speed dial, yet we miserably fail to communicate with each other face to face to avoid waging genocidal wars against each other. We can build gravity-defying flying machines that serve Dom Perignon while crossing the Atlantic or send a man to the moon and bring him back, yet we cannot achieve peace between Arabs and Jews that would send a Palestinian child walking to school without the risk of getting killed.

Indeed, we can espouse many stubborn beliefs linking us to a benevolent, omnipotent Creator of this life, yet we are unable to recognize that the single most act this Creator would abhor is the unnecessary taking of this same life in His very name.

It is obvious that we have got our priorities mixed up somewhere along the way. For example, I could never understand how so many people can get overly obsessed with the prospect of certain species becoming endangered, all along oblivious to the impending extinction of our own kind in a man-made nuclear holocaust. Why are we so worried that killer sharks, for instance, are dwindling in numbers?

What possible inconvenience can such an eventuality add to our already complicated daily lives, apart from many divers and surfers feeling safer while frolicking in the oceans? What great loss to humanity has the extinction of dinosaurs brought about anyway, except to make Steven Spielberg much richer than he already had been?

I bet you if these giant lizards were running around today causing mayhem to lives and properties, we would make them extinct yet again, because all the arguments about protecting the eco-balance of mother nature would go down the green drains they came from when you or your child are being chased down the street by a hungry Tyrannosaurus Rex. You and I would kill the bastard without hesitation, even if it was the very last one walking the Earth, and so would all conservationist freaks, although they wouldn’t like to admit it.

The same goes for snakes and alligators. I, for one, am not going to lose sleep if none of these nasty reptiles are left to spread their venom and terror, and will be very happy if my wallet or shoes were made of raccoon skin instead. My children are not going to mind either, and are going to be equally happy poking fun at elephants or chimpanzees when they go to a zoo, because neither of them has yet complained that they cannot go Apatosaurus back-riding on the weekend.

Don’t get me wrong here, but I’ve had it with the fantasy world of the scaremongering green industry. Their alarmist tactics have gone too far, and their conviction in their trade has turned into zealotry, seldom relying on solid scientific grounds. For example, I’ve always had a hunch that Al Gore’s dabbling in documentaries had more to do with his apocalyptic mood after conceding the election to a monkey than him sincerely fearing the extinction of all monkeys.

I’ve always felt that his “Inconvenient Truth” was never really about truth as much as it was about the re-invention of Al Gore as the savior of this planet. I was right. Last November, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the best experts on global warming that money cannot buy and the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore for their work on the subject, finally published their findings.

Contrary to the green lobby’s assertion that a 20-foot wall of water would drown low lying cities in the near future, the IPCC predicted that oceans would rise by no more than one foot over the next century, as they have also risen by one foot during the last 150 years, a natural phenomenon that we have hardly noticed when it did happen. Here is a conclusive quote from their report: “Catastrophic scenarios about the beginning of an ice age… are mere speculations, and no climate model has produced such an outcome. In fact, the processes leading to an ice age are sufficiently well understood and completely different from those discussed here, that we can confidently exclude this scenario.”

There is a lot more evidence out there to prove that Al Gore’s hysterical claims are not only unfounded exaggerations, but at points mere fabrications. I am not saying that we therefore should continue desecrating our environment and continue burning those fossil fuels as if there is no tomorrow. On the contrary, there is nothing I find more detestable than the black diesel fumes coming out of all those trucks and buses on the streets of Amman.There is nothing I despise more than a family not cleaning up every single piece of litter after a picnic in the Dead Sea.

But for Al Gore to make a movie telling us to start building Noah’s Arc because of carbon emissions, while ignoring the real catastrophe of his country’s intentional littering of Iraq with thousands of tons of depleted uranium – a substance so poisonous that its cancerous qualities have a staggering half-life of 4.5 billion years, a substance that has already caused a cancer epidemic for those Iraqis who were fortunate to survive the unprovoked war against their country – this I find to be the most immoral course of distraction from the real environmental evil facing our planet, and is in my opinion the lowest depth of unashamed hypocrisy.

My son will hate me for saying this, but to hell with all the sharks. Let us first worry about the well-being and survival of human beings. Once we’ve achieved that – and we are very far from doing so at the current rate – then, and only then, we can perhaps start dedicating resources towards saving the great white killers, and all those other man-eating beasts out there that we like to stare at as long as they are securely chained in captivity.

Take care, and if you ride – or scuba dive – do it safely.

This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine

Being a lawyer, I’ve always pictured the ultimate courtroom drama to be destined to take place on judgment day. In fact, any day that shares its title with the name earthly courts give to their final verdicts pretty much deserves this legal honor.

Amongst the colorful array of evidence that would be presented by the prosecution to demonstrate mankind’s obsessive tendency to misbehave over the ages, my personal guess is that “exhibit A” is going to be the medium Al Gore (who would be biting his toenails with regret) claimed he invented. Yes, my friends, the people behind the internet are going to be the star prosecution witnesses in this mother of all trials before we get the barbecue that we truly deserve.

Before you jump to conclusions, I can tell you that my prediction has nothing to do with the fact that over 95% of the entire content of the internet is dedicated to the graphic display of the sin of fornication, although this would be sufficient reason to discredit this medium in any courtroom. To condemn us just for that would be too petty, I think.

I am talking here about a totally different sin altogether, one that has also been abbreviated into another four letter dirty word: SPAM.

Ok, maybe you’re right and I cannot claim to have a clue about how judgment day would look like, if I can even assume with such confidence that one would ever take place. But I do have my reasons for this theory.

I don’t know about you, but I feel there is something profoundly demoralizing about beginning your every day by visiting your e-mail inbox only to find it overloaded with two types of relentless and unsolicited messages. The first ones are the hundreds of different invitations to freely share other people’s money because someone out there thinks you can be gullible enough to believe that a huge figure needs to go into your bank account and make you filthy rich out of the blue.

The other kind consists of messages extolling the virtues of the happiness that a few added inches can bring into a man’s life, by offering to sell us products that demolish the comforting myth with which men console themselves about size not mattering (it seems the jury is still out on whether it does, since, like on many other issues where they enjoy keeping us guessing, women don’t seem to make up their minds and give a unanimous ruling to put this matter to rest).

Some people just delete these spam messages and never think twice about them. But I find both types of these daily solicitations to be particularly revealing of the folly of civilization in the 21st century. For here you have a remarkable tool, which represents the pinnacle of human genius and which could be utilized to engender boundless benefits for the people of this world, being exploited instead in the most debased manner: either to manipulate people’s need for money by luring them into financial destruction, or to manipulate every guy’s fantasy of going as deep as no man has gone before.

It is true that only total idiots respond to such emails and that such certified fools deserve what they get. But this doesn’t change the fact that the internet has allowed these crooks to enter my and your private daily lives whether we let them in or not. Maybe I’m not using the proper repellent filter or software, but I personally feel that the sheer volume of such messages and the persistence of those who send them is a constant reminder to all of us – which I don’t particularly need with my morning coffee – that no matter how far civilization can reach, the same old dirty rotten scoundrels are destined to accompany us hand-in-hand on this journey wherever we go.

This reminder eats away at the core of our sense of progress as a species as it belittles everything else we have achieved and can achieve. For example, for each odd email you receive about a heroic stand of a human rights activist, or about a closer step towards curing cancer, there are forty emails offering you to inherit the money of an African dictator, or asking whether your partner would savor a little more width and length. So then, is that what we’re are all about after all: just money and procreation? Surely, there must be more to life than loads of unearned cash and a huge appendage to go with it, wouldn’t you have thought?

On another note, I personally feel sorry for all those other genuine thieves and money launderers who do sincerely want to entrust you with the fruits of their labor but now find that their messages get lost in between all the fake ones. How frustrated must you be if you’re really working with a trust fund in the Bahamas and did actually stumble upon a dormant account that you need to secretly funnel and share with an email user you have diligently researched and chosen to help you out with your heist?

What must you do to convince your potential partner that you are not one of those daily thousands of pretenders and imposters, and that you are truly a family member of imprisoned Russian oligarchs seeking the discreet movement of funds outside Russia, or that you are in fact the confidant banker of a diamond-mining family who perished in a plane crash leaving behind unattended tens of millions in a secret account? Life must be difficult if your name is really Abdul Falafel Precious Stone from the Republic of Moon Islands and after discovering you have terminal testicular cancer you decided to donate all your family’s wealth from decades of banana farming to your dear brother in Islam whom you have chosen to administer the plundering of your fortune on charitable causes.

I feel your pain, Abdul. With all these cry-wolves in abundance, truly unique opportunities to make a nice buck have gone down the drains, all because of dishonest spammers who have ruined it for everyone.

But seriously, you’ll be surprised to find out the type of people that do fall for these email offers of instant riches. A former colleague of mine in Geneva, a former vice-president of a major company, fell for the scam and even attempted suicide in the aftermath, despite my numerous warnings to him to laugh at these jokes and then delete them, and his assurances that he wouldn’t reply to them. I guess this is the price we pay for living during the zenith of capitalism, right at the centre of the greediest period in human existence, when more people are given incentives to dream of easy money than in any other time in history, and with no end in sight to the vast market of luxurious lifestyle previously only affordable to Kings and Agha Khans.

With its burgeoning mass consumerism – facilitated also by the internet – this is by far the most materialistic century of all, and this is an undisputable fact. Al Pacino acted out an unforgettable scene in The Devil’s Advocate as he revealed himself as the Devil impersonate to Keanu Reeve’s character when he rightly claimed the twentieth century as having been his own. Indeed, Satan rules supreme today.

Everyone’s out to milk you dry, conveniently leaving any semblance of scruples at home, and they are coming up with the most sophisticated techniques to do so by evolving with the times and accommodating with technology, no matter how many lives are destroyed in the process. I guess a lot of the blame also has to rest with Hollywood who has consistently glamorized outlaws in thousands of movies, from Bonnie and Clyde all the way to the latest Ocean’s 13, great films in which bandits and robbers are always made out to be either misunderstood souls or the coolest people on earth.

The honest and likable thief is indeed a character that got so much more than it deserves from the producers and directors of Tinseltown, so I might as well add these culprits to the list of the accused on the day when we’re all going to Hell. Objection, yells the defense. Overruled. We find the defendants guilty on all counts. This court is adjourned.

Take care, and if you ride, do it safely.

Fine, I exaggerate. However, sometimes I wonder if she is more emotionally committed to the latest installment of “Grand Theft Auto” than to me. Of course, I was the one who irritated her with my obsessive devotion to “Final Fantasy.”

Revenge is sweet.

I would like to see some type of statistical study on the kind of damage that video games can do to a marriage. Forget setting up romantic dinners or remembering her second cousin’s wife’s birthday: the real challenge to many committed couples today is making sure you don’t kill each other while arguing about whether or not “Assassin’s Creed” lived up to its hype (I say yes, she says no).

It chokes me, but I have to admit that my wife is a better gamer. To be perfectly honest, she even has a better relationship with my parents than I, their son, do (“why can’t you be more like Dina*, son?” – a question I hear almost as often as the “when are you going to give us grandchildren?” inquiry). Maybe, she is better at living.

Does my wife have to make a mockery of my high scores? My knowledge of elaborate cheats? My commitment to the art of gaming?

The answer, I am discovering, is affirmative.

I have no one to blame. I created this situation. Once, I made a horrible blunder. I became competitive with her. I forgot that in relationships, excessive competition is not healthy. Before we were married she knew that I was the better cook. The sight of a kitchen makes her confused, while I navigate everything from the stove to the juice-maker easily. This didn’t trouble her.

It didn’t trouble her that I could touch the tip of my nose with my tongue and she, by contrast, could not. She could be humble about such life-and-death matters.

I had lost my humility, however. Perhaps now it is time to find it again.

Men are jealous of women who excel in a “boy’s” field, and gaming is still dominated by the boys. There is nothing manly or natural about the jealousy. It’s simple stupidity. Even as one’s friends point out that one’s wife is more fun to play “Halo” with when we visit them (we have steered clear of buying an Xbox, if only because we don’t want to die, covered in mold, while attempting to play every good game the world offers), one must remain committed to the idea that she has the right to the praise she receives.

Let her continue the Playstation affair.

I’ll console (pun intended) myself with my secret shrimp recipe.

What? I have to be good at something.

*- Name changed to protect the innocent.

With these distressed words, art expert Zoja Finci implored the late Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegovic, to save the Islamic relics of her beautiful city from destruction, despite the fact that she is Jewish herself. This was back in 1995, soon after the end of the Bosnian war, and she was referring to the Begova Mosque in Sarajevo, the largest Islamic monument – and arguably the most ornamented – in the former Yugoslavia. The vandals she was denouncing were not Serb militias, but none other than the Wahhabist hordes who traveled all the way to Bosnia to complete the destruction they started in Mecca.

As if the desecration of the graves of the Prophet’s wife and companions, and the complete demolition of every single remaining vestige of Islam in Mecca and Medina were not enough, the Wahhabist bulldozers set their eyes on Europe. Since 1995, a post-war crime of a different nature has been ongoing to erase the beauty of Islamic architecture in the Balkans under the guise of Islamic Aid.

You wouldn’t have thought for a minute that Wahhabis were particularly concerned with architecture to bother themselves with such expensive restoration efforts in far away lands, until you discover that their aim has nothing to do with restoration and everything to do with obliteration. All across the Balkans, even the slightly damaged structures were not repaired, although it would have been the easier thing to do, but were razed to the ground to be rebuilt from scratch in the ugliest form imaginable, and as far off from the original shape and design as humanly possible.

Then came the end of the war in Kosovo in 1999, and the architectural vultures immediately went after the corpses there as well. Harvard University Fine Arts Librarian and expert on Balkan Islamic architecture, Andras Riedlmayer, goes so far in condemning the grotesque defiling of ancient mosques in the Balkans to pronouncing that “the Wahhabis, with their wealth and fanaticism, are a menace to heritage, in some ways more dangerous than the [Serb paramilitary] Chetniks, since about the latter, at least, no one harbors any illusions regarding their uncharitable intentions.”

One foreign expert described one of the architects involved whom he had interviewed (and who never practiced the profession) by saying that “his ideas for mosque design involve knockoffs of Saudi-modern shopping mall architecture with odd touches inspired by the décor of the Love Boat, including portholes! He is the very model of the modern zealot, narrow minded, arrogant, and so dumb he doesn’t even realize it.”

Centuries old Ottoman mosques, libraries, schools and graveyards were knocked down for no reason except to implement Wahabist doctrines attacking any semblance of architectural splendor by inventing sayings of the Prophet decreeing that the ornamentation of mosques or tombs is a crime in the eyes of God. Reidlmayer recalls that prior to the War in Kosovo, “when the Wahhabis took out sledgehammers and set about smashing the 17th century gravestones in the garden of Peja’s ancient Defterdar Mosque, angry local residents beat them up and chased them out of town. I was shown the damaged gravestones, beautifully carved with floral motifs and verses from Qur’an. That was in the late summer of 1998. Six months later, in the spring of 1999, Serb paramilitaries came and burned down the mosque. Unlike the fundamentalist missionaries, they were not interested in the gravestones.”

So why do these Wahhabist scavengers travel the globe to implement the uglification project, you may ask? Who ultimately benefits if our culture and civilization is made to look as ugly and primitive as possible in the eyes of the world?

The plot thickens when you enter the domain of politics and consider the urgent need to reverse a natural human emotion called sympathy. It is well known that nations across the world sympathize more and develop a closer affiliation with a people whose contribution to humanity is materially felt and seen to be one that is positive, refined and sophisticated.

Americans, for example, still revere the Japanese culture, admire their history and savor their food, despite having incinerated two of their cities with atomic bombs. So how do you make sure that Arabs and Muslims remain reduced to a barbaric, uncivilized and useless people, who deserve what comes their way in terms of occupation and dehumanization? By working very hard to ensure that the association in people’s minds is always automatically connected with ugliness. Not with Samurai or with Sushi, but with filth and depravity. For the world is less likely to be bothered if a few more ugly terrorists get killed or robbed of their land, because all what the world can see coming out of their culture is repulsive and unattractive.

When the words ‘Arab’ or ‘Muslim’ are mentioned, no one should recall anything as miraculously breathtaking as the Dome of the Rock or the Taj Mahal, lest they rethink their apathy towards these apparent savages and, God forbid, sympathize with their suffering. The world should always conjure up images of Bin Laden and other Wahhabist creations when thinking about our lot. That way, it becomes much easier to dispossess a few million ‘nomadic’ Palestinians for the sake of saving a chosen race of European achievers, scientists and artists, who have no where else to go, and who would likely turn ugly deserts into lands of milk and honey.

If all what people see are hideous images of our people, coupled with decapitation videotapes of squealing victims, then the looting of the Baghdad museum under the nose of the Marines becomes more digestible by the world community, because, at the end of the day, what could possibly be inside this building? Surely, more ugly artifacts of an ugly civilization. Mission accomplished indeed.

But there is a huge, annoying crack in the uglification project. There is a place in Europe that Wahhabis cannot touch or destroy, and it is a source of constant irritation to the uglifiers.

Indeed, how could you put on a straight face and explain to the queues of millions of tourists who visit Andalusia each year that they are walking in the footsteps of the same people who today exemplify everything crooked, violent and evil? What if these people went back home and started believing that the Arab Islamic civilization was worthy of some respect after all? Hell, what if they started to make the link with the Dome of the Rock and attempted to criticize Israel for weakening the foundations of Al Aqsa Mosque by their useless excavations in search of a non-existing temple? Houston, we have a problem.

Not to worry, you solve it by committing the most dishonest forgery in history: by changing their name to begin with, by calling them Moors, and never refer to them as Arab Muslims. But where does this strange name come from? It doesn’t matter, just make sure to repeat it, and the world would buy it. Oh, the Moors. It just sounds ancient and exotic, like the Mayans of Latin America, and is the perfect cover up for the fact that the entire 781 years of the magnificent civilization of Al Andalus was purely Arab, not even Berber, and overwhelmingly Muslim.

This falsification plan also comes complete with troubleshooting contingencies. Whenever the endless pilgrims to that region think for themselves and ask the tourist guide why the endless calligraphy on the walls is not in “Moorish” language, they immediately acknowledge the Arab element but confuse matters by introducing a man called Maimonides, the lone Jewish figure that Westerners must always associate with the beauty of Al Andalus, although he lived all his life in North Africa and wrote his books, only in Arabic, in Egypt.

You then hit two birds with one stone by claiming that this civilization was Judeo/Islamic, despite the unanimous agreement of all historians that such claims are a load of fantastical dreaming and pure wishful thinking (along with the other embarrassing and discredited attempts to claim that Alhambra Palace was based on the design of the never-seen-before Temple of Solomon, a fantasy that fails to explain how the Arabs could borrow the designs of a temple no one has ever seen before, a temple that exists only in the imagination of the zealots who believe in its pointless excavation).

Before I go, I’ll tell to you a little story told to me by my brother about a music DVD he had bought in the Fnac store in Geneva, which shows the extent of the psychological complex suffered by the uglifiers. They cannot just relax and admit the Arabs into the league of civilized cultures. They have to always keep their vigilance, and create and employ tools from our midst, to keep us out.

The best-selling DVD he bought was of the famous Shehrezade ballet by Rimsky-Korsakov, performed by the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg. The DVD was produced in Europe by ART Haus, and although not mentioned on the DVD cover, the story of Shehrezade is otherwise known in English as “Arabian Nights”. Pay attention, not Moorish nights, not Hindu nights, not Polynesian nights, but Arabian Nights. The stories take place in Baghdad during the reign of Haroun Al Rasheed and his wife, Sit Zubaidah, who is one of the main characters of the ballet (Zubide).

Here we have a splendid performance, marvelous Baghdad decorations, outstanding colorful costumes, captivating music, and guess what? Zarqawi and Mullah Omar do not star in it, nor does any other Wahabi character. It takes the audience on a trip a thousand years back into a magical, mystical world. Indeed, nothing can be more Arab than Arabian Nights, now can it? But they cannot let go even for a bloody DVD. So you flip open the leaflet on the cover, and it reads:

“Shehrezade is a work filled with love and passion, guilt and deception, anger, pain and desperation. The anger of Shahriar, the Sultan of India and China, who suspects his wives of…..”

Did they just say “Sultan of India and China”? You bastards, even the Arabian Nights!

Take care, and if you ride, do it safely.

I recently got asked a bunch of questions by someone from a past life currently writing a book that includes a chapter on creativity, cinema, Palestinian and Arab independent production among other topics. After a few emails back and forth, the writer popped the question: “Do you mind if I include you in the chapter on Palestinian (as opposed to Jordanian) cinema?” I replied that that would not be true nor accurate to me personally and professionally and proceeded to dissect my life in an email back:

“I know that you’d like my answer to be the ideal story, but to tell you the truth, it’s not.

On identity – I am Jordanian. I never felt Palestinian nor can I relate to that part of me beyond the wider family meaning. It’s not how I grew up and the lifestyle I led allowed me to look way beyond borders of origin and just be a citizen of the world who happened to be from Jordan and from a family of Palestinian origin from Nablus. I did not grow up in a home that was Palestinian at all and did not receive that kind of awareness from my Jordanian-born father and Lebanese mother as we lived in 7 different countries around the world and I attended 8 schools during 12 years, speaking four languages and learning about the religions of the world through social studies and not ‘religion’ class.

My father was a politician and I hated politics – and still do. It’s not a strategic, conscious choice about being this or that, it’s who I am and what I am as a result of my life. And that may not be good news for your angle on Palestinian identity issue/unity/origins/rights, but it is my reality and works for me, end of story.

On film, you mention that I’m probably attracted to being Jordanian and not Palestinian from my professional perspective due to the pioneering position/entrepreneurial/being first – in truth, I could care less about all that. I’m so much more concerned about continuity and raising the bar and delivering outputs and maintaining perpetual movement. Being the first is nice for about two seconds, but it’s nothing and deserves no glory if it doesn’t become part of an industry that grows forward – and for me, that is the creative industry that happens to be in Jordan and will hopefully have a vast horizon.

Why film you ask? I’ve always loved the movies. I enjoyed my school video club, home movies, and over time I wanted to make films that entertain in a way that reflect things in my life or the life I can relate to. Most of my entertainment was American and some European and I couldn’t relate to some of it although I was always entertained by it and would seek it out. On the other hand, I’ve been bombarded with crappy Arab productions that are insulting and far from entertaining on one end (with a handful of exceptions of course), and on the other end there’s a barrage of ‘preaching’/cause related films/docs most of which I find repel more than they engage; or they are simply ‘good to know’ and didn’t push me to any kind of activism. So all I’ve had was foreign audiovisual which was extremely entertaining but did feel borrowed at times.

In 1990 I interned at a Jordanian production house. Back then they were successfully producing series for TV (and still are), most of which I could not identify with. I had no means to produce independently, so I started making TV commercials at that company. I liked the idea of creating little stories for products, I also made some corp docs to train myself and for the money (which paid very well). I started getting interesting assignments just because I spoke English, could present and pitch and develop creative concepts – stories. A couple years later I got offered a great job both in scope of work and salary at a regional ad agency which I took and worked with full-time for 4 years, making TVCs and creating stories for commercial clients, one of whom wanted to put a real-estate newsletter online in 95, and so I did that with Khaldoon Tabaza (founder of Arabia Online, which does not exist anymore, and is current chairman of Riyada Ventures) and got a taste for this little Arab digital city he was creating with a wonderful small group that was years ahead of the community around them as they built Arabia Online.

That year we were hacking test accounts to connect to the web, or dialing long distance to the UK or Israel, using a free ISP account to connect to the web. The agency client paid JD5,000 to put online 12 newsletter issues which for a few months in Jordan he could only access thru that expensive convoluted long distance way before the ISPs launched in Jordan. I was immediately hooked on the online world and tried to get the agency to embrace it, but it was too early and they shrugged it off. I got restless, and left, and dabbled with Arabia. At first the thrill of building the portal was great and I soon realized the ‘cool’ content that could be created freely, away from censorship and the hassle of the industry status quo and how it was reaching a wider audience, anywhere. At Arabia I often struggled to find or help create new original content and after we built the monster I started realizing that it won’t happen by force as people are not used to ‘creating’ and it just had to evolve gradually.

While in Dubai I felt the time was right to start making content, I considered staying in Dubai and producing, and did the rounds with some production companies, but they were mostly doing TVCs and programming for pre-sold television and I didn’t see myself there again at all. I’ve been a huge fan of mobile – in 97 I was roaming on my very expensive Fastlink line on the first Nokia Communicator/the brick, checking my Arabia mail and looking at the few portal pages on a small B&W screen – paying hundreds of dinars monthly to do that. And no, there were no sites formatted for mobile or small screens then.

So consuming media on my mobile and laptop in small format is innate and attractive to me. I figured it would be easier to start something from scratch in Jordan. So I came back and was actually looking into making snackable media for small screens, because I believed people would want to consume entertainment and information quickly and on the go. In 2003 I spent an entire dinner talking with an investment banker friend about making entertainment for small screens, and he mocked it all night saying there could not be a business model as people would never be willing to consume media that way.

At that same time I was also developing two production projects with friends, one was a docudrama about an ancient lost land, and the other was a sitcom script I started writing in English about a bunch of Arab friends living and working in Arab cities – the genesis of which was my life really. While in development, the intent was to pitch the doc to European funds. But at the same time the Film Commission in Jordan had just been announced and I knew some of the board and the exec commissioner, so I went to them to pitch my doc project hoping they had some money or resources to tap into. They had just started to build a team and were about to start exploring what to do, so after my presentation they asked me what I needed to take the project forward, I told them and they said they wished they had the means to do all that but don’t at that point.

A couple days later Samer Mouasher ( Commissioner at the Royal Film Commission, entrepreneur in ecotourism & film production) asked me to help put together a set up that would do just that so we could jump-start parts of the industry. It was a good opportunity for me to get to know the local market, and what better way to do something right than to structure it out of need. I told them I really wanted to produce and that the RFC job would be a temp thing I would help with thinking I could do it over a few months and then go out and produce. Well, nothing in this part of the world gets done that fast, so I stayed with the RFC 2+ years and developed some amazing capacity building programs that included multimedia literacy as well as the specialized filmmaking ones.

Then I was finally very ready to produce, and when I left, I walked out into a beautiful space that had various resources I could bring together. Finally I was ready and found a community around me that had kicked in. But the real tipping point was the access to the digital filmmaking tools that were becoming mainstream, allowing us to sidestep celluloid film, labs, specialized skills, etc – all of which did not exist in Jordan, and never had to. We could do digital production which made things easier, cheaper, braver, faster – allowing us to experiment and explore and do it our way – whatever that was going to be.

It’s been a totally organic progression, and now, with multiplatform distribution, I love the producing space at this point in time because it’s possible for me to pull into it everything I’ve always loved and all I’ve learned through my rich experiences.

You [the letter-writer] mention Elia Suleiman’s views on “Palestinian identity: the one which was born in the 70s based on human values, freedom and justice for all.”

Surely human values, freedom and justice for all belongs to Homo sapiens in general, not just Palestinians. It’s nice to say all that, and I get this view, but I don’t see how that differs from what any other nationality wants or aspires for. It’s the basic requirement and rights human beings seek anywhere, is it not?

The Palestinian/Israeli conflict is extremely unjust and outrageous and most of the time I find the events surreal. Maybe shame on me for moving on with my life, but in that same breath I say shame on the world that continues to enjoy its spectator status on this issue! But I also remember growing up thinking the same about the Native Americans when I learned about them in social studies while sitting in a multicultural class which included Israelis, and I thought the same of slavery in America, about South Africa, and the Maoris, and the Dalai Lama, and the Indian caste system, and, and, and…

I will not apologize for not fitting into the Palestinian mold while holding a name like Toukan, rooted in Nablus. I am proudly the product of the life, learning and cultural awareness that nourished me over the years as I lived around the world, and I cannot turn back time and don’t wish to either. When asked about my nationality, identity, where I’m from, the answer is Jordanian, without hesitation. I am fully aware that my roots/larger family is originally Palestinian, but to me that’s a detail of lineage that I don’t identify with in my present.

I was recently Facebooked by a young Toukan – a total stranger who messaged me because of our last names. When I asked him about himself, he said he was a twenty-something Lebanese.

You may find this tragic, but it’s a reality I embrace.”

More About Nadine Toukan: With an insatiable appetite for adventure, living in Tripoli, New Delhi, Beirut, Belgrade, Tehran, Rome, Muscat, Dubai, Washington and Amman while playing everywhere else was never about the air miles. It’s always been about the stories. Over the years, I’ve produced stories for advertising working with Horizon, FCB, for online communities working with Arabia Online, and for multiplatform with aspiring Arab filmmakers through my work setting up the Capacity Building Division at Jordan’s Royal Film Commission.

Today, as an independent producer based in Jordan and passionate about the convergence of artistic hearts, tools,storytelling and the power of collaboration, I’m working with filmmakers in the region to bring new entertaining stories from the middle of the east to interested audiences anywhere. Why? Because I believe that good, well made stories that entertain have and always will change our world. And because I believe that the industry of filmmaking and other arts enables us to engage in a wider progressive global dialog, transforming our attitudes and economies….and because I like the quality of my life when I’m creating with beautiful people.