Newspapers in Swing States Are Delivering Anti-Islam DVDs to Voters

By Ali Gharib, IPS News. Posted September 22, 2008.

Millions of voters in U.S. states crucial to this fall's presidential election received DVD copies of a controversial documentary film as advertising inserts in their morning newspapers over the past week, with more expected to be sent out over the upcoming weekend.

The 2006 film, Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, which has been accused by critics of encouraging Islamophobia, was reportedly delivered, or slated for delivery this weekend, into tens of millions of households in states such as Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Colorado, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Missouri and other "swing states" that don't vote consistently for either party and usually decide elections.

Republicans and their candidate, Sen. John McCain, have made battling the threat posed by radical Islamists a central platform of their campaign, while presenting their Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, as being weak on the issue. Obama has also fought off persistent smear campaigns, particularly among Jewish voters, that he is a closet Muslim.

Gregory Ross, the spokesman for the Clarion group, which produced and is distributing the DVD, told the Harrisburg Patriot-News that the movie was being delivered to 28 million homes throughout the month of September and that the intention was not to sway voters to either candidate.

The Clarion Fund is a shadowy non-profit group created to "educate Americans about issues of national security," according to its website. The staff and organizational information of the group is not listed on the website.

Clarion Fund was founded by the writer and executive produce of Obsession, Israeli-Canadian Raphael Shore. The group also runs the website Radicalislam.org -- an educational site which implores its readers to "take action against radical Islam" by exploring its resources under four headings: "fueling terror," "Sharia law," "vote 2008," and "radical Islam overview."

Because of Clarion Fund's non-profit, tax-exempt status, it is not permitted to sway voters in a partisan manner. But Radicalislam.org reportedly was, until it was recently pointed out in the media, carrying an article that explicitly endorsed Sen. John McCain.

IPS telephoned the Clarion Fund and its reported contact and counsel, Eli D. Greenberg of the New York law firm Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman and Herz. The calls were not returned.

The documentary, despite an initial disclaimer that the material covered applies only to radical Islamists and not all Muslims, has drawn fire from critics for conflating mainstream Islam with violent and militant tendencies of a smaller subset of the religion. Critics argue that it makes little distinction between the religion of Islam and the political realities that inform terrorism.

Among the film's stable of experts are "reformed" Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorist and convert to evangelical Christianity Walid Shoebat, self-described terrorism expert Stephen Emerson, and another evangelical convert from Islam named Noni Darwish who runs a website called Arabs for Israel.

An investigation by IPS last year revealed that the production and promotion of Obsession was tied to several right-wing Zionist groups in the U.S. and Israel. Raphael Shore's brother, Rabbi Ephraim Shore, heads up the Israeli group Aish Hatorah, which helped form HonestReporting, an organization which, the IPS investigation revealed, had ties to the film despite the apparent denials of the relationship.

Several of the newspapers that ran the advertising insert were contacted for interviews by IPS, and those who responded all gave similar responses that, though the material may or may not agree with the editorial positions of the papers, the DVDs met the standards for advertising. The newspapers said they did not want to participate in censorship.

Asked how advertisements are screened for inclusion with the paper, the publisher of the North Carolina News and Observer, Orage Quarels III, told IPS, "Is it slanderous? Is it bias? We look at each one individually."

See more stories tagged with: new york times, barack obama, john mccain, newspapers, islamophobia, election 2008, swing states, clarion fund

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »