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• Format: NTSC
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000H0UPKI
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #178,326 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

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36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent movie - a must see, September 30, 2006

By 

G. Hila - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Islam: What the West Needs to Know - An examination of Islam, Violence, and the Fate of the Non-Muslim World. (DVD)

This is a very informative movie that reveals the whole story why there is so many tensions and conflicts in the islamic world.
It is very well explained in steps, with arguments from people that have a very deep knowledge of islam history and religion and at least one of them has lived and experienced the islamic culture and society for himself.
Usually movies like this tend to be passionate and depend a lot on the personal conviction of the makers, sometimes overlooking the facts. This one is not like this, it is not biased. It simply based in facts and arguments.

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An utterly shocking, honest look at the beliefs of Islam. Very thorough!, September 18, 2006

By 

Darren L. Joseph "Darren-Lee Joseph" (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Islam: What the West Needs to Know - An examination of Islam, Violence, and the Fate of the Non-Muslim World. (DVD)

I own several documentaries on Islam such as the cross or the crescent, debates sold by Ahmed Deedat - the foremost debator on Islam - and I thought I knew something about Islam. This documentary is by far the best I have seen because it cites verses from the Koran and the Hadith, which you can verify for yourself, considering the contexts of the verses (if you own a copy of the Koran as I do). I was ignorant even though I have personally read much of the Koran. This program is shocking to say the least. There is absolutely no speculation whatsoever in this documentary but bare hard facts. I'm still at a loss for words. This is hard-hitting, and really exposes one's ignorance.

I highly recommend it to all people - Muslims who have not been disciplined enough to read and understand the Koran properly for themselves, as well as people of other faiths. I really learned a lot. The doctrine of abrogation is quite key - the fact that verses in the Koran revealed later chronologically nullify earlier verses if they contradict. Many of the peaceful verses in the Koran are nullified by later verses which command the Muslim to literally kill unbelievers. Another key fact I learned was that the Suras (chapters) in the Koran are not organized chronologically as one might expect, but they are organised from largest chapter to the smallest. This one fact could lead an ignorant person to belive the more peaceful verses, some of which are found towards the end of the book, are the later versus, but this is not so - the exact opposite might be true. I also learned about the two types of Jihad - physical and spiritual. Sura 9, is said to be the last chapter in the Koran and has plenty to Jihad - physical Jihad. Amazing - a real eye-opener! I need to watch it again, get my Koran and a highlighter!

41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Education On Islam, December 27, 2006

By 

Scot MacKenneth "Scot" (Aberdeen, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Islam: What the West Needs to Know - An examination of Islam, Violence, and the Fate of the Non-Muslim World. (DVD)

These are some of the many arguments the film makes:

1. Islam is a state FIRST, and a religion SECOND, e.g., the goal of Islam is not to make everyone a Muslim, but to force everyone to live under Islamic RULE. Nonbelievers, e.g., Christians, Jews, etc., in countries under the rule of Islam live in second-class status, and must pay a special poll tax, and so on, and face strict discrimination, e.g., traditionally, new Christian churches could not be built in Muslim lands, and existing ones were not allowed to be repaired, dooming the Christian communities in Muslim lands to a perpetual state of decline. Another example: under Islamic law, it is against the law to leave Islam and join another religion such as Christianity, because it is an act of treason (punishable by death) against the Islamic state. In that regard, one of the most influential Muslim scholars of the 20th Century, Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi, said, "If Islam is truly a 'religion' in the sense that religion is understood at present, surely it would be absurd to prescribe the penalty of execution for those people who wish to leave it." Then he said, "When we present our arguments to demonstrate the validity of this punishment, we have in view no mere 'religion' but a state which is constructed on a religion." The Islamic calendar does not begin with the date of Mohammed's birth, or when he got his first revelations from Allah, as we might expect of a religion, but when he moved from Mecca to Medina, and became the head of state. Thus the "separation of church and state" in Islam is not only unthinkable but HERETICAL. This point resonated with me because a Muslim once told me that he doesn't even like to think of Islam as a religion, it is so much MORE than that. And recently I read the following quote from a pilgrim on the Hajj in late December, 2006 (Kuwait Times) which really illustrates the DVD's point of Islam as a state or nation:

Mohamado Thiam, a telecoms engineer from Senegal, said pilgrims were praying for Muslims in hotspots around the world. "I'm very happy, look how our nation is expanding," he said.

2. The film says that Islam is a religion that mandates violence against unbelievers. It argues that while there are indeed many peaceful, moderate Muslims who wouldn't hurt anyone, there is no peaceful and moderate Islam. That is why it is very difficult for moderates to stand up within the Muslim community itself (not necessarily before infidels on American TV) and say that violent acts in the name of Islam are not Islam. The film notes that, in the Quran, Allah allows verses of the Quran that came later in time to abrogate or void earlier ones. The film argues that religious scholars of Islamic jurisprudence in the Middle East, whether in Jerusalem, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and so on, UNANIMOUSLY agree that "the verse of the sword," i.e., "kill the unbelievers wherever you find them . . ." voids all the peaceful verses, such as "Let there be no compulsion in religion," because it came after the peaceful ones chronologically. [The Quran, I should point out, is not arranged chronologically, but from the longest chapter to the shortest.]

3. In the religion, Mohammed is viewed as the perfect man that all Muslims must strive to emulate. The film has some disturbing quotes from the sacred texts of Islam by Mohammed, e.g., he said that no one who died and went to heaven and experienced it would want to come back here again for all the world and everything in it, "except the Martyr, who, on seeing the superiority of Martyrdom, would like to come back and get killed again in Allah's cause." The film also quotes an authoritative Islamic text that says that Mohammed married a six-year-old girl, and consummated the marriage with her when she was nine years old.

But the film is not a boring "study of text," e.g., it has some video from Middle East TV, including a chilling call-in show, where a 12 year old with a child's voice calls in and says he reads the Koran every day and wants to be a Jihadi and kill Jews and infidels, and the moderator, all condescending smiles (as an adult is with a child), ends the call by blessing the youngster and saying that he hopes that the boy will grow up to become a jihadi warrior some day. The moderator's whole attitude reeks of "Oh the darling young boy."

These are but a few of the many points, and the other ones are equally impacting and interesting, especially the section on the expansion of Islam throughout history, and in our time. I highly recommend this DVD! It is very informing and so interesting.