Islamic Radicalism in "Not Without My Daughter"
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The film Not Without My Daughter presents two encounters between the West and Iran. The first is that of Betty Mahmoody, on who's reported experiences the film is based. The second is the filmmakers' rendering of those experiences in dramatic form. Neither response to the culture of Iran or to life in that nation around 1984 is free of the hysteria generated by Western media portrayals in the 1970s and 1980s of the Revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Islamic 'fundamentalism', and stereotypes of Islamic life in the Middle East. But neither response is wholly dominated by these factors and Mahmoody's experience, no matter what elements of personal ignorance or cultural arrogance were involved, is justifiably portrayed as extremely frightening. The chief problem with the encounter as depicted in the film is that what is a personal dilemma for Mahmoody -- in which cultural differences affect a family -- is generalized as if it was capable of explaining, typifying, or symbolizing relations between whole cultures or between nations. The difficulty with this, of course, is that elements of internal relations among the Mahmoody family (e.g., the wife's ignorance or the husband's deception) or even the circumstances of their lives (e.g., the behavior of Mahmoody's family in Iran or his working experience in Michigan hospitals) are hardly typical. Nor are these personal experiences, or the genuine intercultural issues that they raise at a personal level, germane to the problem
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s not only been seen as a unified civilization/ religious culture but as one dedicated to terrorism. Not only are "the words Muslim and terrorism linked together" but the general picture has developed, in large part through portrayals in the popular and news media, of Islam as a faith "intolerant of other religions and eager to use physical force to expand" (Findley 36). Among the many demonstrations of the essentially medieval nature of the religion and the cultures in which it is practiced is the role of women. Islamic women are "deemed to be backward, subservient, and totally at odds with the kind of equality and rights Western women have managed to achieve throughout the twentieth century" (Brasted 8). This conception of women's roles is extended, by implication, to the society in general (since Islam is seen as a unity) which is believed to be universally characterized by "conformity, repression, subordination, control" (Brasted 8). The great problem with the film Not Without My Daughter is that these stereotypes are reinforced by Mahmoody's experience as the filmmakers depict it. Despite the fact that the film pays attention to the problem of stereotyping it tends -- through visual and other filmmaking strategies -- to
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Approximate Word count = 2449
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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