The film being reviewed can be watched here.

DAVID STRATTON: Margaret?

MARGARET POMERANZ: Well, as you know, I’ve always been a fan of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s work. They have really developed this genre into something uniquely them. Death, destruction, chaos, exploitation. This is your classic HT piece and it’s wonderful.

DAVID: People often complain that Muslims are not represented in the media, and I tend to agree. But this film is different. It offers the whole gamut of Muslim experiences: screaming Muslims, flag-burning Muslims, placard-waving Muslims, angry Muslims, anti-American Muslims… We have them all here and I think it’s wonderful that all the different shades and hues of Muslim life are represented in this film.

MARGARET: Of course, the film has been criticised by some conservative commentators for promoting a message that really does spell the end of Western civilisation if it is ever realised. But some will say that’s no reason not to like the film. We can admire it for its artistic merit and gritty realism without necessarily buying into the whole political idea.

DAVID: Yes, indeed. In some ways, there is no higher form of tolerance than to assist in something that you know will ultimately end up with you being killed or enslaved under some sort of totalitarian HT superstate. On one level, I know that HT would consider me to be a dirty infidel who doesn’t wash himself but, on the other hand, I think there is a visceral truth here if we can just peel back the invective, hatred and religious fervour. I think there’s something very human in this message of complete and utter enslavement to an HT overlord.

MARGARET: It’s a message of hope, isn’t it? When the Caliph arrives, we’re going to see a lot of things change. There won’t be any hunger in the world, AIDS will be cured, animals will no longer attack humans and Hollywood won’t release any B-grade movies. You name it, the HT Caliph is going to solve it. But as a non-Muslim don’t you find it confronting?

DAVID: Yes, I think they are trying to force us to confront our tolerance. As a running dog of the liberal capitalist democratic globalist secular hegemony, I just take these ideas for granted. The director wants us to move us beyond our tired complacency. He wants to scare us. It’s just so incredibly and brutally honest. There is a certain frisson that emerges from the montage of angry Muslims that, well, I’ve not seen since the grainy footage of some of the German political films of the 1930s and 1940s.

MARGARET: I like the way in which they build up to the closing scenes. The music is just wonderful. We have this fast moving progression of angry Muslims in various stages of rage, waving placades, pumping the air with their fists, and then we have this tremendously potent climax in which we are told that it’s coming. The Caliph is coming. It just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it, David?

DAVID: Absolutely. If HT get their way, it’s going to be very bad indeed for people like us, Margaret. But, you know, we’ll just have to suck it up. (Laughs) I’m giving it four stars.

MARGARET: I’m giving it three and a half.