#CAIR: Arab-American, Muslim Coalition Requests Review of 9/11 Museum Film President Joe Daniels and Director Alice Greenwald National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center 200 Liberty Street, 16th Floor New York, NY 10281 April 30, 2014 Dear Joe Daniels and Alice Greenwald, As a broad coalition of civil rights, religious, and ethnic organizations, we write to express concern about the film The Rise of Al-Qaeda to be shown in the National September 11 Memorial Museum. As reported in The New York Times on April 24, the museums own religious advisory group has repeatedly asked for months that this film be reviewed and edited, with their concerns being dismissed entirely. According to the groups testimony, the film deploys academically-controversial terminology like Islamist and jihadism to generalize, without full definition or context, about al-Qaedas actions. The advisory council believes that viewers of the film may assign collective responsibility for the attacks to Muslims and Islam. According to your conversation series document of June 2013, the advisory council was first asked to review the film because of concern expressed by advance viewers about the reactions of Muslim. In response to a letter, signed by seven of the leading Arab-American and Muslim-American organizations, requesting to view the film or to visit the museum in an advance tour, you wrote in a short response on April 25: Our mission is to create a museum that provides a factually-based narration of the history we are charged to document. We are confident that our exhibitions achieve that aim. We sincerely hope that you and the members of the coalition will visit the Memorial Museum when we open. This assurance is insufficient. The September 11 Memorial Museum has duties to be transparent and responsive to civil society and to the public, due both to the hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funding it has received as a National Museum and to the potential impact an insufficiently-vetted exhibition could have on an array of constituencies in the United States, especially Arab-, Muslim-, Sikh-, and South Asian Americans who have endured significant backlash, discrimination and hate crimes for their actual or perceived religious, racial or ethnic identity since the terrorist attacks of September 11. Given the rejection of the unanimous advice of the museums own advisory council, outside civil rights and anti-discrimination organizations cannot take the museums own asserted confidence in the appropriateness of the films script at face value. Not only has the museum refused to offer a screening to civil rights organizations, but it has apparently refused to screen the film for The New York Times, CNN, and other leading media organizations. It is difficult to have faith in assurances that the claims of your advisory council are inaccurate or exaggerated when the reaction to public concerns is to embargo the film and ignore all input. Therefore, we request that you make The Rise of Al-Qaeda available to our organizations for review, through a secure online link if necessary. We also encourage you to work with your interfaith religious advisory council and consider possible edits to the film before the museum opens on May 21. We fully appreciate the solemn and important purpose of the September 11 Memorial Museum to honor the victims of the horrendous attacks of September 11 and to narrate the events of that day. We hope that this national institution will emphasize fundamental American values of unity, openness, religious freedom, and tolerance; they offer the strongest basis for us to defeat violence and division. Sincerely, Samer Khalaf President, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) Lena Alhusseini Executive Director, Arab-American Family Support Center (AAFSC) Nihad Awad National Executive Director, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Salam Al-Marayati President, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) Sarab Al-Jijakli President, Network of Arab-American Professionals (NAAP) Suman Raghunathan Executive Director, South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) Sapreet Kaur Executive Director, Sikh Coalition
Posted on: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 15:20:46 +0000
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