This article first appeared on the American Enterprise Institute site.
When I teach, I'm often asked to recommend books or movies for those on the go who want quality and nuanced information but don't have time to do a college seminar every time a question arises.
Books are easy: Almost anything by Bernard Lewis, for example, but especially The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years and, for Iran, Roy Mottahedeh's Mantle of the Prophet.
Films are a little trickier, but there's some great ones out there:
Mustang
New to Netflix, Mustang, a 2015 Turkish film, was a real treat to discover. It is the story of five teenage girls who want to live life and enjoy the modern world, but who are virtually imprisoned by their religiously conservative uncle. Bilge Ebiri, perhaps the best film critic out there, reviewed it here.
Basically, it brings home the generation divide now underway in the Middle East. It also illustrates—in a tragic way—the falsity of some of the religiosity taken for granted by those who argue that veiling is somehow feminist or an expression of free will.
Paradise Now
Now it's been more than a decade since this film by Israeli Arab director Hany Abu-Assad came out. It focuses on two Palestinians—best friends—who seek to become suicide bombers and attack Tel Aviv. The film, reviewed here in the Jewish Virtual Library, explores the motivations and mechanisms by which the two Palestinians are manipulated and the variables that lead one to be "successful" while the other is not.
Overlapping the plot, of course, are the moral questions with which audiences should wrestle about what sympathy if any is due to the two men who aspire to be terrorists. Love it or hate it, this is one film that is always guaranteed to spark real discussion when I show it in a class.
Al Erhabi (The Terrorist)
In the early 1990s, an Islamist insurgency in Egypt seemed to be spinning out of control. Unlike the United States, where mainstream politicians across the political spectrum too often seem afraid to discuss the religious inspiration behind Islamist terrorism, Egypt responded by ridiculing the extremists and their hypocrisy head on.
Enter Adel Emam, the Egyptian equivalent of Leslie Nielson of "Airplane!" and "Naked Gun" fame, who plays a naïve young Islamist selected by higher-ups to conduct an attack. On his way, he is hit by a car and taken in by a middle-class family where he experiences a whole new life. I wrote about this particular case in an essay last year on the use of satire and humor to de-legitimize and undercut religious extremism.
The film is worth watching, both for its exploration of class and societal differences in Egypt (and elsewhere), but also for its treatment of the religious question, a third rail too many Americans bend over backwards to avoid.
Persepolis
I like Persepolis not only because I went to it on one of my first dates with the woman to whom I'm now married, but also because it really does give insight into the Islamic Revolution in Iran which, alongside the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the State of Israel, is probably one of the most important events of 20th century Middle Eastern history.
The film, converted from a graphic novel, tells the story of one girl navigating events both in Iran and in the diaspora. It is poignant yet funny, and provides insight into the trauma that Iran and so many Iranians have experienced.
Other films—the 1962 Lawrence of Arabia and the 1966 Battle of Algiers—may now be a bit dated but are classics for a reason. They are both artful and beautiful, illustrating clashes of values and historic events that reverberate today.
Films might be about entertainment, but taken together, the six films here span the region from Mediterranean to the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf, give insight into the region's complex social fabric, and show just how much more multifaceted the region is than what might be gathered from political discourse and newspaper headlines today.
Do you agree with these picks? Why or why not? Are there any movies I left out that should be included?
Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official who instructs senior military officers deploying to the Middle East and Afghanistan on regional politics, and teaches classes regarding Iran, terrorism and Arab politics on board deploying U.S. aircraft carriers. He has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen and both pre- and post-war Iraq, and spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. His book, Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes, examines a half century of U.S. diplomacy with rogue regimes and terrorist groups.
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