arabs respond to michael moore's film

Arabs Riveted and Angered by 'Fahrenheit'
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

Published: August 4, 2004

CAIRO, Aug. 1 - When it opened last weekend in Beirut, "Fahrenheit 9/11" achieved the almost impossible: It silenced a movie audience. Although Beirut is the one capital in the region where almost all American films are shown with no censorship, screenings are somewhat more social affairs than elsewhere in the world, with people chattering on their cellphones or with their friends in the audience.

But the unheard of happened during the initial showings of the film, Michael Moore's angry documentary about President Bush. A cellphone began ringing, and the rest of the audience hissed loudly that the owner should shut it off, prompting virtually all the people in the rapt theater to whip out their phones and silence them, too.

Also unusual for an American documentary, the film is expected to receive wide play in the Arab world. It has already been in theaters for several weeks in the Persian Gulf, and censors in Syria and Egypt have approved the film, although no screenings have been scheduled in those countries.

A few critics have weighed in, arguing that Arabs should not be so gleeful about the movie's Bush bashing, given that the image of the region and its people that "Fahrenheit: 9/11" presents is not so positive.

Mamoun Fandy, an expert on Saudi Arabia based in Washington, wrote an op-ed article in Asharq Al Awsat, the Arabic newspaper in London, blasting the movie as racist and making faulty generalizations about Arabs, who, he argued, should not hail it as supporting their cause.

Kuwait barred the movie as offensive to its Saudi neighbors, and the Saudi ambassador to London, Prince Turki al-Faisal, was quoted in the London-based Arabic daily daily Al Hayat as saying the movie twisted the truth and was inadequately researched. (There are no movie theaters in Saudi Arabia, out of concern they would allow the forbidden mingling of the sexes, but the film is said to be widely circulated there via DVD.)

At the packed Beirut screenings many in the audience glued to the film said it showed them a way that America works with which they were unfamiliar. "What really struck me is how the American administration was able to manipulate the American people," said Leila Kanso, a 59-year-old social worker. "How can a government do that?"

Many said they wanted to know more about the reaction to the movie among Americans, who have bought more than $103 million in tickets.

Leena Saidi in Beirut contributed reporting for this article.