Vern Barnet's Questions and
Filmmaker Stephen Marshall's Replies

Barnet conducted the interview by email, and Marshall put Barnet's questions and his answers in the Sept. 21 Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/stephen-marshall-sean-hannity. Marshall first recounts his appearance on the Sean Hannity show and then says:

But then this week I was given a couple of questions by the Reverend Vern Barnet to answer for his weekly column in The Kansas City Star. "Holy Wars" is showing down there on October 1, and he wanted some context in light of the Ground Zero mosque and Quran-burning controversies. It offered me a chance to rethink some of the ideas I originally wanted to bring to Hannity, and I thought this would be a good platform to present them.

1. What is there about your film that will help folks put controversies like the ones over the so-called Ground Zero mosque and the church's plan to burn the Quran Sept. 11 (a plan condemned by General Petraeus) in some sort of perspective, especially for Christians and Muslims?

Happy you asked this question. It was actually the initial (stated) reason I was invited to appear on Hannity during our week-long screening in New York. I think the most important thing to understand is that on a purely theological level, it is a tenet of Christianity that those people who do not accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior are doomed to Hell. This is not a light sentence. And while a great majority of Christians would probably say it's a metaphorical statement, those fundamentalists who believe the Bible is the word of God literally believe Muslims are doomed. And thus, less than -- tools of the devil, even. And we cannot forget that at one point, America was a "good," fundamentalist nation. And these ideas, which are typically identified as triumphalist (my way or the highway), still govern much of the ideological framework of the national identity.

In this context, it's perfectly justifiable to burn Qurans and to oppose mosques. Not just at/near Ground Zero, but anywhere in "Christian" land. And that extends to bombing civilians in Muslim countries. It's an either/or situation. It's dualism. And it's precisely the kind of world paradigm we entered after the 9/11 attacks when the president of the United States declared, you are either with us or against us.

This is the worldview I experienced when I first met the characters whom I followed in Holy Wars. This is the paradigm of fundamentalism, and it is something that will remain with us as long as Christians (and Muslims) refuse to seriously undertake the hard work of questioning the validity and functionality of passages that negate the humanity and spiritual value of the other side.

Now, of course, there is a widespread feeling of anger and pain in secular Americans around the issue of the Ground Zero mosque. But this is also a result of a poorly formed understanding of Islam. And even of 9/11. These emotions are those of a society still traumatized by the catastrophic experience of the attacks. They cannot separate Islam from the attackers. They cannot deal with nuance. Worse, they cannot see the damage it will do to their constitutional legacy. Nothing else matters but the opposition of the mosque. And in this sense, they have become fundamentalists themselves. They are victims. But they are now victimizing others. And it has a bit of the flavor of the pre-Nazi society in Germany.

In Holy Wars, Aaron Taylor (a Christian missionary) is able to look this fundamentalism in the eye (in this case, the eye of his opponent, Khalid Kelly, an Irish convert to radical Islam) and then do the thing that most humans have great difficulty doing: he objectively questions his own extremism. He removes himself from the cockpit of his ego, and he challenges himself. I wish more people would have the kind of humbling experience that Aaron had and find the courage to transform themselves. It's really the only way that people authentically change.

2. Without spoiling the ending, can you say what you learned about the opportunities and dangers of interfaith dialogue? Promises and disappointments? Methods and individual personalities involved?

Well, I think it needs to be said that given what I discussed above, interfaith dialogue is going to be crucial going forward. We live in a paradigm of scarcity. There is less arable land, less clean water, less oil. Increasingly less of everything. And humans are being driven back into very tribal identities, led primarily by nationalism, but closely followed by religion -- especially in the case of Islam, which makes religion primary over nationalism. With three billion-plus people identified as either Muslim or Christian -- that's half the planet -- there needs to be a modern understanding, a kind of treaty, between the two. And this isn't for the moderates of both sides; it's for the extremists. Because if just three percent of both sides regard themselves as holy warriors, willing to die for their faith, that's 90 million people. That's a huge problem.

So we need leaders of both religions to make some very clear demarcations between the old books and our modern world -- at the very least. At the most, we need a new governing framework for the two religions and their relationships both to each other and the world.

As for my experience, one of the major challenges to this dialogue is that if you get two highly confident, masterfully articulate theologians in a room together, the chances are neither will budge. Neither will learn from the other. Neither will come away with new understanding. That's the problem with interfaith dialogue. It so often turns into interfaith monologue. But that doesn't mean we should not push for it. We may have to include a third party, someone trusted by both, who understands each side implicitly, but who also has the skill and moxie to force concessions when one side is making ill-formed or irrational points. But this is a digression.

What I learned from my experience in Holy Wars was that unless a person comes into the dialogue with a shard of doubt, the talks will most likely fail. This was demonstrated in Khalid, who (till this day) sees no value in his meeting with Aaron except the opportunity to pummel a Christian. I'm always amazed when people tell me they thought Khalid was going to be the one who would change. It actually gives me hope. They must have seen something I missed. But the result was still the same. And that was a disappointment. It's never a positive experience to see someone move closer to extremism and self-destruction. Except when their anger and fundamentalism provides a cathartic experience for the other person. And that, of course, was the beautiful irony of Khalid's presence in the film. Without him, Aaron could not have changed.

And that is the essence of holism, the antithesis of dualism. And here we've come full circle. I pray that our world can find a path to this state of being.