The Hamburg Cell

I watched the TV movie, the Hamburg Cell last night on Britian’s Channel 4. It was a docu-drama of the story of 9/11 as seen through the eyes of one of the terrorists, Zeid Jarrah. My initial fear was that the movie would romanticize the terrorist movement. Although it put a human face on the terrorists, it didn’t show compassion or sympathy towards them. Jarrah was a Lebonese born Muslim who lead a fairly liberal lifestyle. The movie follows his life and involvement from the beginnings in 1996 to the fateful day in 2001. Beginning in 1997, Jarrah got slowly more and more involved with fanatics and Jihad. The band of terrorists moved to live and “study” in Hamburg. Their reoccurring complaint about the West is that Muslims are “dominated and humiliated.” Everyday their hatred grows. Jarrah went off to Afghanistan with the others in 1999 to train for Jihad. Jarrah has a girlfriend –then wife who remains normal and opposed to his involvement with fanatical Muslims. He ends up constantly lying to her and his family about his activities.

When I watched the film, I got an indirectly worse impression of Islam. It seems that the Muslims, who aren’t interested in jihad, are the ones that aren’t very religious. The more “religious” Jarrah became, the worse he treated his wife. The better Muslim he became the worse of a person he became. Scenes from a mosque in Egypt show the entire mosque, a “peaceful” religious institution, chanting death to America and the infidels. One of the terrorists is fanaticizing about becoming a martyr and hopes his burial is a “good Muslim burial,” which he explains that a good burial means that no women will be present or ever visit his grave. I got the impression, whether intended or not, that moderate Muslims were ones that weren’t very Muslim and were just basically Muslims-in-name-only.

It also made you think about the terrorists in a different aspect. In a country such as Syria, a child could grow up learning to hate America, hate Jews, and that he must die for Jihad from his family and his religious teachers. He brainlessly goes to Iraq to detonate himself on a bus full of children. He doesn’t know any better and hasn’t experienced life apart from learning about Jihad. These 9/11 terrorists, however, lived and worked in the West. Jarrah lived in Florida and saw that Americans weren’t horned devils. The fact that he interacted so much with normal people, but still wanted to kill the innocent, makes his crimes all the more worse.

The movie ends with the terrorists boarding the planes intermixed with video of 9/11 happening. Although it doesn’t show the actual hijacking, it does also put a very human face on the fellow passengers who were aboard the plane. It serves to remind everyone that 9/11 wasn’t just a death toll number, but an innocent 8 year old girl, a 40 year old father, a caring 60 year old grandmother, or an optimistic 24 year old stewardess. I think people should see the movie, because it serves a good reminder of 9/11.