Iqbal Hossain grew up in Bangladesh, dreaming about a college education in the United States. Now that he's made the "home of the free" his own home, he's concerned about the future of the liberty that drew him here.
Hossain, president of the Khadeeja Islamic Center in West Valley City, will be a guest speaker next Monday at a viewing of "Persons of Interest," a documentary that examines the alleged imprisonment without due process that some Muslim Americans have faced since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"I originally come from a country where often you cannot criticize your government, you could find yourself in prison," Hossain said. "All of a sudden my freedom and rights are in jeopardy, where do I go? This is not the America that attracted me."
The "Persons of Interest" film, which premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival, is one of two that will be shown this month as part of the Salt Lake City Film Center's "The Muslim World and the West" series. Both include discussions with the directors.
The U.S. Department of Justice could not be reached for immediate comment on the documentary's criticism of policy changes following Sept. 11, 2001, which allowed Muslims arrested on immigration violations to be held for extended periods without being charged.
The other film, "Hollywood and the Muslim World," created for American Movie Classics, is a glimpse of attitudes individuals in the Arab world have about American television and what it models as values. That film will be shown this Thursday at the University of Utah.
Nearly 20,000 Muslims live in the Salt Lake Valley, Hossain said.
Kathryn Toll, managing director of the film center, said the idea of a series of Islam-focused movies came from a board member who saw a lack of understanding in Utah about Muslim society.
"With 9/11, a radical piece of another culture came to us in the most horrible way," she said. "It behooves us all to learn about the world in general, about this culture, to learn is this what the Muslim religion all about, maybe there's a lot more to it."
"Hollywood and the Muslim World" director Charles Stuart of Concord, Mass., said the views of American culture in the cities he visited in the months leading up to the war in Iraq were as diverse as the people he interviewed. He said most people viewed American media as harmless entertainment, but a few thought of the media as a conspiracy to change their culture.
"I knew people would be critical," Stuart said. "What I wasn't prepared for was people who were so conspiratorial; they thought there was a conspiracy by people in Hollywood to actually affect the way they think and live. I found myself defending America quite a bit."
One 19-year-old at a video store in Cairo, Egypt, told Stuart said his problem with American media was the stereotype of Arabs as riding camels and being terrorists. "We drive cars," Stuart recalled the youth's angry lecture.
Tobias Perse and Alison Maclean of New York shot "Persons of Interest" during the last week of Ramadan in November 2002. Some of the 12 Muslim detainees whose stories are told in the documentary have since been deported.
Maclean said the documentary puts a personal face on the anonymous numbers of Muslims jailed as terrorism suspects on immigration violations without ever being charged.
"I was just very affected by the way these people's peoples' lives were ruined by this process, which is really quite arbitrary," she said.
Series includes 2 films and panel discussion
"Hollywood and the Muslim World" will be shown Thursday at 6 p.m. at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, 410 Campus Drive. Director Charles Stuart will speak.
"Persons of Interest" will be shown Monday at 7 p.m. at the Tower Theater, 876 E. 900 South. A panel discussion will include director Tobias Perse; Dani Eyer, director of Utah ACLU; and Iqbal Hossain, president of the Khadeeja Islamic Center.
Information: Salt Lake City Film Center, www.slcfilmcenter.org.
E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com