Patricia "Patty" Akkad

The Hesperado is not one of those blogs that is compelled to stay up-to-the-minute on the news; for the elementary reason that when it comes to Islam, no news is old news -- even 7th century history is news, if only because 21st century Muslims are still largely motivated by texts, laws and divine revelations they believe go back that far.

Today's piece is hardly that old; it only goes back a few years, to 2005. In November of that year, Muslim suicide bombers (what other kind of suicide bombers are there?) targeted a posh hotel complex in Amman, Jordan, called the Radisson Hotel, and at the same time two other hotels, Grand Hyatt and Days Inn -- with the death toll totaling 57.

Among those dead was a beautiful 30-something "Muslim-American" woman, Rima Akkad Monla, and her father, film-maker and producer Moustapha Akkad, known not only for being producer of the Halloween horror film franchise, but also for having made a movie back in the 1970s tangentially about Mohammed starring Omar Sharif playing Mohammed's uncle Hamza -- a movie which caused a group of black American Muslims self-styled as "Hanafi" (not Nation of Islam) to take buildings hostage in Washington, D.C., in March of 1977.  Twelve of these Muslims, according to About.com Middle East Issues, saw fit to 

"...seize three office buildings in Washington, D.C., killing a radio reporter (Maurice Williams, 24, of WHUR-FM), wounding 13 people and taking 134 hostages. Mack Cantrell, a city police officer wounded in the assault, died several days later of a heart attack."

Among their demands was for cancellation of the premier of the movie Mohammed, Messenger of God. set to open in Manhattan and New Jersey. (Movie houses agreed to suspend the showings, but the movie was shown on March 12.)

So nearly thirty years later, in 2005, Moustapha Akkad and his daughter Rima were among those blown to smithereens by practitioners of the same ideology they supported and enabled (despite their patina of "secularism").  

Incidentally, Akkad's widow is a decidedly white American and, as can be seen in the photo at the top of my essay, could easily be a retired Republican granny in a nice rest home in Florida (Moustapha himself looked rather white as well, particularly during his later years).  The question occurs: why would a woman like that marry a Muslim like Moustapha Akkad? 

Of her daughter and her cruel demise, the still grieving mother lamented her loss, noting:

"Rima is a totally American girl, who was killed for no reason."

No reason?  That's rich, coming from a woman who married a Muslim man.

As for Rima being an all-American girl, one gleans between the lines a bifurcating loyalty:

At USC, she received a B.A. in International Studies; and what did that portend?  She left the States to go live in the Middle East, studying "Middle East Studies" at American university in Beirut, Lebanon. There, Rima met the man she married, a Muslim named Ziad Monla.  Though she lived there (eventually raising two sons), she frequently visited America.  Her passion, apparently, was polo playing, where she excelled at the El Dorado Polo Club in Indio, California.  This also is a popular pastime in the UAE, among Saudi royals, in Pakistan and Iran, among other places.  In fact, the Persians introduced polo to the Muslims in the 7th century (or more likely, Muslims stole it from them), and Muslims have been playing the sport for 1,400 years. Indeed, it's likely that it only became Westernized (through Great Britian) after the British picked it up during their Indian colonialism.  So our 30-something Rima certainly chose a pursuit solidly and richly grounded in her Islamic heritage.  At best, we could call Rima a "Muslim-American" -- if that indigestibly hyphenated monstrosity of a concept were a viable identity.  But it's not.

We must, when eyeing a photo like the one up top, not be seduced by the pretty face, the cowboy hat, the relatively scanty attire, and the retirement-home poker visor on the white-haired fruitcake-baking-at-Christmas grandmother.  All those details are superficial, cluttering up our perspective and obscuring the Islam that must lie underneath -- the same Islam that so viciously destroyed their lives.  This seemingly seamless (but summarily unseemly) Americanization of Muslims must be seen, reasonably, after we have, as Frank Gaffney puts it, "restored the connective tissue" to all the dots of data we have about Muslims, as one small piece of the puzzle by which, slowly but surely, Muslims more and more are deeply infiltrating into the warp and weft of our societies and institutions.  And the Americanization facilitates our own PC MC gullibility by which we anxiously hope any given Muslims we encounter are modern and moderate.

And of course "Patty" Akkad isn't solely to blame for this Americanization; her Muslim husband became rather solidly ensconced in maintream Hollywood, with his Halloween productions and his many other television and movie projects over the years; and in appearance he looked like any other fairly wealthy white movie producer with a beefy face and white hair and no blatant hint of anything Oriental about his physiognomy.  At best, he could perhaps be Greek.  All these banal facts serve to lay down the roots and tendrils of an increasing Muslim presence in America, as surely as the posts of a white picket fence are laid into the grass, one after another, to form the fence for the house of the New Neighbors in Town.  Still to the tune of hundreds of thousands per year of Muslim immigrants, with no abatement even mentioned as a possibility to put on the table.

And the proof in the hummus is the years Patty's Muslim man spent making, financing and country-hopping throughout the Maghreb trying to get backing for his 1970 Mohammed movie, which in his own words was supposed to help the image of Muslims.  Describing what the film meant to him, he said in a 1976 interview:

"...I think there was something personal, being Muslim myself who lived in the west I felt that it was my obligation my duty to tell the truth about Islam. It is a religion that has a 700 million following, yet it's so little known about it which surprised me. I thought I should tell the story that will bring this bridge, this gap to the west."

A year later, Muslims went ape-shit over it.  Thirty years later, they exploded and killed this emissary of Dawawood and his daughter. and fifty-five others.