The New York Police Department is drawing criticism following the disclosure it recently used an anti-Muslim video in training for officers. According to the New York City newsweekly, the Village Voice, officers were shown the 72-minute The Third Jihad video in the NYPD’s required counterterrorism training courses. The Third Jihad is said to depict gruesome imagery coupled with the argument that Muslim leaders and organizations in the United States are part of a plot of global jihad. During the film, the narrator says, “Americans are being told that most of the mainstream Muslim groups are moderate when in fact, if you look a little closer, you’ll see a very different reality. One of their primary tactics is deception.”
The straight-to-DVD movie was released by the Clarion Fund, which in 2008 sent copies of another anti-Islamic film to 28 million homes in battleground states. That film, called Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West, also features graphic, violent images and makes comparisons of Islam to Nazism. The NYPD says it no longer shows the video.