You know how, whenever some atrocity is committed and Muslims are implicated, we hear from the Muslim community that "that is not the true Islam"? Well, these are the guys they have in mind. The community of the faithful are all very spiritual types who quote one another passages of the Hadith (the Muslim equivalent of the Talmud: a guide to right conduct in everyday, concrete matters) on the question of whether or not one of their own should come forth as a eye witness to a murder of a Frenchman. Sound familiar? It's the Muslim take on "Witness"--only here the Amish and their quaint ways are replaced with Arabs coping with assimilation into French life. Needless to say, not one member of the Arab community has a rough edge on him: no extremist integralist, no female veiled or even covered, no secular, assimilated low life (the one believer who appears a little too orthodox for Western tastes turns out to be a flexible, "I-can-dig-it" kind of guy too). And though the ending is pure Hollywood with a twist of Mecca thrown-in, this film was interesting to view because of the way it portrays the generational tensions within immigrant Arab families.
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