By Joe Bendel. Imagine an Islamist police state ruled by Dianetics. That is basically the state of what passes for reality in Turkmenistan. They also have obscene oil and natural gas deposits. As a result, a lot of people who should know better have feigned interest in the Ruhnama, a book supposedly written by the largely illiterate president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov that co-opted elements of Islam for the sake of his personality cult. Director Arto Halonen (the quiet one) and co-writer Kevin Frazier (the gabby one) try to ask some of Niyazov’s international enablers why they think the Ruhnama is so swell in their would-be muckraking documentary Shadow of the Holy Book, which screened last night as part of DocPoint’s tenth anniversary celebration tour of New York.
Appointed by Gorbachev as Turkmenistan’s Communist Party strongman, Niyazov was a hardliner who supported the 1991 coup attempt against his patron. Indeed, Niyazov’s dictatorship incorporated the worst elements of Communism, Fascism, Islamist extremism, and flat-out lunacy. Yet Halonen and Frazier largely ignore the ideological roots of Ruhnamania for inexplicable reasons (though perhaps that picture of Castro in their office is a clue).
When Shadow documents the institutionalized insanity of Niyazov’s Turkmenistan, it is jaw-droppingly scary. Subjects like algebra and physics were banned from schools, in favor of greater Ruhnama study. Architectural behemoths combining Fascist pomp, Islamic symbolism, and what can only be described as kitsch have been erected to glorify the crackpot tome. There is even a gargantuan book with pages that actually turn.
Continue reading Exposing a Cult of Personality: LFM Reviews Shadow of the Holy Book