Out of Cordoba: Averroes and Maimonides in Their Time and Ours
OUT OF CORDOBA is a feature documentary about Jews, Muslims, and Christians struggling for coexistence and against the hijacking of their respective religions by extremists. The film profiles several contemporary people of faith, who, inspired by two “wise men” from the city of Cordoba in medieval Spain — Averroes the Muslim, and Rabbi Moses Maimonides the Jew — are challenging the propositions that there is an inevitable “clash of civilizations” between the West and the Muslim world, an incompatibility between Islam and democracy, and an unsolvable conflict between Muslims and Jews. Out of Cordoba is also the story of the film’s director, Jacob Bender, an American Jew and peace activist, as he undertakes a journey around the Mediterranean world after the attacks of 9/11 — in Spain, Morocco, France, Egypt, Palestine, and Israel — following in the footsteps of these two “wise men of Cordoba” in search of Muslims, Jews, and Christians committed to utilizing their religious traditions as sources of tolerance, democracy, and human rights. Among the extraordinary people encountered by Jacob is a Muslim leader in Spain who declares a “fatwa” against Osama bin Laden after the Al-Qaeda attacks at the Madrid train station, a rabbi in Israel who defends Palestinian homes against demolition by the Israeli army, Egyptian human rights activists attempting to democratize their country, and an art historian decoding the secrets of one of the most enigmatic of Renaissance paintings. The film explores the little-known but vast influence of Muslim thinkers upon the West, as well as presenting inspiring stories that have been often been neglected by the mainstream media in favor of a simplistic concentration on Muslim “terrorists” and “fundamentalists.”