One would expect that when PBS airs documentary films about religion, they would be equally objective and fair handed with each faith.


Premiering smack in the middle of the Christmas season, the latest PBS documentary — “Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet” — featured a rather one-sided view of Islam and its history. According to the New York Post, in this aesthetically beautiful film “no commentator is so impolite as to note that Muslim women today suffer widely from genital mutilation, forced marriages, purdah, illiteracy, sexual apartheid, polygamy and honor killings…this patronizing film might be fine for an Islamic Sunday school class, but not for a national audience.”


Compare this to PBS’s 1998 documentary “From Jesus to Christ,” which focuses keenly on critical new scholarship about Jesus and his life and openly questions issues of Christianity.