A Song Against Jihad

Christopher de Bellaigue

One comes away from Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu not only despising the tyranny of Islamic extremism, but also strangely buoyed by the sense that its exponents may be redeemable through the dignity and beauty of their victims. This stems from Sissako’s stubbornly optimistic view of human nature. When asked recently about his refusal to reduce the jihadists to mere brutes, he replied, “a man has been a child. He has been good.”