Moazzam Begg, The Confession, documentary still. All rights reserved.RB: I’ve been asking myself what is so brilliant about your choice of subject. Your film, The Confession, invites Moazzam Begg, who so many coercive institutions have tried to silence, simply to speak as a human being, which he is very good at.
Whereas some of us might assume from the title that what we have here is the subject of a Christian spiritual autobiography, in fact the last role that he seems inclined to play is finding out whether or not he is damned. In these terms, he remains elusive. Maybe that is part of his impact.
But the point is that this is not so much about him as us. It is such a good litmus test for the remaining decencies, the ones that come between us and all that fear-mongering. For our capacity to see that someone who is Other is still a human being, and that this is much more important than all the fear.
