Something other than newspapers fell onto the front porches and doorways — and into the mailboxes — of about 160,000 News & Observer and Durham News subscribers on Saturday.

It was an advertisement that took the form of a DVD called Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West. According to a New & Observer article, the Clarion Fund, “a New York-based advocacy group that funds documentaries and Web sites about Islamic fundamentalism,” was an integral part in the DVD’s placement in more than 70 newspapers across the country. Included in this group are papers like the New York Times, the Charlotte Observer and the Wall Street Journal.

The DVD, produced in 2006, uses footage from Arab and Iranian television stations to chronicle radical ideology, and its packaging claims to reveal “an ‘insider’s view’ of the hatred Radicals are teaching, their incitement of global jihad, and their goal of world domination.”

Obsession‘s director Wayne Kopping spends a portion of its hour-long run time drawing parallels between the Nazis and radical Muslims.

Although the DVDs were not inserted into newsstands, some of those who received the print version and supplement were students.

And some were Muslim students.

Sara Haddad, president of Muslim Students’ Association, was one of those who opened up Saturday morning’s paper and saw the supplement.

It’s arrival came as a surprise, she said, but not because she didn’t have prior knowledge of it.

Her friend told her about an article on the Huffington Post that detailed both the DVD and into what newspapers it would be inserted. Haddad listened to this, she said, and laughed.

“He told me it would probably offend me,” Haddad said. “I thought it would be ridiculous that it’d be sent out in the newspaper, of all things. But it happened, and that’s the way it is. Now we have to figure out what to do about it.”

She said it would be different if groups or individuals passed it out, but that it came out with copies of one of the state’s largest newspapers created a different effect.

“The newspaper reaches so many people. It’s print media,” she said. “It’s not just junk mail.”

And because the DVD is not just junk mail — it retails for $19.95 — it has the opportunity to reach more people.

While she said nothing about the DVD was factually incorrect, she said some of the film’s sources were former Muslims.

“They sit there and they have them talk about the horrors of being Muslims,” she said. “It’s an honest-to-God true story that this was what’s happening to the culture, but it has nothing to do with Islam.”

At least, she said, not the Islam that is most American Muslims practice.

She predicts Obsession will aggregate latent or hidden discrimination against Muslims who have, like her and her family, spent generations in the United States. It won’t happen because of inaccuracies in the film, she said, but because of misunderstanding that could result from it.

“It happened in the 60s with African-Americans, it happened with Jews in the 40s — I thought we were past all that at this point,” Haddad said. “I can’t believe something like this could happen in this country.”

Dick Reavis, an assistant professor of journalism, said it was not a coincidence that the DVD, which is two years old, was sent out on a national scale less than two months before the presidential election.

The pamphlet that came with the DVD reads, “The threat of Radical Islam is the most important issue facing us today. But it’s a topic that neither the presidential candidates, not the media are discussing openly. It’s our responsibility to ensure we can all make an informed vote in November.”

Reavis classified the film as war-mongering.

“Technically, I thought it was pretty well done,” Reavis said. “But the movie treats ideas as if they were hurricanes or tornadoes — they fall from the sky and they have power by themselves. In real life, we make ideas and they prosper if those ideas speak to our daily lives.”

If people don’t like those ideas, Reavis said, they have two choices: either squash them with force and threats, or take away the physical conditions that make those ideas popular.

“That’s the only way you’re going to get rid of the idea forever,” he said. “This movie never asks what it is that has made radical Islam popular for people. It never asks that questions. It seems to be a call for repression.”

He equated radical Islam to radical Christianity in the form of the Ku Klux Klan. With the Civil Rights Act, without violence, the government halted the KKK’s attacks against the black population.

He said what the United States government has to do is listen to the Middle East, not push for war.

“Nobody wants to talk about the possibility that the U.S. — not our people, but our government and our businesses — has misbehaved in the Arab world,” he said.

But until that time comes, Haddad said she, her family — which has been in America since the 70s — and her friends will have to deal with blatant discrimination.

“We all work. We all go to school here. My mom grew up in Texas and my dad’s a business owner here. It’s hard to be like, I’ve been an American longer than some people and here I am being told that, hey, I’m a terrorist.”

Since the DVD’s arrival, Haddad has dealt with multiple phone calls from friends and MSA members who were worried about how they should handle the situation. Although she has confidence that her neighbors will not look at her any differently, she can’t say the same for classmates and those she meets or passes on the street.

“This country is being told to watch out or we might turn on it,” Haddad said. “The fact is that somebody on the street may not know me. They might pass judgment on me, and that doesn’t help. My parents don’t like for me to go out by myself. Things like this don’t make it any better.”

As for a new medium through which groups can advocate their causes, Reavis said this type of supplement has the possibility to be a common occurrence. It’s the same advertising method that European magazines use to sell their products. It’s a trend, now, to insert a few free samples into the magazine’s wrapping to sell more copies.

“Newspapers are so desperate that I could get them to stuff anything inside except a condom,” he said.