A number of scholars interviewed singled out the West Bengal State Archives in Kolkata as suffering from especially appalling conditions.
Almost all the scholars interviewed support the filmmakers' case, though one doubting Thomas is included, David Mevorah, a curator at the Israel Museum.
As befits an epic subject, one of the French scholars interviewed for the film, Jean Tulard, set what might be a talking-head record.
Political scholars interviewed yesterday generally dismissed the notion that any anti-Semitism among Christians, who account for 85percentt of voters, would be much of a factor.
The project isn't helped by its shopworn format: images of scholars, interviewed against the same blue backdrop, are interspersed with clips, old photographs and archival materials.
To hear the voices of Mr. Aslan and Dalia Mogahed, the two scholars interviewed by Ray Suarez in "What a Billion Muslims Really Think," the program's first hour, might take some doing.
Government officials and legal scholars interviewed today in London, Berlin, Paris and other European capitals cited a series of objections to the American tribunals that the president's Nov. 13 order would allow for foreigners charged with terrorism.
The half-dozen clerics and scholars interviewed said that even if they had been critical of the American policies that so inflamed Mr. bin Laden, like United States support for Israel, there was no way to rationalize the violent course that he was advocating.
But Western scholars interviewed by telephone as Mr. Kharrazi began his visit cautioned against seeing the new Iraqi leaders as necessarily pliable in their relations with Iran and against any assumption that Iranian and American interests in Iraq are strongly opposed, at least as long as the Sunni insurgency here continues.
But several constitutional scholars interviewed for this piece dispute this notion.
