The High Price of Telling the Truth About Islam
POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Monday, February 6, 2017 02:51
VIEWED: 11703
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A strange thing happened to me today when I was driving past the Federal Building in Los Angeles. There were a crowd of people assembled there with signs which said that Israel is an aggressive force in the Middle East and that Iran is being picked on. As I stopped at a red light I heard a man with a mega phone lead the protesters in a chant charging Obama with genocide. I saw many young people and several Muslim women with their heads covered. It was an anti-war demonstration that probably a year ago I would have supported. But although I am not in favor of military action, I know that Iran is not another Iraq, and that in fact there is more going on here than the overly-simplified picture that the protestors were painting, as cars drove by honking in support. As the light turned green another sign caught my eye – a picture of the Twin Towers burning which read “911 Was an Inside Job”. As I looked at a sea of Palestinian flags and college kids banging on drums I felt a certain frustration – frustration based on a series of events that have changed my world view.
In the Summer of 2010, having recently escaped Hollywood, CA to take a much needed break from my profession as a film maker, I was driving in my car listening to a story on NPR. It seems the people in my new home of Murfreesboro, TN were up in arms over the proposed construction of a 53,000 square foot mega mosque, to be built in their small town in the middle of the American Bible Belt.
I listened carefully, to the sound bytes, of those who had shown up to a town hall meeting to voice their opposition and, as someone who was rather new to the South, I was surprised by what I was hearing. “America is a Christian nation and there is only one God and his name is not Allah and his son is Jesus Christ” and “America is a Christian Nation” and “These Muslims do not share my values and I don’t want them in my backyard”. Growing up in Southern California, I had never heard anything like this before in my life. And I started to follow the story with great interest.
On the outer edge of town, off a small country road, there was a large parcel of land, right next door to a Baptist church, with a big sign that read, “Future Home of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro”. Over the past 6 months that sign had been defaced twice. Once it was broken in half and another time the words “Not Welcome” were spray painted over it.
Rutherford County, which includes Murfreesboro, only has a little over 100,000 residents and yet the area boasts nearly 200 Christian churches. Having not been much of a fan of Islam or Christianity or religion in general (and that’s putting it mildly) I saw this as something of a David vs. Goliath story – with fanatical Evangelicals bullying a peaceful Muslim population, which had been in the community for over 30 years without there ever being any trouble. And, after learning that in July there was to be a big parade down Main Street to the town square, protesting the construction of this new mosque, I decided someone really needed to make a documentary about this. And even though I had gone to Murfreesboro to escape the film world for a while, it seemed pretty clear that if I did not document this in a movie, no one else would. I wanted to show the world what I was seeing. So I put together a small film crew and began production on a documentary I would title, “Not Welcome”.
I had never seen more American flags assembled together in one place than I had on that hot July morning as the anti-mosque crowd gathered at the base camp to prepare for the parade. Many of the marchers showed up wearing red, white and blue. I had 4 cameras covering the event with one crew embedded with the Liberal activists who were going to counter-demonstrate and the rest of the cameras with me, embedded with those who were to march against the mosque. I conducted several interviews in the school parking lot where locals and those who had driven for hours gathered, prepared to march against what they perceived to be not only a threat to th
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So what was the 'high price' this author paid? Not being able to write articles for the Daily Kos anymore? Losing some of his facebook friends?
What a drama queen.
It's not personal. It's just war.
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Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
So what was the 'high price' this author paid? Not being able to write articles for the Daily Kos anymore? Losing some of his facebook friends?
What a drama queen.
It's not personal. It's just war.
yeah. a drama queen.
If that's all you got out of reading this, then you're missing the point.
The writer goes into thoughtful detail of how he started on one side of the issue, and the more he looked into it, came to see something else.
Pity you can't evolve in like manner.
" We're all just folk. " - Mal
" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall
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It's a classic example of not being able to separate issues. His looking deeper was actually getting more off topic from the story he was trying to tell. The Muslims here in America, as he observed and which other people he talked to and which he repeated in his article, really aren't any kind of worry, and the treatment they get is not justifiable.
The reason his backers wanted to pull their money was not because they didn't want him to tell the truth, but because he was getting off on a tangent about the middle east, putting the production into development limbo, and wasting their money.
If he wanted to, he could have produced his documentary then gone and produced another documentary about the truth in the middle east, and then we would have gotten two documentaries, not none. But apparently he has ADHD and lacks focus, and made it into a big deal like something scary happened to him to change his mind and that his viewpoint was being silenced.
Whatever man. If you think your viewpoint is being silenced, go join one of those anti-Mosque protest crowds already.
Also, this post made me have a nice long email conversation with my Muslim friend who went to Japan.
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What Byte said.
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It's curious at the lengths to which you go to ignore the point being made, but as you say...what ever, man.
" We're all just folk. " - Mal
" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall
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Quote:
yeah. a drama queen.
If that's all you got out of reading this, then you're missing the point.
I was just starting with the title. I did have more criticisms (I read the whole thing, it was interesting) to add when I had more time, but I think Byte has already nailed it.
Quote:
Pity you can't evolve in like manner.
I have no desire to 'evolve' into a conspiracy-mad Islamophobe ("Is Hamas Building a 53,000 Square Foot Facility in America???"). But good for you to have another in your ranks.
It's not personal. It's just war.
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Quote:
It's curious at the lengths to which you go to ignore the point being made
Not 'ignore', but: 'refuse to conflate with a completely different point'. As Byte said, he could have made a completely separate documentary about his Islamophobic awakening. Instead he tried to treat it as two sides of the same coin... but it's two different coins.
Your corrected sentence reads:
"It's curious the lengths you go to refuse to conflate the point with a completely different one..."
It's not personal. It's just war.
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Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
It's curious at the lengths to which you go to ignore the point being made, but as you say...what ever, man.
Well how about you ARTICULATE and i mean in your words, not someone else's what you think about the piece and what you agree with, so that we can have a discussion.
I understand where this man is coming from, but frankly I feel pretty much the same about all religions. There may be peace, love and smurfs on the surface, but underneath are the ancient and viscous views on life and humanity, where punishments are harsh and tolerance for others is low. I recently read an article on the Salvation Army where they admitted that gays deserved death because it said so in the Bible.
In many religious texts there is what I consider to be the ugliness of intolerance and tolerance of viscousness. But I know plenty of people of different religions who choose to ignore those aspects of ancient texts and focus on community, spirituality and the more compassionate words that have been written. It makes me feel like something a bit screwy is going on, but live and let live, I say.
if people want to practice their religion where and whenever, then they can do so, as long as they do so peaceable and with respect for others who do not hold their views. If they step over those lines, I condemn them, regardless of the name of the faith.
The issue for me is who was stepping over that line in that town. Who do you think?
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Hey Magons, if that article about the Salvation Army you mentioned is online, would you mind posting up the link? I'd love to show it to my friends who get all indignant when I refuse to give the SA money when they're out collecting money during the Christmas season.
Socialist and unashamed.
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