Recent Comments
Re: “A pro-Murfreesboro Mosque filmmaker does a radical about-face”
Jon, I could go into why the Bible's violent texts are very different from the Qu'ran but that would be a tedious discourse and I'm not here to defend any religion. What is dangerous about comparing Christian lunacy with Islamic lunacy is that it so minimizes the threat of Islam. How many acts of terror (not acts of war, acts of terror perpetrated on civilians) have been performed in the name of Christianity in the last decade or so (since 9/11)? Can you count them? Can you count them on one hand?
Do you have any idea how many have been done in the name of Islam since 9/11?
You can find the answer here:
http://thereligionofpeace.com/
Re: “A pro-Murfreesboro Mosque filmmaker does a radical about-face”
Pretty convenient that you associated Bell's conversion as being entirely due to watching his own footage of Gafney who you conveniently paint with a broad brush as being a fear monger. I don't suppose it would have fit into your agenda to illustrate how of the words of an Egyptian cab driver touched Bell's heart. For your readers: Bell got into a cab with an Egyptian driver and wanted to share in what he assumed would be this man's enthusiasm for the Arab Spring. The man was not enthused, he was fearful. Eric questioned his attitude, Mubarak was a tyrant and had billions that he'd kept from the people, how could having him fall be anything but good?
The man gave him the answer, he was afraid of what the Muslims would do do his family as they were Coptic Christians. He was afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood gaining power as this could prove deadly. His words stayed with Bell and as Bell learned more about Frank Gafney, he learned of Gafney's work revealing the facts of how much the Muslim Brotherhood is in our own government (oops you left that out didn't you? You only credit him with fearmongering)And while Eric watched the Arab Spring unfold on the news, with every attack on Christians and churches, he wondered if the cab driver's family had met their demise. He was haunted by this man's worst fears being realized as he watched the FACTS unfold on the news. He could not dismiss this even though it was very INconvenient. It prompted him to actually read the Qu'ran, Hadith and Sirah. In the very holy books that Muslims revere, he found all of the facts that changed his mind and his heart.
More inconvenient were his conscience and sense of ethics (forgive me if these are foreign terms to some of your readers) that would not allow him to continue making what he believed was a one sided documentary. He felt both sides had to be shown. This did not fit his backers' agenda. They wanted things done their way or he was to give back the money. This was pretty inconvenient as some of it had already been spent, so Bell went into personal debt to repay them.
That kind of sacrifice is the result of a deep spiritual experience. Bell is not being paid by any right wingers or sponsors of the counterjihad movement. Oddly enough he had plenty of money and security when he was on the other side. Now that he is getting real threats, that budget is gone. He's on his own but won't back down. (can you say "balls of steel'? I knew you could)
What is most curious to me is how you could hear this man's story and not be filled with admiration (even if you disagreed with his viewpoint) for his courage to stand on his own and do what he felt in his heart was the right thing. As a journalist, you could have been inspired and sought the truth yourself. Maybe deep inside you knew you didn't have that kind of character and maybe in feeling badly about yourself in comparison, you needed to make him look like he was full of crap.
You can listen to your colleagues who will pat you on the back and tell you that you did good by putting that Islamophobe in his place.
..Or ...will Eric be YOUR Egyptian cab driver?
Time will tell.
Peace
Re: “A pro-Murfreesboro Mosque filmmaker does a radical about-face”
AnglRdr says: "EricAllenBell, of the over 1 billion Muslims in the world, how many of them have committed acts of terror? So when you make comments like "Is it really true, that Islam is a peaceful religion which has been hijacked by a few extremists? It sounds nice. And we sure do hear this parroted a lot. But the facts just simply do not support it." you are simply wrong."
How many Nazis actually killed or tortured Jews? Can we agree that this was the intention of the Nazi party? If people were born into the Nazi party you would find many of them not committing atrocities. Would that make Naziism OK?
We hate cancer, not cancer patients. If you only have cancer in 5% of your body, is that no big deal? Hey think of the other 95%, right? Maybe many people who have cancer don't die, does that make cancer OK?
And if you think the comparison of Islam to cancer is wrong, you haven't read the Qu'ran, Hadtih and Sirah.