a changed world view

Save for our summer guest writer series (coming in August – fire up!), rarely do I allow this space to be solely consumed by someone else’s words.  The following perspective was too significant to ignore.  With brief editorial commentary, here are the words of Eric Allen Bell, a filmmaker recently banned from blogging at the “Daily Kos” because of contradicting their desired perspective.  Bell was originally an outspoken supporter of the proposed construction of a 53,000 sq. ft. mosque in Murfreesboro, TN.  He was covering it for a documentary to be entitled “Not Welcome.”  Here are his initial remarks…

 

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…  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. 

 

Bell was a meticulous observer, watching the innocent advocates, the obnoxious opposers, even the media who promoted the issue…

 

CNN breezed through town and produced a quick hit piece painting all of the mosque opponents as uneducated rednecks and the Islamic community as everyday people who were being wrongly persecuted… [it] was called “Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door.”

 

Bell was convinced the Muslims were wrongfully targeted… until…

 

I could not believe the cartoonish way in which those who opposed the mosque were making their case.  I felt like I was on the right side of this thing – absolutely certain.  But in fact, I was wrong…

 

I went home to Los Angeles, showed my 25 minute short version of the documentary to some distributors and backers… And sure enough someone said they would back the completion of the movie.  It was decided that the focus would be on “the enemy at home” that being what we were calling “Apocalyptic Christianity” …  The Murfreesboro issue was to be used as something of a jumping off point to take a look at the expanding influence of the End Times Evangelical lobby in the United States and how they use their influence to manufacture consent for the bombing of oil rich Islamic countries and to influence policy on social issues.  The theme would focus on the problems we have in America, with our own religious lunatic fringe, rather than on a peaceful group of non-Christians who just wanted to build a place of worship…

 

But something kept nagging at me on a gut level.  Something about all of this didn’t quite feel right.  The Arab Spring, which I supported, started to degenerate into the Islamist Winter, and I grew more and more concerned.  I flew back to Nashville to shoot a conference on whether or not Islam was conducive with Democratic Values and on the way to my hotel room I learned that my cab driver was from Egypt.  I asked him how he felt about the fall of Mubarak, a dictator worth over $70 billion dollars while so much of his country was living in poverty and he told me he was concerned.  Concerned?  Wasn’t this good news?  The cab driver was a Coptic Christian and he told me that he feared for his family back home.  “If the Muslims take control, and they will, it will be very dangerous for my parents and my sisters.  I’m scared for them right now.”  After that conversation, I started to pay more attention to the news coming from the Islamic world in the Middle East.

 

Over the coming months I watched as the Muslim Brotherhood gained political power in Egypt.  I saw that cab driver’s worst fears come true as Coptic Christians were attacked by Islamic mobs.  I saw Tunisia institute Sharia, the brutal Islamic Law.  After Libya fell, the Transitional Council also instituted Islamic Law.  The nuclear armed Islamic government of Pakistan arrested and punished those who cooperated with the United States in killing Osama Bin Laden.  A woman under the Islamic government of Afghanistan faced execution for the crime of being raped.  Similar news stories emerged from Iran.  A man who typed “there is no god” as his Facebook status in Indonesia, the largest Islamic country in the world, was arrested for blasphemy.

Several Muslim men in England were arrested for handing out leaflets to Londoners demanding that homosexuals be executed by hanging for violating Islamic Law with their lifestyle.

 

And it struck me.  Even though these angry townspeople in Mufreesboro, TN had not articulated their concerns very well, they were only half wrong.  I remember meeting Frank Gaffney and interviewing him in front of the courthouse and asking him if he really thought that the peaceful Muslims here actually presented a real threat to America and he said no.  That caught me off guard so I asked if he really thought it was a credible threat that a community that makes up about one percent of the United States population was just going to suddenly rise up one day and try to take over the country and force Sharia Law onto all of us.  Again he said no.  Then he told me I was asking the wrong questions.  He suggested that I was only looking for answers that would support the conclusions I had already arrived at…  

 

It was at this time that I went to my backers and told them that we were not making an honest documentary… It was critical that we also show the very real threats that exist within Islam.  We needed to show that what is happening to these small communities of peaceful Muslims in America are the exception to the rule.  I wanted to show what happens to countries when they gain a Muslim majority, how women are treated, that homosexuals were executed, that free speech did not exist, that the forced Islamic Law was not consistent with Democratic Values… the response I received was, “Eric you are starting to sound like an Islamophobe.  We don’t want to make a movie that promotes fear.  Let’s just stick with the existing plan, okay?”

 

With objective research, Bell says the series of events “changed my world view.”  He attempted to educate his employers, having worked for the Daily Kos and Michael Moore among others, but they refused to even consider his fair-minded attempts.  They only wanted to support the conclusions they had previously arrived at.

 

Has Bell thus become a conservative?  “Not really,” he says.  He’s still opposed to the invasion of Iraq; he doesn’t care for Bush 43; and he supports gay marriage.  But he’s also pro-life.  Bell even still supports the right to build the mosque in Murfreesboro.  But he no longer believes that Islam is a peaceful religion; and he will no longer be part of a biased media that refuses to report otherwise.

 

Respectfully,

AR

 

(Intramuralist note:  Bell’s account was edited here due to space considerations; for a more complete perspective, see his article entitled, “The High Price of Telling the Truth About Islam.”)