From that point on, Terry was my friend. He confided in me that he was not courageous at all and he was scared to death that this guy was going to decide to get even with him. He insisted that he was not really brave but just couldn’t stand back and watch the same thing happening any longer. His own safety was pushed aside to do the right thing for all of us 7th graders.
In nearly forty years, my taste in friends hasn’t changed much. I am proud to call Eric Allen Bell my friend for much the same reasons, he has stood up to the bully with little or no care for his own well being and has done so for the good of others. But on the playground these days, Yard Monitors and teachers don’t seem very supportive. In fact they seem to side with the bullies. I’m having a hard time with this.
When I first heard of Eric Allen Bell I knew I had to extend a cyber hand to meet him on Facebook. Here was a guy who had seen the light of political Islam and he did it from the left. He was not the typical right wing Christian stereotype, he was a voice from the other side, from the side that most of my creative friends are on, a side I desperately wanted to get to listen. I too had undergone a similar transformation albeit I was never all that liberal, politically. In fact I was never all that political, politically. My eyes glazed over when the subject of politics came up. I’d rather not take up time with my story but the jist of it is that I began studying Islam in order to defend it and was pretty shocked at the true nature of the ideology. I have studied several religions before and have no problem with people believing anything they want to believe; it’s none of my business. But this was different, only a small part could be considered a personal faith, and most who practiced that were perfectly nice people. The rest of it was a political system and those who practiced that were not so nice. Furthermore, it was a political system that has a history of conquering all other forms of government and has never changed that as its main goal. I saw evidence of this in Europe where the multicultural experiment turned countries against their own indigenous people in favor of Islamic colonization.
Had I merely studied the belief system, I would have been enriched and moved on believing that any person’s beliefs are sacred and must not be challenged or taken from them. It was the Political side that held my interest and concern. The fact that more than half of the texts in the Qur’an are devoted to the treatment of non believers tells me that I do have a dog in this race and it’s not bigotry when this ideology intends to affect me. Once I saw this, it was hard to stop noticing the curious dance that seemed to be performed all around the subject. This made me look at many aspects of politics differently. I saw how our accounts of history have been altered and how quickly everyone dismissed any accusations against political Islam as being xenophobic and racist even if they were simply facts. Why was it that my liberal friends can be just as concerned as me about human rights but turn a blind eye to what is going on all over the world in the name of Allah and his messenger? There is something deceptive going on here that makes little logical sense. It is something I can’t turn away from looking at, trying hard to understand just why things don’t add up.
Meeting somebody from the left who “got it” was too good to be true! I will not go into his story of how he went from making a film about the evils of Islamophobia to becoming a counterjihadist. That is his story to tell, and it’s a good one! The fact is that he did and he didn’t turn into a right wing Christian because of it. Still the long haired guy who practices Zen meditation, he was validation for me and I hoped he would be a liberal voice for the movement. That was not his plan. He decided that there were other voices that were already out there that could do the job without him and that he didn’t need to risk getting into the fray. His main concern was not for his own safety so much but for that of his loved ones; he didn’t want to put them in danger. I understand that all too well. This is a subject where one’s freedom of speech can be a threat on one’s well being. Eric decided to let others fight the fight and he would pitch in some day if really needed.
It was another topic, entirely, that made us friends. My search for methods that might help my son who has Aspergers Syndrome led me to conversations with Eric. I knew he had made a movie about his troubled youth and I wanted to talk to him about some of the things that had helped him. We discussed meditation techniques, the pitfalls of conventional psychology and the demons of the Juvenile corrections system. Eric was very helpful and we hit it off like family. If somebody had told me that my new friend, Eric Allen Bell was actually my long lost brother, I would have believed them.
Eric’s decision to not speak up about counter jihad did not last long. Like my friend Terry, he couldn’t stand back and watch something he felt was wrong. What had held him back didn’t matter that much now. Having been shunned by the entertainment industry for not completing a film demonizing Islamophobes, he was already an outcast. He gave back the funding for the film and was now broke. The liberal blogs that he had written for banished him and most of his friends in the entertainment industry had “broken up” with him in text messages. Since he had already lost quite a bit, he felt he didn’t have much to lose. He decided to fight back and be a voice in counter jihad. This is what brings me here, writing about my friend who has been speaking the truth in spite of the bullies, but now the bullies seem to be coming from both sides.
In the recent events of the latest 9/11, the official reason behind the unrest, we are told, is a 14 minute trailer for a film. The White House assures us that it these attacks have nothing to do with any of its policies. That alone sounds pretty fishy to me. Me thinks they doth protest too much. Odd that instead of sticking up for our freedom of speech, our leaders immediately attacked the film and it’s maker. I would say this is about as spineless as things get. We sit back and condone the barbaric actions of radical Islamists who have killed our people over this and we blame a video and apologize for offending them? Hello? This is the same logic that would inspire somebody to give the school bully their lunch money every day in the hopes that he will eventually be nice. Does that really work?
The film maker, Nakoula Bassely Nakoula, is mostly guilty of making a terrible film period. The fact that this is a Coptic Christian plea for attention on their relentless persecution by the same ideology that set fire to our embassies seems to go unnoticed. Then on September 17, Jagmohan Singh Raina, Chairman of the All Party Sikhs Coordination Committee in Kashmir made a statement condemning the film. He also WRONGLY named my friend, Eric Allen, Bell as its maker. While we can joke that the worst thing about this is to be accused of having such poor Cinematic skills, the reality is that this assertion has placed Eric in serious danger. Recent Muslim rage has increased the usual saber rattling statements on Eric’s Facebook page, but this Sikh’s misinformation has significantly changed the climate. The threats have increased and grown more vicious. In the past Eric has reported threats to facebook and they have done little if anything. It took him months to get them to take down a site that had a map of where he lived alerting Islamists where they could find him. Now since this misinformation was announced and the threats escalated, Facebook is finally doing something: They are punishing Bell. First they suspended him from posting for 48 hours. Now he has been blocked from his account entirely.
Again, I find this odd. Eric has always made it clear that he is not against Muslims, he is against political Islam. He does not condone any hate speech on his page. Now he receives death threats and Facebook does not silence the thugs that are threatening him but silences him instead. Freedom of speech? Now it’s only for a select few? Which few? The ones who pose the biggest threat? Now when he needs to make it clear that he is not guilty of the accusations, they silence him?
Obviously Bell will need some security measures and some help dismissing the misinformation, I have concerns about how that’s going to go. With so many officials deep in the pockets of CAIR, (Council for American Islamic Relations a terrorist front group who’s focus is to spin media stores from tales of Islamic aggression into tales of Muslim victimization. It’s really quite a trick) it is hard to tell what law enforcement agencies are actually on the side of the people who pay to protect and serve them. Oh wait a minute, maybe they are on the side of those who pay them, maybe that’s exactly what the problem is.
This is perhaps the most ironic point of Bell’s story: that people think he went to counter jihad for money. Nothing could be further from the truth. When he was on “the other side” making a film exposing these nasty Americans who won’t let the nice Muslims have their 53,000 square foot mosque being built with questionable funds, he had TONS of security! But of course he needed protection from those dangerous Southern Christians who just might Sweet Tea him to pieces. Once he was on the side of American liberty, he was naked to the elements and facing the real threats. The money is not in counter jihad. The vile fact is that the petrol dollars flow freely to the apologists and appeasers from law enforcement to the politicians. Why settle on a salary paid by tax payers when you can have so much more? Appeasing Islam is a profitable hobby. Citizens don’t make laws, lobbyists do, and this great country of ours has the best laws money can buy. If our freedoms are not profitable, I am afraid they will have to go.
So these days, where does one go on the playground when the bullies are after you? If that bully has rich parents who have paid off the yard monitors, you’re pretty much on your own. We are all on our own. This is the tip of the iceberg and we can’t look to our leaders to help us because they’ve already been …persuaded …to look the other way. And when the violent results of their indiscretions explode all over innocent people, they will blame a 14 minute video and whoever else they can hold in front of their own trembling bodies.
I’m not in seventh grade any more
…that was before the Carter administration.
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