Undercover Hollywood Writer Tells of His Journey to "Islamoawareness"

From Big Peace:

Note to readers:  A friend who works in Hollywood penned this essay which I thought would be of interest to readers.  He would have gladly have contributed it directly, but as he works in Hollywood, he is concerned about the “non-existent” blacklist, and asked that I post it for him.

I use the term “Islamoawareness” because people who are critical of Islamic doctrine are often smeared as “Islamophobes”.  I reject this label because a “phobia” is an irrational fear of something, but to fear something that is, indeed, out to kill you is the height of rationality.

I started this journey after 9/11, but not immediately after. As shocked as I was that nearly 3,000 lives were brutally snuffed out by Islamic terrorists, I bought the line that George Bush and Tony Blair parroted; namely, that Islam is a “religion of peace” that had been “hijacked” by extremists. So, I dismissed Osama bin Laden as nothing more than a homicidal extremist, and I really didn’t examine it any deeper.


But then I happened to see a billboard on Sunset Blvd. around May 2005. The billboard had some words on it I had never seen before, including “dhimmitude”, “Eurabia” and “Bat Y’eor”, and the address of a website, jihadwatch.org. (You can see the billboard here.)

Naturally curious, I wanted to know what these new words meant, so that night I Googled “dhimmitude”, and my journey to Islamoawareness officially began. I visited the Jihadwatch website, found out about Robert Spencer, started to read his books, got a copy of the Qu’ran to verify the verses he was quoting, and read many other books besides.

While I continued my education, buses were bombed in London on 7/7/05. Then, the Muhammad cartoons were published later that year and outraged Muslims actually KILLED people over them. It seemed the Muslim protesters were saying, “Islam is a religion of peace; and if you say otherwise, we will kill you!” and that absurd irony made me seriously doubt that Islam really was a religion of peace, and made me dig further.

I learned about “The Verse of the Sword” (9:5) that says “slay infidels wherever you find them”, the verse condoning wife-beating (4:34), the hundreds of other violent, intolerant verses, and the all-important distinction between Meccan verses and the Medinan verses in the  Qu’ran.  (The more violent ones are considered “more true” to Islamic theologians.)

I learned about the countries where Islam rules, and saw that they almost always are places where freedoms are denied, economies stagnate, ideas are repressed and human rights violated.
I learned about the barbaric system known as Sharia law and its death penalty for homosexuality, adultery, and apostasy, and how it codifies second-class status for non-Muslim and all women.  Iran actually executes gays routinely, simply because they are gay!

I learned about Muhammad; how he is held as an “excellent example of conduct” (33:21) for Muslims to follow even today, but then I learned the historical record (in the hadith; the collections of his doings and sayings, and in biographies written by pious Muslims) shows that he owned slaves, raped the female ones (in a couple of cases shortly after having their husbands killed), robbed caravans, tortured a man to find out where he hid his treasure–by building a fire on his chest, married a 6 year-old, and had sex with her when she was 9–and he struck her, too.  He had all the men of an entire tribe slaughtered, and had his critics assassinated.  And these are excellent examples of conduct?

Go read the whole thing.