I too am concerned about radical Islam - as much as I am concerned about the type of radical Christianity that seems to want to bring on the end times. Both are dangerous. One influences small terrorist organizations while the other makes or breaks presidencies and controls the foreign policy of the largest military superpower in the world. Radical, fanatical, fundamentalism is the enemy and it is hiding in the pages of The Reader in newsstands all throughout Rutherford County.
Standing Up To The Bullies
By Eric Allen Bell
Murfreesboro, TN: Christianity is superior to all other forms of thought and we are not to tolerate our inferior Muslim neighbors. In fact, they are all out to get us. It’s a conspiracy. They are planning to take over and force an antiquated system of religious laws upon us. They hate us. Their mission is to the overthrow of the United States Government. They hate our way of life. They’re taking over and nobody is doing anything about it. We must stop them from building a place of worship. We must stop them before they gain too much control.
We must hold parades where we march against them while screaming out Bible versus through megaphones and waving American flags. We must file lawsuits to prove that Islam is not a religion and therefore they have no rights as a religion. They can’t be trusted with rights because they‘re not real Americans. We must hold each and every one of them accountable for what happened on 9/11 because each and every one of them is a potential ticking time bomb, waiting for the day they get the word from the Imam that it is time for Jihad. We must let our children know that all Muslims lie, that this is part of their religion and that they are never to be trusted. They are lying foreigners trying to force their foreign ways on us. America is a Christian nation founded by Christian men based upon Christian ideals. God bless America!
These are just some of the ideas put forth each week by Pete Doughtie, Editor of The Rutherford Reader. In fact, these ideas are not just presented, put pounded away, in the headlines, in the pages next to articles about the Bible and ads for gun permit classes - week after week, relentlessly. The “newspaper” is made available for free in stacks at local businesses that have no shame in promoting the Doughtie brand of fear and good old fashioned religious intolerance. Articles smearing this minority group - a group that has lived in the area peacefully since 1982 - appear next to an ad for Cosmetic Dentistry of Murfreesboro with a caption that ironically asks the question, “Embarrassed to Smile?”
One of the biggest block ads you will find in The Reader is for self-professed Christian Life Coach, Phillip Foster. Over the summer Foster created a Facebook group called “Stop the Mosque and Islamic Training Camp” in protest over the County Commissioners decision to allow a new Islamic place of worship. The group quickly became popular with likeminded people who posted YouTube videos about the “End Times” and a video from “The 700 Club” wherein Pat Robertson declared that soon the Muslims in Murfreesboro will require mandatory foot washes in all public bathrooms and force all school girls in the area to wear a veil in public.
When construction began on the new site, one of the members of Foster’s Facebook group posted that they had seen tractors breaking ground and that “something needed to be done” about it. Days later, an arsonist set fire to one of the tractors. There was worldwide media coverage and the overwhelming response the people in Foster’s group had was outrage - outrage that this was being called a “hate crime” and an absolute insistence that it was probably those Muslims who did it. When the ATFE stepped in to conduct a Federal investigation, Foster quickly took his Facebook group offline. These days, when he’s not promoting hatred, paranoia and intolerance, Philip Foster is available for counseling and spiritual guidance through his life coaching business, “Maximum Change”. He is also employed as a drug counselor at “Branches Recover Center” in Murfreesboro, TN. And I recently learned that he works in the Children's Ministry at World Outreach Church.
It should be noted that one of The Reader’s regular contributors is Kevin Fisher - organizer of the July 14th “March Against the Mosque” and one of the plaintiffs who is suing you the taxpayer for all the emotional damage that is being done to him and will be done to him if the mosque is built. Fisher claims that the fact that his ex wife converted to Islam has nothing to do with, what appears to be his holy war, against Islam. He maintains that he is mostly concerned about traffic issues and possible soil contamination.
In the summer of 2010, the Kroger supermarket chain decided to no longer carry The Reader as it had determined the anti-Muslim content to be “hate speech”. Right away Evangelical blogs went to work reframing the issue as “Islamic Censorship”. When KFC also decided to pull The Reader for hate speech, another Conservative blog reframed the issue as “Kroger, KFC and Others Submit to Sharia”. Sharia? Really? However the biggest media supporter to come to Pete Doughtie’s rescue was Fox News who spun the story as The Reader falling victim to Liberal censorship.
Now this sinister minister of Islamophobic propaganda has put yours truly in the crosshairs. In December I wrote an article called “The Reader - Chasing Rutherford’s Future Away” and posted it in the Forums section at DNJ.com - the website for the leading local newspaper in Rutherford County. It held the top position under “Hot Forum Topics” for 10 weeks before being replaced by more current issues - such as the recent proposed legislation that some groups fear will make practicing Islam to be a felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
Naturally, the bill proposed by Murfreesboro resident and State Senator, Bill Ketron, is being fiercely supported by the propaganda wing of this local hate movement, The Rutherford Reader. Incidentally, Ketron is also introducing legislation to demand proof that President Obama is really a citizen of the United States and not just some African, as well as legislation allowing the state of Tennessee to create its own currency. Oh, and he’s also jumped on the union-busting bandwagon vilifying teachers as the source of so many of the state’s financial problems. But I digress.
Late in 2010 an organized boycott of The Reader and its advertisers got rolling and I joined in on the action. We contacted some of the local businesses that carry this publication and respectfully let them know our feelings on the issue, asked the business owners to read The Reader for themselves and let their conscience dictate whether or not it contained hate speech. We let them know that we would not be able to be patrons of their establishments so long as they carried The Reader. We took similar actions with advertisers. We made it clear that we did not support the banning of publications or censorship, but rather were in favor of allowing market forces to decide The Reader’s fate. And since that time, stacks of the Reader are no longer carried at certain places of business in the greater Rutherford County area.
It didn’t take long before it was brought to my attention that my photograph was enlarged and pasted onto the headlines of that week’s Rutherford Reader with big bold words declaring “The Reader’s Free Speech Threatened”. And not surprisingly, the article was parroted in blogs that hit the panic button back when Kroger and KFC pulled the plug. In the weeks that followed, smear pieces were written about me, often taking the form of anonymous letters to the editor - one of which was an attempt at investigative reporting which claimed that I was a tax cheat, demanding that I pay my taxes and was signed “A Concerned Christian”.
Not to belabor the point, but in the March 2, 2011 issue of The Reader, on page 4, Pete Doughtie himself writes a column about the person whom he calls a “twisted sister” who needs to “cut his hair”. That of course would be me.
It may be hard to believe, in spite of all that has been said thus far about this recent rivalry, but The Reader actually contacted me on October 8th asking if I would be willing to write a regular column. This came after I expressed my objections to a smear piece The Reader published about a documentary I have been producing on the backlash against the mosque entitled, “Not Welcome“. In the piece The Reader stated that I had never even stepped foot inside a mosque or cracked open a copy of the Koran - charges which are both completely false, bizarre and absurd.
I objected saying that someone at The Reader should have asked me directly if I had studied anything about Islam before printing such lies. Call me, interview me, but don’t just assume. So I was very surprised by the response I got via email on October 8th from one Kate Doughtie of The Reader:
“We have decided that we would like to interview you as you have suggested and after that, a possible "guest column" in the Reader (weekly - on the Sharia law subject from your viewpoint or knowledge) (and no-compensation - as the rest of our columnists). We will be in touch.”
The offer was hard to make sense of, or trust, so I ran it by some friends in media. Their concern was that The Reader might be using me to appear “fair and balanced” perhaps to get back onto the news racks of Kroger. But there was no way to know that for sure, so I thought write back and see what happened:
“I would love to do the interview. As for Sharia Law, I am not qualified, anymore than your journalists are, to really speak to that issue from a place of authority. However, I would be interested in interviewing say the Imam here in Murfreesboro about Sharia, and then a radical about Sharia, and comparing and contrasting the difference in how they interpret that law. Either way, I am happy to hear from you and very much looking forward to discussing how we can work together. My hat's off to you for being willing to allocate space in your paper for a different point of view. I respect that and hope that my contribution will be meaningful.”
Crickets. A tumble weed blows past. Weeks pass. Nothing.
In this week’s issue Pete Doughtie assures his readers that such an offer to write a column never happened. He continues his paranoid Gadhafi style rant, asserting that I am on the payroll of his rival publication, The Daily News Journal - and that soon I will taking over. Seriously. I’m not kidding. I wonder if he believes that I am also working with Al Queda and giving hallucination pills to the youth so they will turn against him. Of course, now it all makes sense. Make some speeches and then go hide in the bunker under the house. The prophecy is being fulfilled.
For the record - Not only am I not on the payroll at the DNJ, but when I submitted my article as an Opinion piece to Editor Jimmy Hart (“The Reader - Chasing Rutherford’s Future Away”) Hart declined, stating that he prefer not to get involved in attacking the competition. Fair enough. I posted it in the forums section online instead, backed the boycott of The Reader and the drums of war have been beating ever since.
But this is not a personal rivalry… Well, okay - it’s more than just a personal rivalry. This is about standing up to bullies. I look around me and I see events in this country that bear a remarkable resemblance to Germany in the 1930s. Recently in Orange County, California (where I am originally from) a group of Muslim families attended a charity event for the homeless. Outside were countless protesters waving American flags chanting “Go back home! Go back home!” and “One nation under God, not Allah”.
Over the summer, in Temmecula, California, Evangelical Conservatives showed up to protest a mosque - chanting, flag waving, yelling through megaphones - and they brought their dogs. Dogs? Apparently one of the organizers heard somewhere that Muslims don’t like dogs. So, let’s put an end to the myth that this type of ignorance and hatred is a uniquely Southern problem, as it is clearly not.
All over the nation xenophobia is spreading rapidly like a brush fire. Fanning the flames are the usual suspects but the mission is to keep us divided, distracted, afraid of each other and easy to rule. And it’s working. Our elected leaders are unable to lead. The mess they got us into is one they are unable to get us out of. And so many of them resort to the oldest trick in the book - scapegoating. It’s easy to organize because all of the Bill Ketrons who want to get re-elected will jump on the hate wagon. And all of the Pete Doughties out there will exploit the opportunity to express their dark mean-spiritedness while hiding behind the cross and the American flag.
And if we do not stand up to them, then what will become of our nation, of our communities? Can civil rights in America slide back to where we were in 1960? Some days it seems like we already have.
Finally I would like to say this. I too am concerned about radical Islam - as much as I am concerned about the type of radical Christianity that seems to want to bring on the end times. Both are dangerous. One influences small terrorist organizations while the other makes or breaks presidencies and controls the foreign policy of the largest military superpower in the world. Radical, fanatical, fundamentalism is the enemy and it is hiding in the pages of The Reader in newsstands all throughout Rutherford County. It is up to every one of us to stand up and say “Enough!”. Have the courage to speak out and let businesses know that you will not tolerate bigotry, religious persecution or fanatical hate speech.
It is time for us to have the courage to stand up to bullies.
- Eric Allen Bell
