Sidebar...last night the much anticipated documentary, reported by Soledad O'Brian, entitled "Unwelcome: Muslims in America" debuted. Soledad did an amazing job on the documentary. It exposes what Muslims are going through in a small town in Tennessee. They are trying to build an Islamic center because their current place of worship is too small to accommodate them and the documentary shows the opposition that they are facing within the community. I thought the documentary was extremely enlightening and also extremely sad. It brought to light how many people are opposed to Islam and are scared that those who practice will take over America. I found the people opposed to the Islamic center sickeningly ignorant. They are scared of something that they know nothing about. The community members who opposed the building of the center knew nothing about the Islamic faith and based their believes of of September 11th. I don't understand how the acts of a few can correlate to the believes of all Muslims. I would think that those same fears would be lessened through education about the religion but clearly not everyone thinks like I do. In my opinion, education is the best way to combat fear and ignorance. But I know this would only fall on deaf ears.

Another thing that saddened my about documentary is that an African-American man was heading the opposition and actually filed suit to stop the construction of the Islamic center. This surprised and disgusted me because I just could not believe that an African-American MAN could be so ignorant and blind. How can we as a people actually discriminate against a group of people when we were and still are discriminated against for the color of our skin? How can an African-American forget about all the struggles our people had/have to go through because we are black and yet discriminate against someone else because of their religion? Is not discrimination due to race the same as discrimination due to religion? At the end of the day, it is still discrimination. And now that we have a Black president, you're still acting like that? The black man on the doc really disgusted me and saddened me. The documentary really brought to light how far we have NOT come as a country. Most of us are still as ignorant and blind that we were before September 11th and even the Civil Rights Movement for that matter. Nothing has changed. If you watched the documentary, let me know how you feel about it.-azureDizzle