Editing Openai/69231e78-5a78-8013-81a7-f2dd38762292 (section)

=== User: Now let me give you the Intro which tells the reader why I am writing the book. ===
Now let me give you the Intro which tells the reader why I am writing the book.

“Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.” — African Proverb

This book is the lion’s pen.

INTRODUCTION

FROM HOLLYWOOD TO REALITY THE ME IN THE MEDIA

I want to share an experience with you, that showed me how I was wrong in the way I was doing my research. The internet was new to me at the time and meant I could learn just about anything, and I decided to take advantage of it. When we ask the question, that's where learning begins. Having all this access to history that I never had before changed my thoughts. The history I was finding left me no choice but to change the way I was thinking. I "thought" I knew history very well. I was a history buff and even took college courses when I was younger. Looking across all this new information made me realize how incomplete the history I thought I knew was. The things I knew weren't wrong but were so incomplete, they may have well of been wrong. 

Something had to change. For me to continue forward I had to break away from everyone and all that group thinking where you look at everyone else to get a feel for what they want to hear. I was being told this and that by the masses that really don't know themselves what's happening or going on. They were being told the same half-truths as I was. My thoughts before this experience were a mish mash of everyone's beliefs and opinions. I didn't really even know or understand what my thoughts were. I had to ask myself, "What do I know?" and "What do I know only because someone else told me?" 

This little self-examination made me feel like I didn't know anything! My plumber was telling me what was happening in Palestine/Israel. Did he really know? I had to start educating myself so I could separate out, what were the things I was saying that were just beliefs I had? And what were things someone else had told me that maybe they knew, but I knew nothing about. We get in these conversations, and I always wonder what it is people are telling me that they know? (What are the facts?) And what are they telling me that's just something they heard from someone else, be it the news, their Church, office gossip, friends... Can anyone just give it to me straight! The internet proved to be an invaluable tool to find those answers. Who's right, and how do we know? I hit the books!

What led me to ask myself these questions? The media of course! Took me a while, but I started to think that maybe these people didn't know what the heck they were talking about! At the time I was a news junkie! I couldn't get enough. Watched them all. I wanted to know what they all had to say. Unfortunately for them, I'm also a very aggressive reader. This experience eventually led to me getting rid of my TV. The story that let the cat out of the bag for me on the media was Islam. As the media stories were getting more and more over the top, I could see that they were flooding the media with more and more misinformation. 

I was watching the News, and they were talking about the Radicals in the Middle East. While showing us all the death and destruction that goes along with terrorism in the background, they were showing a verse in the Qur'an that talked about the Disbelievers. I pulled up the Qur'an and brought up the verse that was being shown on the TV. Sure enough, it said word for word what the TV was showing. I wanted to know what it was that Islam was being taught to try and gain some understanding. Not only as to why they would act this way to someone outside their faith, but more importantly, how do you convince billions of people to believe these things? I went to Book 1 and started reading. There are 114 Books in the Qur'an. The 1st book is very short, just a few sentences. Praise be Allah stuff. I went to Book 2. There are only 7 Ayahs in the first book. An Ayah is basically a verse. Some are just a sentence, but some can be longer like 5 sentences. Book 2 is called Cow and was a much longer read, 285 Ayahs. While I was reading Book 2, I came across this verse,

2:62 Indeed, the believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabeans1—whoever ˹truly˺ believes in Allah and the Last Day and does good will have their reward with their Lord. And there will be no fear for them, nor will they grieve.

Footnote - 1
The Sabeans are an indigenous group that believes in a supreme being and lives mostly in Iraq.

Right away I was thinking "Jews and Christians will have their day with the Lord"? I thought we were the "Disbelievers"! This says, "Indeed the BELIEVERS" I already knew in the 61 verses I had read before it, that we (Christians, Jews, Sabeans, ...) are not the Disbelievers. While I was reading Book 2 it was describing the Disbelievers, and they are describing someone else, not Christians and Jews. We will get to all that later when I talk about the history. Also, Sabean? I never heard of that faith until I read it that day in the Qur'an. Included in the footnote it said that Sabean was the faith in the Mid East before Islam and Christianity. I had never thought about what the faith in the Mid East was before Christianity and Islam came along. Turns out Sabean was the very 1st faith and all the other faiths; Hinduism, Zoroastrian, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam are all products of the Sabean faith. These are the 7 faiths that still exist today. As a history buff this experience made me realize that to understand history correctly you have to know what the different faiths are teaching. If you don't know what they believe you not only won't understand the history fully, but it also lets the media tell us anything. Because we don't know ourselves, we have no choice but to believe them no matter what they tell us or disbelieve everything they say and know nothing. The sad part is that the reporters don't know either. If they don't know the faith, they can be told anything just like us and have no choice except believe what they are told. Just that term Disbeliever can be deceiving if you don't know the faith. It looks like a term that would mean anyone that doesn't believe in the Islamic faith. I myself thought that until I read it and got an understanding of who they were describing.

I was only about 1/2 way through the 2nd book of the Qur'an that I knew that what the media had said wasn't exactly true. The Qur'an mentions at least 3 or 4 times in the 2nd book alone that the Jews are God's chosen and that he chose them above the worlds... What the media were saying about the Disbelievers may have been true, but it was downright misleading because of what they weren't saying about it. I learned that the media gives us enough truth to make us think a certain way, and then just stop. Leave out enough, and the truth is no longer the truth. As you can see from verse 2:62 above, that it must be describing someone else. I found that it's a combination of how the media and others teach us about Islam, and the language they use like "Disbeliever". The people in the Middle East live under similar circumstances with their media and religious leaders and what they are told about us. Just as we are told they are the terrorists; they are told we are the "Great Satan" in the West. The Fascists on both sides driving the hate. This drives the division which they need to stay in power.

This disturbed me because it meant that a news source that I trusted at that time just tried to mislead me. That wasn't just any media, it was the source I had (and this is important) "CHOSE" to believe. How many other things were they misleading me about? This was worse than a lie! I felt I had been slighted by people I trusted to give me accurate information. A slight is worse than a lie! A slight is giving us truth in a misleading way. Why were they misleading us? What does the Qur'an really say?