Shiite Fight Club

A very nice day for me today. It was a day off of work for me today, a holiday. It’s the last day of Ashoora, where the Shiite Muslims beat themselves in penance. The Sunnis don’t celebrate this, as they think it is rather silly. I went by a small village in the afternoon and I saw a bunch of cars. I didn’t think the festivities would be until the evening. So I decided go have a look. In this small village, which looks very middle eastern, they was a big crowd watching the guys in a parade. The Imam (or Mosque pastor/priest) would have a microphone and be singing prayers to Allah, the men in the parade behind him would either respond or rhythmically beat themselves. It was actually kind of cool to listen to, though I don’t believe in what they are doing. There were thousands of me, in this tiny little village. The parade was men about 10 to a row, that must have been 200-300 rows deep. I couldn’t really tell because processional went on and on and on. I watched for about 20 minutes and I didn’t see the end. When these guys beat themselves, they hit themselves hard. In unison, these thousands of men would beat their chests some as hard as they could. Do that every 20 seconds for 8 hours straight, you’re going to be sore. It was like Islamic Fight Club. It was a spectacle to see, but sad nonetheless. These people are all very sincere about their faith, but they feel like they have to do these acts in order to gain access to heaven. Salvation by works, most every religion follows. I think salvation by faith espoused by Christians is the only religion like it in the world that goes by the faith only principle…I think. Everyone else, you have to work for it. It makes the conversion simple. I think God designed it to be simple, Love God, and Love others as yourself. I don’t think it gets much simpler than that. Although the loving others sometimes can prove to be challenging.

I met Austin, the Scottish deep sea diver for a game of squash. I had to leave a bit early because I was supposed to interview some people for the Adam kidnapping story. But that got postponed til tomorrow after I traveled to the office, loaded the gear, got my cameraman only to find out…sorry. We’ll try it again tomorrow. It’s a worthy video we are donating our time to. It is reprehensible what is happening to this poor child. Hopefully the media and the short documentary will serve to galvanize people to action and raise the consciousness of the situation to the governmental levels. Its hard to imagine the pain that this poor family must be going through.

I went out to dinner with Pat tonight. He’s becoming a good friend. Its nice to have someone to confide in.

Oh…I forgot to tell you. With the relationship with the South African Bollywood producer formalizing. We now have distribution outlets available. Because of his experience, other channels will be easier to develop. When you have distribution, its really easy to get financing. I talked to the musician, that Im pitching Rock N Royal too. When I mentioned that I had financing, he got really excited. I was hoping he’d pay for it. So he’s on board and he wants me to talk about the details with his manager. So I talked to the manager, who is in Bahrain. He lives in Spain, the UK, and Bahrain. The manager was very excited about it. He’s having a big New Year’s Party on Al Dar island, that’s the group of islands which the musician owns. You have to navigate there by boat. He put me on the guest list for the big new year’s party which is sold out. So hopefully we can come up with a deal on new year’s night. Plus the party should be pretty cool.