While I commend ‘Aliens in America’ for presenting Muslims as normal people through the character of Raja, the attempt to ingratiate Islam into American society through portraying aspects of this religion is grossly irresponsible. Given the range of murderous edicts currently preached by Islam, attempting to normalize Islamic ideology through this series is akin to presenting viewers with a sympathetic main character who follows Ku Klux Klan ideology.

Members of the Ku Klux Klan are of course human beings too, they are capable of love and laughter, and kindness to strangers. It’s just that for whatever reason, they have fallen into adhering to an ideology which underpins violence and hatred towards certain groups of our fellow citizens. For this reason, if a TV show introduced a sympathetic character who also happened to be a Klansman - and it mentioned this affiliation - it should also expose the hateful aspects of Klan ideology. Note that I’m not suggesting that Klan ideology is as vile and murderous as Islamic ideology - which seeks to victimize Muslims as well as non-Muslims, and targets around one-sixth of the world's population.

Among its teachings, Islam (not to be confused with everyday Muslims) currently preaches that a variety of groups of our innocent fellow citizens be executed. The groups are apostates (Muslims who leave Islam), practising homosexuals, married adulterers, blasphemers, and atheists. The victims implicated in these teachings amount to tens of millions in the US, and around a billion people worldwide. (I have already had to detail these teachings - with links to Islamic websites - due to another recent Islamic-apologist TV show named ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie’. For anyone interested I have asterisked pertinent posts of mine at my posting history.)

Muslims who are considering leaving Islam, or who are homosexual, or who have cheated on their spouse, should not have to live with death threats hanging over their heads. Also, the freedom to blaspheme against Muhammad/Allah, and the freedom to express disbelief should be a given. And of course the same goes for non-Muslims.

It is to be hoped that the creators/writers of ‘Aliens in America’ get educated on Islam, and use the opportunities this show presents to help create pressure on Islam to revise its teachings so that it can become a religion not so drastically at odds with modern Western values of tolerance - and a religion that Muslims can be proud of belonging to, without feeling threatened.

For Muslims considering leaving Islam but fearful for their lives, a new group of ex-Muslims was formed last June in the UK to support others – see their photos and mission statement at http://www.ex-muslim.org.uk/indexManifesto.html. A radio interview with their spokeswoman was conducted on 18 July 2007 on ABC (Australian) radio and can be heard at http://www.ex-muslim.org.uk/eng/mediacoverage/audio/Australian%20radio-July-18-2007.mp3 – I recommend that the writers of ‘Aliens in America’ listen to this short interview.

I believe that ‘Aliens in America’ can be responsible as well as funny by aiming some of its humor at these obscene Islamic teachings. Perhaps Raja could leave Islam, and then learn to deal with the subsequent death-threats from some laughable bad-guys. Or maybe a third friend – a wise-cracking ex-Muslim - could join up with the two boys. If we continue to pretend there is not a gulf between Western values and the current ideology of Islam this will only prolong the disharmony - when we should all be pushing for an urgent revision of Islam’s murderous edicts.