My 9/11 post received a very lovely response from H over at Everyday Stranger that caused me to reread that very same post. Yikes! Don't worry, y'all. I'm not in that bad shape. I wrote and posted angry yesterday so it was a lot more fierce than it probably should have been.
Anyway, my reply to her ended up on the longish side and both include some valuable stuff so I'm putting 'em out here in the open instead of just commenting or mailing back.
Ususally I tend to align with how you think, but on this one I think you are a wee bit angry and it is tempering what I have suspected is, deep down, an extremely giving nature.
The thing of it is, punishing an entire race for the wild, horrible fuck ups of a twisted brainwashing sociopath who is more in desperate need of decaf than anyone I have ever known is not something I would have said you were about.
I was just in Turkey, and the musical call to the mosue drifting in the evening air was absolutely beautiful. I talked to a number of Muslims there (it is predominantly Muslim) and they told me one thing that I take with me-the Koran is a list for the following to live by, but is a matter of interpretation. I was told, a few times, that they are Allah's suggestions.
I'm going to be ripped apart for this now, but is this really different than the insanely Christian nutball who felt it was ok to gun down a doctor and his driver as they worked at an abortion clinic? He interpreted the Bible in one way. Bin Ladan has interpreted the Koran in one way.
But to punish a whole race, a whole faith, for the ignorance of a sect, makes us no better than them. After all, they think ALL Americans are bad. If we think ALL Muslims/Arabs are bad, then we have fallen down the slippery slope.
Fight the hate, man.
//H
Thanks for the kind words and concern, H.
I was writing angry yesterday so that post came off a bit stronger than it should have. But not by too much, unfortunately. I don't want to be a bigot, racist or hatefilled person. I never was before 9/11 and the fact that it is so difficult to fight down these base impulses, and the way it makes me feel when I recognize my own attitudes, makes me hate them even more for what they've stolen from me. It's a nasty and vicious circle that feeds on itself.
But it is getting better. Educating myself has helped enormously. Time helps. Afghanistan and Iraq are helping - seeing that progress can be made in that region and that the psychos really do seem to be a minority. Ironically, France is helping. The way they are totally screwing themselves over their own fundamentalist problems has gone a long way towards showing how much stronger we Americans are as a country and a collective culture.
I don't blame all arabs anymore. Yes, I am initially leary when I run into someone of obvious arabic heritage, but I'm at least ashamed of my emotional reaction and can conciously master it now.
I do still believe that fundamentalism is a problem that will never go away so long as there are fundamentalists. Fanatics of any stripe, whether islamic terrorists or anti-abortion snipers are dangerous by their nature. Fundamentalism, especially when tied to the arabic culture, breeds fanatics faster than free range bunnies. To actually defeat terrorism we must educate the arabs and bring them into this century. A change in their culture is absolutely required in order to end the worldwide terrorism problem but if that change is suffrage, education and franchisement then is it really such a bad thing?
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