My father drives me to school in the morning, and today he brought up the recent hot topic of the group of Muslims being booted off of a flight because they did their required evening prayers before boarding the flight and sitting in different areas of the plane. When he asked my view of the matter I was unprepared and unread, but I decided to take a stab anyway.
I am always saying that I have been blessed with the gift of perspective. I look at all sides of an issue objectively and then use common sense and reason to formulate my own opinion of the matter. No matter how it was spun, I knew that they were praying. Being a spiritual, religiously tolerant person, I refused to believe that there were any sort of ulterior motives behind their prayer. If it was a group of Christians praying and then separately boarding a flight, no one would even think twice. Religious Christians are seen as upstanding citizens, while Muslims, no matter how pious, are simply seen as angry terrorists.
My dad thought it would be nice to bring up the language barrier. The Christian faith reveres those who "achieve" the gift of tongues. How is it that we can't understand what they're saying, but we assume it's good, but when people pray in Arabic it's probably foreshadowing some sort of tragedy?
In my mind I had him beaten; no matter which right wing radio host he quoted, Reason was always one step ahead. I knew that prayer was acceptable, I knew that all Muslims are unfortunately grouped with the small percentage of Muslim terrorists, and I knew that it was utterly and completely wrong for someone to just assume that these people were terrorists because they were Muslims who just so happened to have their flight schedule overlap their required prayer. And then he crippled me.
"What would you do?" he dared to ask. I gave it some hard thought, examining the very core of my being to find the truth. I couldn't say these things if I couldn't live them. The truth, the brutal honesty that I showed myself has wounded me and my trust in myself.
I would be nervous. Not terrified, not necessarily even scared, but I would be nervous. I would think twice and doubt their motives. Day in and day out I can write the essence of righteousness, I can proclaim the truths of Reason, and I can make myself out to be an American youth untouched by politics. I can not write the truth without trying to find it, and the truth is I have been indoctrinated, instilled with American prejudice. Day by day I have succumbed to the hammering doctrine of national insecurity; I have submitted to the hateful racism of public opinion.
I don't want to be a bigot. I'd like to say that I am the exception, above the influence of politics, but today I learned that I am not. I can't live a day without being exposed to homespun politics and agenda. Is the media to blame? Am I really an unwitting variable in a government experiment? Is this what they want me to be, and are they taking pride in my internal struggle? I'm not an intolerant person, but I am seeing more and more how blind and ignorant I am. I'm letting the Zeitgeist of modern America hinder who I am and what I know to be true.
Left, right, moderate, republican, democrat, it doesn't even matter anymore. No one is left untouched by modern politics. We are breeding a new generation of people without thought, completely dependent upon the thoughts of leaders who are just as ignorant. We need a third option, WoWees, and we need it fast.
Red Blooded
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Posted by Hojo at 11:57 PM
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6 comments:
Here's the conundrum. Because a certain small section of Islam preaches hatred and death, all muslims get labeled. In addition, unlike most other religions, Muslims, becuase of their faith make a spectacle of prayer and dress (of course Christians and Jews used to back in the day).
Now these particular Muslims were making a point, and got some concessions out of the airline (IE a seperate prayer room). Look at this way. I have Muslim friends, they too are leery around esp. Middle Eastern looking Muslims.
We could even take it one step further, white still have a primal fear of blacks. If you were walking around a city, who would you be more leary of?
oh I think they should have been let alone with their prayers & be respected, some Christians have a gift of tongues, (not so far, one of my family members at home does have the gift, but is not something that is done voluntarely, comes and goes when there are prayers going on) yet a gift of tongues is not for the joy of the surrouding people but for the person him/herself, and the language is specifically languages Jesus spoke, meaning that a person that knows the language can understand clearly, there is a weird feeling (not bad) but weird when you have a person that you have known your entire life and know that they have never spoken or studied Hebrew & they sudenly erupt talking non stop. Here the trick... not everything is gift of tongues, lots of Christians fall for it, there should be good amount of awareness
At first, I was afraid of Muslims. Then, I read the Koran. There are no bomb plans in the Koran.
As for Malach's irrational fear of African American people, we're just one high five and a rainbow away from solving that.
In short, I'd get on a plane with just about anybody. In fact, even if I knew for a fact they were terrorists, I'd get on board. I'm not afraid to die in order to stop them, further their cause or even ask ditections. I'll die right now for no reason.
I mean, come on. We're all going to die before the century is out anyways, right?
Fear leads to the dark side, young Hojo.
I love EVERYONE!!!!
Except Hobbs and the Turks.
^ eh eh that is complitely true lol we are all going to die...
As I spoke yesterday with a Christian fellow, I said..."I believe you understand clearly that your main purpose is to have eternal life, right?" he said "YES!!!" then I said, "and you know that eternal life comes after death, right?" he said "YES!!!" so I said so why are you so afraid of death if ternal life is what you are looking for? are you sure that eternal life is what you want? uhhhhh he was shocked and said "uh I never thought about it", but yeah I mean some people might not really think deeper then what they should but well that is humnanity anyways.
You guys have made me feel so much better, especially the deep comment by bennie. I've been sort of beating myself up because of this.
Actually, I had heard on NPR reports that this group of people was moving around the plane, switching seats and such, and that some of them had only bought one-way tickets, which made the crew wary. In short, they were acting kind of weird and suspicious. Was it MORE weird and suspicious for them to do it because they were clearly Muslim and didn't look like preppy white fraternity boys with monogrammed sweaters? Probably.
Not saying it's right, but then again, if you're acting odd on a plane, you have to be prepared to deal with the consequences, no matter who you are. Four planes were hijacked, two buildings destroyed and one damaged, and lots of people died horribly on 9/11. Not too long ago, there was a huge plot to destroy airplanes in midflight over the Atlantic with liquid explosives.. I can't carry a fucking tube of toothpaste on a domestic flight now, so you bet your ass that security is serious in theory,if not always in practice. In other words, bizarre behavior is a red flag, as it should be, and if you act weird, you lose the right to bitch when people call you on it.
Better to be safe than dead.
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