I have a former student, a competitor on my speech team, named Amina. She has operated on a consistent message of trying to raise awareness of the tenets of the Islamic faith as one of tolerance and love rather than the terror of extremists. It was the content of her Original Oratory, and the topic of much of her slam poetry. She is, in all relevant ways, a typical American teenager with one exception; she has the courage to publicly speak out about her beliefs.
At least twice now she has been published in the local paper's opinion section with her explanation and defense of Islam as a religion of peace. She placed herself; including her name, image, and school out in the public eye to attempt to be an agent of change. This takes incredible courage and I admire her for it.
Feb 11, 2017
April 15, 2017
In both cases the comment section is filled predominantly with hate in response. Statements such as:
FULL OF ****! You are picking and choosing to support your writing, and pretending like evil is not part of Islam. ISLAM = EVIL = ISIS = Mohammand = Quran
@Jay Larson She is lying.
Islam is a fascist ideology.
It commands islamo-supremacy, discrimination of non-muslims, misogyny, homophobia, execution of homosexuals, apostates, infidels, conquest of the world and the establishment of caliphate and implementation of sharia law, etc.
The some cowardly individual (he didn't even have the guts to include a return address or name) had the audacity to mail to her school these texts:
Well, lets see who these "experts" are:
1) Drs. Jack and Rexelle Van Impe - televangelists who
use biblical passages to suggest we are living in the "end
times" Nothing like claiming the
end is near to get some cash from the flock.
2) Robert Spencer leads an organization devoted to stopping Islamic expansion in the US and
was banned by the UK govt from entering the country for his "making
statements that may foster hatred that might lead to inter-community
violence"
Neither of these experts are Muslim. They were not raised in the faith to be able to really understand. Anyone can cherry pick passages from text to support a cause. In a soundbite generation that is generally good enough to sway public opinion, sadly.
However, rather than delve into religious issues and pretend to be an expert that I am not like these knuckleheads, I'm going to apply the plain and clear logic of rational thought to this specific issue.
We (meaning American society as a whole) are at least part of the problem. Here we have a young girl who was raised to believe her faith is about tolerance and love and uses that faith to preach and live by those very values and we have the AUDACITY to tell her she's wrong! This means, if those idiots are successful in their argument, they will convince a young girl that she needs to be a terrorist to be faithful. In being "right" they will have created that which they fear. Why? Why do they want to take a young, impressionable girl and turn her into a killer just to be "right"? It makes no sense!
Until we stop placing people into categories to define them, we will only create the very creatures we declare are the enemy. We are making terrorists out of teenagers.
I, for one, will not be a part of that hate. I am proud of Amina and hope she will continue to be an advocate for peace in a world with too much hate.
Good for Amina. I hope she is successful. Yes, "we" (in a broad sense) are part of a very large problem. The anonymity of social media and online comments only makes it worse; socialization is an area where I think technology might have done more harm than good.
ReplyDeleteOne note, though: The UK and many EU nations have absurdly stringent speech restrictions which would (thankfully) not fly in the US, so their banning anyone should not - in itself - necessarily be indicative of anything. But Spencer tends to be extreme. Also, it doesn't make sense to suggest that one cannot critique Islam unless one is raised Muslim - unless one cannot also critique Christianity or Judaism, or Hinduism, or anything else unless one was raised in an observant household.
Don, I love you bro. Perhaps you think it odd, but I actually do believe that you shouldn't critique any religion that you aren't a believer of. Belief is a powerful thing, and without belief any religious text are just words. Words are easy to manipulate. Anything less than belief when dealing with religion should preclude anyone from considering themselves expert enough to critique. Just my opinion on that though.
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