In lieu of a post today, I'm going to direct you to John Green's blog, where he gives an amazingly well-stated response to the idea of lumping all of Islam (or any religion) into one definition.
This is a subject near and dear to my heart. Hot Stuff is fluent in Arabic and studied international politics in undergrad. We've had many a discussion on exactly this. It's disappointing and infuriating to me when people accept and even encourage anti-Muslim sentiments under the banner of patriotism. In my mind, that's the opposite of patriotism.
I'm grateful for people like John who can express exactly why that is so wrong and who care enough to do so. I'm also grateful for a president who doesn't equate an entire religion with a handful of terrorists.
Tomorrow we'll be back to our regularly scheduled ridiculousness with the fourth installment of Park City Zombie Apocalypse.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Thanks for the link. We must keep open minds and not let fear drive us to discrimination.
Whale wars calls evil Japanese whalers "The Japanese" as if all Japanese are evil whalers. While not quite on the same level as some of the anti-muslim things going around, it's very frustrating especially when a large broadcasting company has no one smart enough to realize what they're doing wrong.
Awesome. Thanks for the link.
The Daily Show had a cool (albeit squirm-worthy) segment on last night where they'd actually sent one of their reporters to Iran. He kept trying to get people on the street to say they hated Americans, but the ones he found were like, 'no, actually I like Americans; they're friendly.' And the Iranian family he visited was adorable--even though he was pulling stupid antics that made me cringe.
Islam is like Christianity and most other religions--most adherents try to be good and follow the teachings of their God. But then there are the evil crazies out there who use religion to propagate hate. I figure the Islamic terrorists are to Islam what the KKK and similar groups are to Christianity.
Kiersten, Great post. Fear and ignorance breed prejudice, and prejudice in any form is unacceptable. The Muslim religion is one of the largest religions on Earth. They deserve the same respect as do people of all faiths (or no faith, for that matter). Acceptance leads to love and love leads to peace. As John Lennon said, "Love is the answer." The people of Iran are going through a difficult time right now, and we should support them. That is patriotic. That is the American way.
Great Post, Kiersten. If normal people would quit being afraid of other normal people perhaps we could settle down and get along. Politicians and news agencies stir up irrational fears between groups for their own selfish concerns.
People are people, even if we all do approach life differently. When all is said and done, we're still people. No need to hate each other.
What we need are more people standing up and saying they like others, even/especially when they approach life differently than us.
NICE BLOG.
See, I'm preaching to the choir here, because of course everyone who reads my blog is open-minded and, quite frankly, freaking awesome.
To quote a wise man: "A person's a person, no matter how small" (or small-minded, or different-religioned, or whatever...).
Post a Comment