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my thoughts on the current political situation
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| Haunted |
I just had a really interesting night...
i was in the cafe getting some coffee and i see someone from my
islamic philosophy class, he always smiles at me and is a nice guy but
we never spoke before. we started speaking and instantly i could tell
that he was very open minded and that we would have a good discussion.
turns out his family is from soviet union, i forgot specifically where
some sort of 'stan, but he himeself was born in jordan and came here
when he was 5. so we had that in common since i came from the soviet
union as well. we talked about mysticism and religion and went off
onto really deep tangents it was great. we sat down and started
talking. he agreed with me completely when i told him how ridiculous i
find the fact that judaism, christianity, and islam all believe in the
same god yet are squabbling and fighting over who's prophet was first
or last. pretty ridiculous. he seems to hold a very high respect for
all religions and when i told him i'm jewish he was very astounded
that i'm studying eastern religion because he feels judaism has
everything i need. he called it a mountain of truth.
i asked him about the koran and about the specific war passages and he
spoke about the context of the koran when it was written, there was a
lot of tribal warfare back then and that it was made to be less of a
mystical religion but more of a sociological and personal dictum for
survival. but there are very beautiful mystical passages in the koran
and thats what draws him to study it and feel a connection to it.
he believes the war passages were justified then and even now they
serve a purpose. he talked about 'martial law' and the protection of
your family. that is where it all comes from. we talked about
fanaticism and bin ladin and his skewing of the koran, but it can also
be viewed similiarly when looked at bush and his skewing of the
constitution. who is right and who is wrong? it's all about
perspective and this idea was really established because of what
happened next.
we were sitting and talking about war and he was very emotional about
the topic because of all the women and children who have died in iraq
and the lack of remorse on our part towards the 655,000+ that have
died, a guy walks over and joins our discussion, hes a lieutenant
commander in the US Army and the two got into a pretty heated
discussion. both of course coming from completely opposite
perspectives on the matter. this went on for 20 minutes as i sat idly
watching and listening objectively. they were both very emotionally
invested in their respective positions, the soldier coming from the
army's perspective that civilian deaths do occur and that the soldiers
are not responsible while my friend was talking about the lack of
honor in the soldiers killing innocent people, families, women and
children. my friend talked about blindly following orders and the
soldier said that since vietnam a lot has changed in the army and that
you are now allowed to question your orders if they are questionable.
here were two young college kids both raised in america who are
arguing over which side was justified. my friend was very emotionally
charged and his hand was literally shaking because he just could not
understand all the deaths and violence and lack of compassion. he was
putting all the blame from all the bad news he's heard on this one
soldier, and i knew i had to step in.
so i told them both to calm down, and told them how i'm not muslim,
nor am i in the army so i have a pretty objective take. they were both
squabbling over little details and i told them to take a step back and
look at it more of a big picture. our response was wrong, the soldier
even admitted himself that its hard not to kill civilians since its
not an open battlefield, so i told him it should have been a police
matter, not a military matter. how do you fight a war with soldiers
against a differing ideology? an ideology that is further augmented by
you killing? the soldier admitted this, and the fact that we were lied
to about WMDs and everything, but his reasoning for going back (he's
on break but going back to Iraq soon) is that we made a mistake and
it's our responsibility to go there and fix what we did. this seemed
to appease my friend a bit and he calmed down. the two ended up
having a good conversation after that and shaking hands.
it seems that once you get people out of their passionate 'tribal'
mentality of good guys bad guys, they can recognize that the only
enemy is ignorance. not each other. most muslims in the middle east
have such a terrible opinion about us but can you really blame them?
all they've seen is war, bloodshed, death, soldiers, attacks against
their religion which they hold very dear. so they have this opinion
about us based on this limited scope, while we have a bad opinion
based on our limited view of them. most people only look at the koran
for the 100 verses that talk about war when there are 6346 total
verses in the koran, likewise we think all muslims are fanatical
suicidebombers who threaten our "freedom" just like they think all
americans hate them, their religion and want to take over the middle
east. is there a difference? both viewpoints stem from fear and
ignorance.
mainly what i learned from tonight is that the enemy is not each
other, but ignorance. and that its not a war on terror because terror
is subjective but rather a war of ideologies and the best battle we
can pursue is a battle of words and knowledge not killing more people
which will only result in more suicide bombers and death and
retaliation.
we in the west have luckily had the intellectual freedom to get over
questionable passages both in the Bible and in the Torah (old
testament) A passage on war Numbers 31:17 "Now therefore kill every
male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man
by lying with him". A passage talking about the taking of slaves:
Leviticus 25:44 "Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou
shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them
shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids". you can find more here
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/index.htm it includes both New
and Old testament
the point though, is that every religion has questionable passages in
their holy text depicting a violent side, but this was necessary at
the time for sociological progress. in the West with our intellectual
freedom we had the opportunity to overcome these passages, for the
most part, and most don't even know they exist and see only the the
good aspects. in the Middle East that isn't possible since all they
see is war and still rely on the violent passages to guide them and
give them allowance to fight back.
Do not blame the Qu'ran, do not blame Islam, do not blame Muhammad and
certainly do not blame the people. Blame the ignorance and tribal
mentality that we have developed, the lack of compassion, and blindly
following a leader who has caused over half a million HUMAN deaths on
the whim of "false intelligence" it's time that we start questioning
our morals and beliefs. if you hate muslims just because they are
muslim and want them dead and have no compassion, are you any better
than the muslim fundementalists? |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
A thoroughly interesting read, thanks for posting.
One thing I take away from it is the notion that despite collective differences (i.e. differences based on what particular religion, ideology, ethnic group, or political identity you happen to adhere to), on an individual level people find more commonalities than differences simply by virtue of being human and desiring the same basic things in life: the right to live freely and pursue one's own wants and needs.
Though it may not seem like it, there is actually a fair amount of energy being put into developing individual interactions as an alternative to groupthink on the international level. The US Department of State and USAID, among other state organizations and NGOs, are beginning to funnel capital into developing exchanges similar to the one you observed tonight - putting people into situations where they "crash" into one another, to borrow the terminology used by the movie that demonstrates the same idea. Because regardless of our preconceptions of another identity, once we come into contact with it, the natural tendency is for our differences to soften, and our empathy expand.
Anyway, I know the world we live in seems like a pretty crazy place sometimes, with ethnic and religious intolerance seemingly everywhere. But it's encouraging that on an individual level, at least, people are still just people. And now hopefully our governments will take notice. |
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