So I was looking at my brother and thinking that he so fits the
"terrorist profile".
I mean, he's seems really dodgy. He's dark, bearded, young, single,
male. He lives alone, not too many close friends. He's quiet and
withdrawn and keeps to himself. He's a bit of a religious zealot,
except that he's of a christian variety - lucky him.
I mean seriously, the bus driver was listening to talkback radio this
morning (I cannot take listening to that crap!) and people were
crapping on and on about "all these Muslims" this and that and ffs, it
pisses me off!
Terrorists are dickheads. No one is disputing this. Extremists who try
to kill lots of people along with themselves are fucked in the head.
They're deluded, end of story.
But to all the people calling up that talk back radio station and
shitting on about people "from all these countries" who can't
assimilate and about people who don't have "western values"(whatever
the fuck they are) and calls for all Muslims to have it stated on
their boarding pass....I am absolutely horrified at hearing all that.
Half the comments miss the actual point, and the other half are
completely misinformed.
This is religious persecution at its very core.
I'm not naive, I'm not a tree-hugging hippy, in fact, I've grown up in
the most right-winged, conservative area in the country. But I speak
as someone who was born in and who has grown up in "western countries"
with an Indian/Asian background of which I am proud.
And I wonder, what if a small, radical group of people started suicide
bombing Sydney Harbour and they were, say, young women in their 20s,
highly educated, Catholic, raised in Australia, but of Indian
background. How the fuck would I feel if I had to walk down the street
and everyone though I was a freaking terrorist?
But that's the kind of society we're creating. It's sickening to hear
otherwise perfectly nice people say terrible things about others
because of their religion of cultural background.
What's happening around us is fear mongering at it's simplest. It
freaks me out - the number of people who can't see through that.
There's a fantastic book by Terry Pratchett called Jingo. It's one of
the best war parodies I've read. The interesting thing was that it was
written in the late 80s, but it's an extremely apt read at the moment
considering the way the world has changed in the last few years. He
explores the way ignorance breeds, the way attitudes, on both sides of
a dispute, are formed. And my favourite character, Sam Vines, stands
as the level-headed one who sees it all for what it is. The idiots at
both sides of the dispute. He doesn't get caught up in the hearsay,
the hate mongering, the fear mongering. He just works out where the
problem is and gets going with fixing things, realising that diplomacy
is never that simple.
We need to rid the world of extremism, violence and stupid, ignorant
fuckers. Most people would have to agree with that.
But to do that, what the hell are we willing to sacrifice?
4 comments:
ignorance breeds fear breeds ignorance breeds fear. I can't begin to imagine how it must feel to be a young asian man walking down the street in the UK right now, but I'm sure it's not good. And that kind of suspicion can only add fuel to the fire.
I wish I could say that we were moving towards tolerance and understanding over here, but what we're moving towards appears to be martial law and restriction of rights and privileges. It's a scary world.
Terrorists are desperate people.
And people need to be wary of the label terrorist, because it has been so over-hyped in the media since 2001.
My grandfather, rest him, was considered a terrorist in 1960s/1970s Chile for being an outspoken Socialist. He didn't kill anyone; he protested, demonstrated, voted, but according to the US... well, you know.
He was a terrorist of the intellect (a tradition proudly carried on by his grandchildren ;o) ), because he voiced an opinion in opposition to that which the rest of the world had been taught to agree.
It's the same today. Fuck the US and their creeping totalitarian doom; I don't agree with the whole killing people thing, but the citizens of this world have the right - nay, the responsibility - to express their distaste (if not outright fury) with leaders whose self-proclaimed jurisdiction continues to spread like disease, and partially due to the inability or unwillingness of US-friendly sovereign nations to resist the lure of trade and military alliances... and in doing so, become America's bitches. Australia and the UK, for example.
What people don't understand is that the US is a global power, but only 250 million of those 6 billion affected by the election of a scarecrow to ultimate control actually had the right to vote for said scarecrow (and a great many of those chose not to). So in essence, less than 200 million people picked a warmongering fuckwit as their president, who then decided to go off and wage war on a stack of countries WHO HAD NO SAY IN THE MATTER.
Nothing sounds less like democracy to me. That's a fucking oligarchy.
Oh, and he also declared war on an emotional state, ie, Terror. War on Terror. Please. You might as well start a War on Confusion. War on Lust.
You ask what we're willing to sacrifice? I tell you humanity would get along just fine without the artificial borders of nation-states, wealth and politics. Rich vs Poor, Left vs Right. Fuck it all. Countries are too large and too powerful to be run by mere politicians... they need to be given back to the people.
(ps - yes, edited to fix some bad, bad grammar)
It's bad being a Muslim male in the UK, but at least you can get away with people not being sure if you ARE a Muslim or not. Not all Muslim men have beards after all, and you don't HAVE to have one.
Being a Muslim women, where you have to wear the headscarf is much more difficult. People associate the extremism with 'extra' signs of religiosity, so when a girl in the UK has on a headscarf, it's even worse.
Sometimes I look down from the top floor of my building, and just wonder what the hell the world is coming to and whether if I was your average white person, I wouldn't feel the same way.
Education is definitely the way forward. But unfortunately the ones that need it the most are the ones most against it.
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