Posted on 12/24/2015 11:17:11 PM PST by Impala64ssa
Dear Mr. Abrams,
When you were younger, did your elders ask you questions like, "If you could have lunch with anyone in the world, who would it be?" I have a hunch your answers were a lot like mine: Jean-Luc Picard, or rather Data. Possibly Q. Definitely Princess Leia. Maybe Darth Vader. (On second thought, maybe not Vader. I feel like he’d be distinctly unimpressed with me.) Star Trek gave me hope. Star Wars was my happy place.
Which makes you my hero. And a lot of other people's, too.
You’ve rebooted both sacred franchises. You not only get paid to live in some of the greatest worlds ever conceived, but to extend them into our age. What an honor and a privilege it is to re-imagine our most cherished tales. But with great power, as Ben Parker would say, comes great responsibility.
This should be a joyous week for me, with the release of both the new Star Trek Beyond trailer, and Star Wars:The Force Awakens. Had you asked me about this a few months ago, I would’ve told you so much happiness in so few days should be banned.
But that was before Paris, San Bernardino, before leading presidential candidates began actually talking about people like me being banned. The national climate for Muslims is uglier than I can recall. I'm legitimately afraid folks dressed up as Jedis at the premiere might be confused for Muslims, and attacked.
That’s where we are right now.
When it comes to Islam, a fair proportion of Americans seem to go nuts. We’ve had Ben Carson saying Muslims aren't loyal enough to be be president, Jeb Bush claiming Muslim refugees shouldn't be let in, Donald Trump talking about special IDs, databases, surveillance techniques, killing family members of the San Bernardino shooters, and Klu Klux Klan members are recruiting anew on the fear of Islam.
I think you can see where I'm going with this. Many Americans fear Islam and think our faith is incompatible with U.S. values. We cannot possibly change these narratives on our own. Whether or not someone likes Muslims is dependent on whether or not she even knows a Muslim. It’s unlikely, even if every Muslim had a transporter device, that we could meet everyone, and change minds single-handedly.
As Muslim American parents, we’re struggling to keep our kids faith innocent
There are a few million American Muslims. There are over 300 million Americans.
Movies and music, art and popular culture — your purview — they can make the introductions we need. At light speed. I know there will be many other projects and films with your name, your vision and your lens flares inside them. (I'm hoping someone gives you the money to make The Silmarillion.) But please, Mr. Abrams, consider going back to Sector 001 one more time. There’s just nowhere like it.
Especially for the away mission we need you to go on.
A Pakistani kid growing up on the margins, I was an awkward child with overly large glasses and way too much hair (not a problem for me anymore, incidentally), who had his first conversation with a girl he was attracted to many years after most of his peers forgot about their braces. I adored Star Trek because it portrayed a future where imagination, discovery and courage were all that mattered. Who cared about races or religions when there was an entire universe out there to explore and discover?
That's the very kind of place where America can not only meet a Muslim, but see her as a hero. What other franchise can do that? A white guy called Luke, born on a planet named after a city in overwhelmingly Muslim Tunisia (Tataouine inspired Tatooine), that we can all believe. But a Jedi named Muhammad? Right now that feels unlikely.
By bringing a Muslim to Star Trek or Star Wars, you'd be so very faithful to the enterprise, too, continuing a proud tradition of breaking boundaries, of reconfiguring the stuff of our stereotypes. Just like Gene Roddenberry, of course the original creator of the Star Trek TV series.
When the Star Trek creator cast Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura, he made a Trekkie out of Martin Luther King Jr. One of America’s greatest leaders knew the power of visibility. In fact, he urged her to stay even when she was disillusioned with her role. (When Kirk and Uhura kissed, the show was banned by CBS affiliates in parts of the South.) There was a Russian character too, Pavel Chekov, when Russians were the evil empire on the other side of the world. There was Hikaru Sulu, too, of Japanese descent, when the internment camps were not so distant a memory.
All of them, on the bridge, against Khan or, better yet, joining forces to expand our knowledge of the universe. These weren’t characters briefly introduced and revoked. They were protagonists who opened the door to the diversity many of us now take for granted, precisely because they challenged the norms and expectations of their time. Let’s do it again.
A crew of Asians and Caucasians, Vulcans and Muslims (bottom line, there would need to be a few of us to represent anything close to global population stats, but I'd be satisfied at this point with one), seeing what's just around the corner, facing down danger together: Star Trek against the clash of civilizations, a movie that inspires generations, that takes hold of our imagination, that forces us to wonder whether the things that divide us today might not tomorrow. Make it so, please.
Besides. Wouldn't that be Idolatry???
Sorry about that. 1 1/4 Billion.
Moe and Dolphie!
“where the crew of the Enterprise tries to figure out how to pull your head out of Uranus.”
LMAO!
Yes, I’d like to see an Islamic hero who incorporates into Islam the Japanese ritual of seppuku (honorable, stylized suicide) as being mandatory WHENEVER a Muslim has a bad thought about a non-Muslim. Now THAT would be something to celebrate and would be heroic.
Until that happens...NO MUSLIM HEROES...only Muslim villains.
It was revealed that portions of the Koran pre-dated the life of Muhammed. How about a DA VINCI CODE where it’s revealed that their entire religion is a fraud? Oh, wait. They’d bomb theaters and murder the creators of such a film. It’s Christians that are the easy targets.
Notice the fake fear of backlash card. They kill us and yet they are the ones with legitimate fears?
I did see one story this week worthy of a verified act of Muslim heroism. Muslim gunmen boarded a bus in Africa and asked the people on the bus to separate Muslims and Christians. The Muslims spoke up and say, “No. You will have to kill us all.”
If Muslims did that worldwide, there’s never be another Islamist attack. The mother who saw the pipe bombs would speak up. The families of the suicide bombing would be ostracized instead of celebrated. The dead bodies of these murderers would be cremated (an unIslamic burial) with no one willing to perform their eulogy.
Behave heroically Muslims and then we will celebrate you.
Well the politically correct bent of the age is such that it’s possible we would see it happen, should no other trend appear and intervene (and it yet could).
I try to see it all through the light of God, who will, if we are not very careful to avoid noticing it, witness to us something of Himself right in the middle of the worst depravity, just to keep the devil knowing who’s boss.
A Muslim hero would do some very un-Muslim things. In real life we can get around this via taqqiya, the ability to go Calvinball when needed. However when imams see it, they may be less open minded. It could be the fear of a fatwa keeps this from occurring.
If I as a Christian were a cartoonist and were posed with this request and I had the power and boldness to do whatever I wanted... well let’s see what I might do. I think I’d have the Muslim resign Islam and become Christian after catching hell from imams for trying to do good to unbelievers, and then hearing a passing preacher talk about the opposite attitude being found in Christian faith. Then this ex-Muslim would save the lives of millions of grateful Muslims who would become Christian too... Yes, I would.
And I believe the operative line in the movie went something like:
"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."
Sometimes God puts a spark of humanity even in the mind of Muslims. You can bet the Christians on board were praying like mad!
Ah yes, no Jews or Christians in Star Wars but by will of Obama and NASA put some muslims in it, by all means.
I did see one story this week worthy of a verified act of Muslim heroism. Muslim gunmen boarded a bus in Africa and asked the people on the bus to separate Muslims and Christians. The Muslims spoke up and say, “No. You will have to kill us all.”
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I read that “story” also. I have my doubts about it having actually happened.
Mohammed was "the last prophet", as such there can be no "reform Islam". The reformation for muslims will only come when they reject Mo's warlord cult and return to the Judeo-Christian Bible as Jews or Christians.
I believe in spiritual influences... God has a book that has more information in it than just, “This person is a Muslim now.” This book chronicles what the entire history of the person will be.
A present Muslim could bend, either temporarily or permanently, to an actual Christ. More and more, “Churchianity” won’t fly in the Middle East in the face of such terrorism. The terrorism forces purity on Christianity as nothing else will endure.
Such a meme as a “reform Islam” would not be entirely impossible — people can and do change even the most fundamental religious tenets in response to various pressures and enticements — but in the face of fundamental belief it would be terribly difficult to engineer, and by the time we finished trying, we might as well just have evangelized.
That number floats wildly even in their out accounting (1.0-1.5 billion, so they claim).
There are millions of so-called muslims in this world who have no choice in this matter. They are not permitted a freedom of religion. Some muslim nations prohibit the practice and texts of all other religious beliefs. Even in some theocratic nations where other faiths are permitted, persons who were born to a muslim father are not permitted to leave the cult under penalty of death.
When the US government was busy making sure that terrorists held prisoner at Gitmo got korans and halal meals, they SHOULD have been notifying the prisoners that they were FREE to practice any religious tradition, not just Islam.
The little drama queen probably never saw JJ Abrams’s Lost, which featured the Muslim Syed, well after 9/11. And Syed was one of the coolest characters in all of JJ’s works.
And yes I mean it... there is at least one “reform Islam” that I know... we know it as Bahai.
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