Posted on 12/03/2015 10:20:56 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Dear Compatriots:
I address you in a moment of collective stress, with another mass shooting, this one in San Bernardino, California, dominating the news. Guessing the identity of shooters-black or white, Christian or Muslim, man or woman (though masculinity is almost guaranteed)-has become a vicious social media ritual. Too many people seem to believe we can discern motivation by ethnicity, or that ethnicity alone determines what type of terror can rightly be deemed terrorism.
It was with much sadness that I witnessed your gleeful reaction when police named Syed Farooq, a devout Muslim, as one of the suspects. You seem to be under the impression that a Muslim shooter absolves the United States of brutality, forgetting that Farooq is also an American. This worldview allows you to embrace mythologies that exonerate you of political violence.
But we must acknowledge Farooq's nationality, because his terrible deed does not arise from an unknowable foreign culture, but from one endemic to the United States. You can exempt yourself from Farooq's actions only if you are willing to exclude minorities from your national identity. Many of you are happy to do that, but it's an intellectually lazy choice.
It is why I greet you as a compatriot. The greeting might make you uncomfortable because I am Arab, but I am also American. Being American requires no special ethnic, religious, or ideological character, even though our nationality contains implicit demands. One of those demands is to not be Arab or Muslim.
Enough about technicalities, though. I don't approach you to be pedantic or to beg for your acceptance, nor do I have any interest in situating mass murder into hierarchies of tolerability. I merely ask you to consider why those hierarchies exist and why it's so easy to name state violence as necessary or desirable. There's a connection between the supposed deviance of Farooq’s shooting and your endless, adamant justification of U.S. bloodletting throughout the world.
To put it plainly: thinking about violent behavior as something innately foreign is a terrific rationale for delivering violence to foreign places. It forces you to hate people and demands your loyalty to institutions designed to contravene your interests.
I think you've been hoodwinked by politicians and luminaries into hating Arabs and Muslims. This hatred is bad for Arabs and Muslims, of course, but it also does you little good. It might make you feel better about your place in the American racial hierarchy. It might alleviate your majoritarian anxieties. It might reaffirm the superiority of your faith. It might make patriotism easier to accept.
It doesn't, however, help you better understand this world and it certainly won't keep food on your table. In fact, it deprives everybody of intellectual and economic sustenance.
The attitudes you possess-that Arabs are beholden to violent culture, that Islam singularly produces religious evil, that Syrian refugees threaten American safety, that the Middle East and South Asia are places of mystical barbarity-have existed since before 9/11, but they seem to have a particular resonance in the current presidential election.
It's become remarkably disturbing, to be honest. It reminds me a bit too much of the rhetoric preceding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. I don't select the analogy at random: more than one eminent conservative has suggested interning Muslims. Liberal beacon Wesley Clark did, too, when he spoke approvingly of interment and proposed it as a remedy for the "disloyal."
Every day I hear another demagogue inflaming your outrage, urging you to maintain an acutely resentful psychology. Ben Carson, often described as judicious and presidential, recently proclaimed that he "would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation," a flagrant constitutional violation and a vulgar bit of pointless scapegoating.
Last week, Donald Trump repeated the canard that Arabs in New Jersey celebrated as the Twin Towers collapsed, claiming that he witnessed "a heavy Arab population that were cheering as the buildings came down." Trump implies that all Arabs supported 9/11. None, therefore, is trustworthy. There is no reason to make this sort of comment other than to manipulate our desire for safety and thereby create a pretext for unthinkable possibilities.
Is it too difficult to recognize the many problems of a discourse that relies so heavily on demonization to generate support? The demagogue can enact violence only when his audience refuses to recognize the violent nature of demagoguery.
Politicians love nothing more than a frightened, uninformed citizenry. It's how they convince us to cosign our dispossession. People who discern gray areas and have the ability to reason through propaganda are their most undesirable clients. The United States cannot be a functional democracy if we make ourselves so compliant.
Believe it or not, Arabs and Muslims (and other minorities) are not the source of your problems. Turn to the politicians who promise you an uncomplicated world for a better target of your anger.
I know you're ready to counter with "terrorism," but the term is largely a bromide in the American political vocabulary. It's useless to debate which groups commit more violence. No week passes that we don't hear of another white supremacist plot to murder South Asians, Jews, Muslims, Hispanics or African Americans. The U.S. and its allies generate extraordinary destruction in the regions of the world said to be uniquely barbaric. Police kill with impunity. Our president orders death by remote control. Everybody suffers but the people who oversee this horror.
Displays of spectacular cruelty pervade the United States, but you embrace any opportunity to disavow them as an exotic problem. And still more people will be killed today-many by those for whom you voted and to whom you pay taxes.
We should work to better understand how the elite apportion discourses of violence into categories of good and evil, civilized and savage, rational and unreasonable. Who creates these binaries? Who suffers their finality? Who profits from their endurance?
Let's explore these questions together. We'll surely be surprised by what we learn through the simple act of listening. Before we do, though, I ask you to remember that I am proudly Arab but legally American, and I refuse to entertain the possibility that either category invalidates the other.
There it is again: "blowback" and the Immutable Moral Stain of being an American.
This guy needs to pack his bags. He is no longer a citizen of the United States, having pledged allegiance to a foreign, America-hating ideology.
We need to QC membership in the American community. This guy is a lot of the reason why.
We need to exile this guy.
It doesn’t matter where he was born or what his citizenship was. As evidence is revealed, it is apparent that he was working for the enemy. More precisely, he was the enemy.
The children of Muslims brought to this country will grow u to hate this country just like their parents.
Who is this jerk talking to? I never saw any gleeful reaction.
Mrs. P6 is very smart. I hadn’t noticed..
How about: "Muslim vs. The Civilized World" debate.
Just how sick in the head were the San Bernadino terrorists-They were parents to a six month old baby-They leave her orphaned in a house full of pipe bombs -After slaughtering their coworkers who gave them a baby shower-And die in a hail of gunfire while engaging in a massive shootout with police.
And now we have this article about how we are supposed to feel sorry for them. BULLS#&;!
Farooq is also an American
*****************
Just because he lived here and was a citizen doesn’t mean he was really an American in terms of the character of a typical American who loves this country, its rights and freedoms, religious tolerance, and its belief in democratic principles. Just because some sits in Yankee Stadium doesn’t mean they are a Yankees fan. Maybe they are there to root against them. Farooq was here to root against Team America.
LA Times: San Bernardino shooting suspect endured turbulent home life, according to court documents
When they closed the insane asylum, The inmates all went out and founded Salon. (Not only is “masculinity almost guaranteed” when there’s a mass murder terrorist attack on us, Mosleminity is also almost guaranteed — dear Salon: are you merely super-stupid or are you deliberate agents for our enemies ?)
Liberals are the ones who want it to be a Christian vs Muslim terrorist war so they can harass Christians and ban Christianity. They are the ones who chant that Christianity is just as dangerous as Islam.
F...ing idiot!
Bad analogy. We know now that the Japanese were not a threat.
And we know Muslims are a threat for political, religious and culturally motivated terrorism.
Indiscriminate murder and behavior mimicking a mad dog.
More pearl-clutching and self-righteous, teary-eyed phony indignation from another Salon phaggot.
I contend that you simply can not be a Muslim and an American because they refuse to recognize the Constitution as the law of the land, nor will they ever swear allegiance to it.
There is something seriously wrong with people like the writer of this article. Conservatives don’t have anything in common with liberals like this guy and maybe it is time to separate ourselves from them. They get they’re area to rule as they seem fit and we get ours.
Congress has the power to create an uniform rule of naturalization.
They need to change the existing rule pronto.
When I read the first 3 paragraphs, I thought it was written by Obama.
“Believe it or not, Arabs and Muslims (and other minorities) are not the source of your problems.”
When the problem is terrorism and they commit 99.99999% of the terrorist attacks, then yes, they are the source of our problem.
This SOB, Syed Farook, was employed by the county as a RESTAURANT INSPECTOR. My GOD, does anyone else understand how many of us he and others like him around the country could poison with doses of cyanide quietly dropped into pots of soup and other restaurant fare during “inspectionsâ€? And he might have never been caught let alone killed by the police. But then, he and his SAUDI wife wouldn’t have been able to spread the “terror†message so necessary to the muslim campaign of capturing the West.
Might I be so bold as to suggest that OTHER jurisdictions that have succumbed to the national insanity of political correctness, tolerance and diversity and have hired in sensitive positions – like “Restaurant Inspector†– people who embrace the ersatz “religion†of islam RETHINK THAT POLICY BEFORE MORE OF US DIE?
Oh, how’s that...? It’s part of obozo’s plan you say??
never mind!
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