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.
These moozlum pukes and their apologists are truly internal enemies in America (and everywhere else). They are members of a blood-lusting, death cult. They seek happiness through death...yours or theirs. Our traitorous “leaders” love them.
Title is moronic. Nationality and religion are not mutually exclusive. His nationality is not the issue. His religion is.
“A happy young married couple, and yet another attempt to strip the American people of their prime natural right of self-defense, spoiled by racists pointing out who they are. Come come ... “ Salon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y34RlJ0L0xE
Verbal obfuscation; he was merely born here a mere accident of geography, in reality he was “Farouk!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We have to stop this crap, recognize them as Arabs first of all. These invaders are Arabs, Mexicans, Pakistani’s, Syrians, Chinese first and last. It is the media engaging in this mere verbal legerdemain.
Verbal obfuscation; he was merely born here a mere accident of geography, in reality he was “Farouk!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We have to stop this crap, recognize them as Arabs first of all. These invaders are Arabs, Mexicans, Pakistani’s, Syrians, Chinese first and last. It is the media engaging in this mere verbal legerdemain.
Taqiyya.
Oh come on Steve. Get the blinders off. You can be an Arab and nobody would have a problem with that. However, being a Muslim by definition means that it is YOU that has a problem existing with the rest of the non Muslim world. Hence, you gotta go!
Salon in bed with the musloid enemy...what a surprise.
heh...
One time I farted so loud and long that my voice recognition software wrote a Salon article...
Steven is a hyper drama queen that should face the reality that certain religions want him dead.
Liberals will deny the truth and the obvious even if it kills them. What fools!
An American? Was he an assimilated American with allegiance to us? If not, why not?
Assimilation into this country, allegiance to the flag and the republic forcwhich it stands and the intention to do so is a requisite for immigrants and what they intend for their children
Did this guy ever pledge allegiance to the flag in public or private school? Did his parents ever become citizens
Salon will fade or they’ll. figure out. The immigration issue at the moment as it is owned by the liberals but being taken away from their irresponsible control, morphs in their hands from, let’s take in all refugees, to everyone is an American as long as they’re here to of course they love this country why else would they come here (the latter is always stated in anger no answer is allowed)
The new control will be back to founding principals. We are a nation. Not of immigrants that’s not in the founding documents. We are a nation of American citizens. With allegiance to the flag and the republic. Immigrants who want to or who want their kids to not assimilate or worse are welcome only in very recent history and that sentiment is perpetuated by a few in control with questionable motivations and by an ignorant easily swayed voters
If he’s an American, then I’m not an American.
Of course, it must be the US, as no one busts into a party and starts shooting ANYWHERE else in the world...
If you believe that, you can confirm your reservations at a Mali hotel, or perhaps you'd prefer a nice room in Fiji? How about Christmas on the Lebenese coast? Maybe a quiet trip to a museum in Tunisa? Or take in a concert and dinner in Paris? Maybe a quick trip down the world renowned London tube? Or walking with your woman down a dark street in Sweden?
He is as American as halal food.
While teaching at Virginia Tech in 2013 Salaita became the center of controversy after writing an article in which he explained his refusal to endorse the “Support our Troops” slogan. Salaita stated that “In recent years I’ve grown fatigued of appeals on behalf of the troops, which intensify in proportion to the belligerence or potential unpopularity of the imperial adventure du jour”. He criticized what he called “unthinking patriotism”.
Did you notice in that commercial it’s the “dumb blonde” who asks why they can’t just get in the running car?
I didn’t get it until mrs p6 pointed it out.
He’s a Muslim and an American.
Some people are Murderers and Americans.
Some people are Child Abusers and Americans.
His main point is pointless.
Did you notice in that commercial it’s the “dumb blonde” who asks why they can’t just get in the running car?
I didn’t get it until mrs p6 pointed it out.
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