Thursday, December 3, 2015

Ugly Americans

Yesterday during the San Bernardino shootings, I was following Twitter trying to figure out what was going on.  Under the tag #SanBernardino, people were posting their horror, news updates, and what they could learn about police activity on the scanner.

When the suspect's name came out (which it did quite early on), there was a pile-on by the right wing about Muslims and terrorists.

Never mind that this man was a born US citizen.  His foreign name and presumed Muslim religion was enough for them to come out, the Islamophobes.

Never mind that mass shooters are disproportionately white males, most of them probably Christian.  Those aren't terrorism.  They aren't brown.

It's more than enough to make you sick.

This morning, we all react in horror and confusion about why this man and his wife went to shoot up his co-workers at a holiday party. His family is stunned.  CAIR, the Council for American-Islamic Relations, immediately deplored the shooting.

Expect Trump the demagogue to call for mosques to close and a registry of Muslims.

But we've seen that before.  Do we really forget that this is how the Holocaust started, "othering" the Jews in Germany?

Do we really forget so easily the "othering" of our own Japanese American citizens, expropriating their property and putting them in concentration camps?

Be watchful.  Speak out. Build bridges to our Muslim brothers and sisters.  Wearing hijab in this climate is a brave move for any Muslim woman;  be supportive.

We must stand up to the ugly Americans.

2 comments:

JCF said...

Jesus said to take the log out of our own eyes, before we help our neighbors take the splinters out of theirs.

Too many Christians (or Post-Christians, that is, Americans of a Christian background a generation or two back) act like they've completed the log-removing first half of the command.

I think removing the log is rather like unto humility: if you think you've got it, you've lost it.

[I can't bring myself to Google it, but I'm willing to bet it's out there: "Give Farook&Malik's baby daughter to a Christian family to raise!" Kyrie eleison.]

JCF said...

"Expect Trump the demagogue to call for mosques to close and a registry of Muslims."

Oh IT, you were so close! Instead, Trump's "Wheel of Fascism" landed today on "Keep ALL Muslims out of the U.S.---even Muslim U.S. citizens" [wouldn't that be a surprise to the (undoubted) Muslim-American military personnel currently serving in Afghanistan?]

Kyrie eleison---God SAVE America from American fascists (of any/no faith) ...