Wardah Khalid is a young Muslim American woman from Houston who will be speaking on December 15 at the MPAC annual convention in Pasadena. I have been doing some research into the various speakers who will be speaking. In the below Huffington Post link, there are three articles that she has written about her experiences as a young Muslim American in the post 9-11 years. I don't say this pejoratively because I take her words as representative of how many young Muslim Americans must feel with world events being what they are, 9-11, and how they all fit into it and how they feel about their identity as American Muslims. Khalid's words indicate that she is trying to build bridges with the non-Muslims around her. If she is sincere, good for her.
The two articles I found most interesting were about the famous anti-Islam video and her visit to Ground Zero.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wardah-khalid/
In the article about her visit to Ground Zero, I was struck by the fact that I had had a (somewhat) similar experience in 1972 when I visited Hiroshima. When I took a tour through the museum, I also felt self conscious as an American because to visit Hiroshima is, indeed, a moving experience-as is visiting Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona). Yet, I don't recall anyone staring at me in a hostile manner or saying anything to me. In addition, I was buttressed by the facts that Japan started the war and that the decision to use the bombs was made to end that war and prevent millions of other lives, both American and Japanese, from being lost.
Still, Hiroshima was an emotional experience for me, and I was acutely self conscious (not ashamed) to be there as an American.
Ground Zero, of course, is a different story. There were no shades of grey on 9-11.
In Khalid's account of visiting Ground Zero, she talks vaguely about the reactions of others to her, as a Muslim. Yet, there is no mention of insults, assault, or even hostile looks. Has she ever wondered what might happen to her had the tables been reversed and she were visiting a place in an Islamic country as a non-Muslim American where they had suffered a similar attack from us?
I will leave it to the reader to take Ms Khalid's words as they will. The impression I take away is that she is a sincere person, but that she is in denial about certain aspects of this entire phenomena and she needs to really take a deeper look into what is driving acts of terror not only against the US, but so many other targets as well-including within Islamic sects themselves.
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One reason I come back to this column is that Gary does have a capacity to look at a different point of view, and I don't mean opinion, I mean the position and life experience from which one might view events.
One factor concerning Hiroshima is that both Germany and Japan were pursuing nuclear weapons technology also. With governments intensely committed to thinking of individuals as primarily members of a group, there is no doubt that they would have used such weapons on the perfidious Americans. The tragedy of Hiroshima of course is that the dead were mostly civilians, who while part of Japanese society, were hardly in charge of war policy. Our actions also targeted these civilians for being "their people."
The difference with 9-11 is that no government sent military forces to wage war on the United States of America. Afghanistan's rulers-du-jour hosted the masterminds, and we legimitately attacked there, to the temporary relief of many of the inhabitants. But the perps came from elsewhere. Thus, a certain amount of hostility was directed toward A-rabs and/or Muslims. Since individuals of either description had not even a responsible government to turn on, much less any other relevant connection, naturally they consider hostility toward themselves to be misplaced.
Americans should welcome Muslims visiting ground zero, just as Republicans welcome Americans of African descent who are willing to give the GOP another chance. After all quite a few Muslims died in the twin towers.
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