I'm sure many of you have been through this before, but it has recently happened to me and I'm feeling sick about it. Someone sent me one of those viral emails that are haunting the internet these days. It was allegedly from my son's cub scout pack scoutmaster, and in the subject heading was THIS IS SCARY--PLEASE READ!. It claimed to be a document called "Joys of Muslim Women by Nonie Darwish," about the many ways Islam victimizes women. I googled her and found out that such a person exists, she is a convert to Christianity, and while she did not actually write this piece, she essentially agrees with it.
I could let all this pass, I suppose, except that the creator of this screed went on to comment. Apparently Nonie Darwish claims that radical Islam aims to take over the west, tear our country apart, and establish Sharia law here. I suppose that some radicals do have that aim. That isn't what made me cringe. What got me was a special paragraph, in red, that said:
(In twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. to elect the President by themselves! Rest assured they will do so... You can look at how they have taken over several towns in the USA .. Dearborn Mich. is one and so is Lewiston, Me.... and there are others...) This was followed by instructions to pass it on, warnings that some people won't listen, and a prediction that Minnesota (where I live) will be next.
I ended up emailing the sender of the message, and everyone on the distribution list. I respectfully pointed out that not all Muslims believe what the extremists do, that the vast majority of Muslims here want to participate in our way of life, not destroy it, and then I respectfully requested that the sender consider what it means to send something like this out into the world. It amounts to an incitement to violence.
Of course I reaped the whirlwind. It turned out that the sender was the cubmaster's wife, who was furious, claimed I'd hurt and embarrassed her husband, and that sending my rebuke to the entire list was irrersponsible. I wanted to argue, and then I wanted to ignore her, and then I realized that my 9-year-old son is friends with her son, a member of the cub scout pack, and the last thing I want is to tear apart a relationship that has been important to him. So I apologized. But she saw through my apology and took the opportunity to scold me further.
Obviously, I apologized not because I believed I had done something wrong, but because I didn't want my son to be a hostage of this situation. But I decided to write about it here for the following reasons:
First, it is obvious that there is so much bad stuff out there, and so many people are swallowing it, and it is so demoralizing, that I hardly dare to hope that we can ever recover from it as a nation. I know that we must combat lies with the truth, but I don't really see how we can combat the many-headed hydra that these lies become. Every time you cut off one head, two more grow in its place.
Second, how many of us have to choose between keeping the peace for the sake of our kids or our spouses or whatever, and standing up for what we believe in? I would like to write back to her, tell her that yes, she saw through me, my apology wasn't real, and I think her message is hateful for the following reasons . . . but I also want my kid to continue in cub scouts. So I'm torn.
In the scheme of things my little heartache doesn't amount to much, but what I see going on is friendships being torn apart all over the country. I talked to a friend about it and she said she gets these from her "friends" all the time, and she can't understand why people continue to believe she wants to receive this garbage when she's told them she doesn't agree with it. My mother gets it from her housecleaner. I'm sure if I asked around, I'd find much, much more of it.
So there it is. I can only hope that this, too, shall pass, but with people claiming Obama is a Muslim, and threatening to shoot him, and actually taking shots at people on an ongoing basis, I am losing hope. One of MN's reps, Keith Ellison, is a Muslim and a damned good legislator. I can only stand in awe of his courage in entering public service in such a hostile environment.