I have just realized that my 87 year old father has drunk deeply of the koolaid. I had no idea he had such fossilized ideas about Muslims. And it hurts that I can't talk to him about it.
My father went through WWII as a fighter pilot. He flew over Nagasaki and Hiroshima after they were A-bombed, and told me how devastated they were. He was badly affected by the war, I think he had PTSD. I thought he would abhor war, as I do. Obviously not.
This all started with the shooting at the
Jewish Federation in Seattle last Friday .
When my Dad called on Saturday, we talked briefly about the shootings, and he asked if there were a lot of Muslims here. I told him there were. Then I remembered all the right-wing clap-trap my uncles had been sending him about Muslims. I wanted to reassure him about my safety. So I wrote
Dear Dad,
I hope you don't take the right-wing crap Uncle Jack sent about Muslims seriously. Ninety-nine per cent of them are peaceful, just as are 99% of Christians, 99% of Jews, and 100% of Buddhists. And lest we forget, the Old Testament has many tales of the Hebrews wiping out whole towns, men, women and children. Not to mention that Christianity was spread at the point of a sword more often than not.
As I said, there are a lot of Muslims in Seattle. I see them every day on the bus, the street, and some live in my building. The only thing I have against them is the Muslim cab drivers very often won't pick me up because I have Friday with me, something to do with their religion. It is also why they resent our troops taking dogs into their houses in Iraq to search, it is an insult to them.
Israel, Palestine, and all of the Middle East, are not at war over religion, they are at war over the same things most wars are started over, land. And water in this case. Oh, and oil, in the case of Iraq. And a bunch of white people taking over land that belonged to a bunch of brown people, the same reason we fought the Indian wars here. And as someone said on one of the blogs the other day, both sides are wrong.
The Koran advocates peace, Christ brought a message of peace, but still people fight. I have only one thought, the thought of another man who was probably ahead of his time. In the words of the Beatle, John Lennon, "All we are saying, is give peace a chance."
I am more likely, I think, to witness World War III, than to witness world peace in my lifetime, but I can still pray for it, and work for it. And part of working for it is to counteract crap like what Uncle Jack sent that just serves to perpetuate myths, and tar all people of one religion with the same brush. I am sorry that a Pakistani Muslim went into the Jewish Federation and killed and wounded a bunch of people, but he is one whack job. He is not a representative of his whole religion.
Love,
Well, I started WWIII, at least between us. He is convinced that all the Muslims are here out to destroy us. I am convinced that a minority of them are. But that has not been my experience of most of them. This has:
Muslims reach out: Temple B'nai Torah congregation member Lynda Matthias, left, walks to the temple with Farida Hakim, middle, who came with a friend (who declined to be identified) to leave flowers in honor of the shooting victims. The shooting is "all the more reason that we work together for peace and justice," Hakim said.
See the whole story here.
The strange thing is that the suspect had been
recently baptized, which made him a Christian, and not a Muslim.
And furthermore, he was mentally ill.
It is just my feeling that the time for "us vs. them" thinking is over. We live on a very small planet. Do some Muslims display the attitudes my father ascribes to all of them? Absolutely. Should we tar all of them with the same brush? No.
My father has said he will have the last word on this, and so he shall. You can't talk to fossils. But I am deeply disappointed that a man I have loved and respected has clay feet.