For years now, we've heard the bashing of Muslims from all over the place. But when does it become enough? Have we come to the point in which it's okay for our elected officials to sit back and allow such hatred? Or has that always been the way it just is?
Since I was 12 years old (that's how old I was when 9/11 occurred) , I've dealt with more than enough ridicule, because of my religion. I've always been the kind to stand up for anything I believe in, so I never sat there silently while being insulted.
I remember one day quite vividly sitting in my government class my senior year of high school. The entire school year I heard quite a few ignorant remarks from the boys in the class that were known as the racists across school. My teacher (who was a total die-hard progressive!) decided we'd talk about terrorism one day. One of the guys raised his hand and declared that "All Muslims are terrorists!" Now being the kind of person that doesn't sit back and tolerate such ignorance, I raised my hand and calmly asked "So, does that mean since I'm Muslim that I'm going to go blow up a building?" He, without even glancing at me, again stated "All Muslims are terrorists!" I replied, "Well? Am I going to go blow up a building? Am I a terrorist?!" Like I mentioned, my teacher was a progressive and couldn't tolerate such ignorance herself, so she chimed in and said to him "You know what, if you're going to insult her, at least have enough guts to look at her!" He turned towards me, with his eyes pointing to the ground, and said "Again, like I said, all Muslims are--." At that point I had to cut him off and raised my voice quite a bit and once again asked, "So am I a terrorist?! Do you really think I want to go blow up a building?" And he then changed his mind apparently and replied with "Okay. Most Muslims are terrorists." While that was factually incorrect, class unfortunately was over, so the "conversation" had to end there.
We all saw in last year's election the kind of remarks made about the then Senator Obama. You didn't have to look too hard to find a video like this...
Or this...
Once President Obama won the election, I thought calling him a Muslim as though it were an insult would end. Lord, was I wrong! It seems to have become embedded within the right as an accepted insult. We keep seeing at the Tea Party protests (which have been commended by many elected officials on the right) signs such as this...
And people such as Mark Williams who is a Tea Party leader made this remark about the president...
...an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief
HuffPost
Here's Anderson Cooper ripping him to shreds a couple months back:
So this morning, I did my usual routine of checking out DailyKos and HuffingtonPost and I stumbled across a very interesting article that featured a woman named Jane Norton. Apparently, she's a Republican senate candidate in Colorado. And to my disgust, the not so unthinkable happened (I say that, because she was sitting in a coffee shop with a tea party crowd)
Norton sat silently while a female attendee declared twice that President Barack Obama is a Muslim and while a male attendee insisted that the president -- who he deemed "an idiot" -- wanted to let babies die on the side of the road "with the garbage."
And her reply?
Well as you can tell there is a lot of passion around what is happening in our own country...And how we can channel that into positive constructive ways that will get our vote out it is going to be absolutely critical.
She said absolutely nothing in reference to the comments made. To get votes, she sat back and said nothing. The thought that this is what has been accepted as a norm within the right is scary. The thought that this woman can possibly become the next senator from Colorado is almost just as scary.
There are days that make me want to cry. There are days that I do end up crying. There are days in which I want to scream. There are days in which I do give a good yell or two. And there are days that make me want to give up. But that is something I cannot and will not ever do. If they want to hate me for what I believe in, they can go right on ahead. But to make "Muslim" an insulting word, well that's where I've had enough. I'm 21 years old now and I refuse to live the rest of my life dealing with this kind of nonsense. I don't want to to go the airport and get extra screening done to me yet again, because of my name. I refuse to be treated as though I'm not "American enough" although I was born and raised here in the United States. I refuse to see this nation go backwards. We've made too much progress to go back. I say enough is enough.
**One more thing...
I saw this image months ago...
And as an Ethiopian-American, all I can say is...what a shame. The sign isn't necessarily the shameful thing. Instead it's the fact that these people will never see the beautiful and wonderful things the continent of Africa has to offer. At the end though, it is their loss.