Changed Everything

I woke up early this morning with the thought, "This is the Sunday I'm finally going to make it to All Souls UU Church and make some friends in NYC who aren't teachers." Then, I remembered that today was September 11th, and decided I didn't really want to get out of bed after all, let alone leave the house and have to face New York City in full mourning.

Maybe it's because I wasn't in New York on that day, wasn't even in the United States.
Maybe it's because of all the time I've spent in the Middle East since then and the collateral damage I've born witness to in that time.
Maybe it's because of all the harassment and difficulty my Muslim and "brown" friends across the country and the world have suffered in the interim.
Or maybe it's just because I was raised to be such a radical humanist.

I'm so tired of America putting on this big parade about how unfortunate we were to be attacked on 9/11. We've been attacked ONCE in SIXTY-FIVE years by foreign adversaries. How many nations around the world can say that? Or as my friend Ginny noted on Facebook today: 

9/11 death toll    =      2,819. 

US casualties in the wars that followed    =      6,686. 

non-US casualties in the wars that followed  =  148,000. 

It's not that I begrudge the families of the dead their mourning, their anger, their remembrance. They suffered. I would never deny them acknowledgement of that.

But I really struggle with the self-indulgence of people in Florida and California and Kansas and everywhere in between who think their lives have been irrevocably marked by what happened in New York, DC and Pennsylvania.  Did the bombing of Sarajevo change the world?  Did the fall of Mogadishu change the world?  Did the massacre on the Pearl Circle change the world?  Did the blockade of Gaza change the world?  And these are just the tragedies of the last 65 years that I can recall off the cuff.  How many hundreds more are there that we never even heard about?  It seems so arrogant to think 9/11 is so much more important.

But, of course, it's not arrogant. It's fact. 9/11 did change the world, starting a chain reaction of a magnitude we never could have imagined, which resulted directly or indirectly in massive deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, civil war in Yemen, liberation in North Africa, increased oppression in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, increased Kurdish autonomy, God-only-knows in Iran....

And maybe that's what makes me angry most of all ... that we have such overwhelming power to impose our judgements, our grief and our consequences on the rest of the world.

BBC's Most Famous Woman In Afghanistan

Georgetown, District of Columbia, USA

This evening I met Naureen at Georgetown Law to see a film about an amazing woman I've heard speak several times on NPR, Malalai Joya. If you have a chance to see the Danish film Enemies of Happiness, I highly recommend it. There are amazing people doing incredible things in Afghanistan, and Malalai Joya is one of those heroes.

On the American side, I am also following two friends, Emily and Arnoux, who are blogging their experiences in Afghanistan.

Obama-mania, Arab style!

Amman, Jordan

First, let me say that my faith in American democracy has been restored. Regardless of who won this election, I was hoping that we wouldn't have the same quagmire we had in the last two elections, with no one quite sure who really deserved to win, even four and eight years later. I'm glad that McCain and the xenophobic, bellicose GOP right and especially Sarah Palin didn't win, but I'm mostly glad that the election was an unambiguous one.

Those Jordanians who had a preference in the recent election are also mostly pleased by the result. I can't tell you how many people, upon seeing me for the first time after the election, have said "Mabrouk! [Congratulations!]" So tonight in my adult English class at AMIDEAST, I decided to ask my students for their thoughts on the election. Most Jordanians I've spoken to tend to agree that as far as the Middle East is concerned, the two candidates are basically the same. On Palestine, the same. On Afghanistan, the same. On Iran, Obama is calling for more dialogue, but is not significantly less belligerent.

Wait a minute, I said. All of that I can agree with. But what about Iraq? Don't you see a difference there?

No, said Ghassan. Whether it's a few hundred troops, or thousands, both candidates want to leave a troop presence in Iraq. They came for the oil, he said, and that hasn't changed.

However, everyone here seems to recognize that, while there isn't a difference where Arabs are concerned, for Americans there is a huge difference between McCain and Obama on domestic issues. All the Jordanians I've spoken to here know that Obama is calling for national health care, and they will all tell you that he has the better plan to help ordinary Americans in their current financial crisis. On domestic issues, all the Jordanians I've met would say that Obama is clearly the best choice.

And, of course, all the Muslims I know here are delighted that America has elected the son of a Muslim. I haven't actually asked anyone why yet. I can think of two likely reasons, though. First, under Islamic law and tradition, any son or daughter of a Muslim is and always will be a Muslim, so although he's been a practicing Christian for years, many Muslims may be telling themselves that America has a Muslim president. The other, probably more likely reason that comes to mind is that, whether Obama is Muslim or Christian, Muslims in America have come under an awful lot of not-so-flattering scrutiny in America in the last seven years, and at the very least, Obama knows something about Muslims. I think that Muslims may well be hoping, as I am hoping, that an Obama administration will be sympathetic to the troubles of both Muslims and Muslim Americans, or at the very least, will be more rational.