Will Mourning yield to a New Day?
Emphasizing an anniversary date is human, though I’m not fond of the way some would exploit the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Yesterday, I saw a CNN video of the events being sold at 7-11, for example.
For thousands of families and tens of thousands of families who were friends of those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, it was a day of enormous loss. Let’s not cheapen and commercialize their grief.
The images of that day are seared in the memories of most Americans and others in the world with the capacity to witness horror and not excuse it as anything less than the vicious acts of men twisted in their minds, hearts and souls. There is little to be gained by reliving those moments, unless one simply has a fresh need to purge the emotions with a good cry.
For some, that day came as a rude awakening about the depths of anti-American feeling in the world, especially as reports came in of cheering crowds in a few places in the Middle East. For others, it came as a shock that there existed a small group in the world whose leaders considered themselves to be the sole reason for the collapse of Soviet Communism and the disintegration of the USSR, and now believed themselves capable of destroying the USA.
For all, it was a rude reminder that any and all countries can be subjected to brutality in the modern era, because hatefulness respects no borders, no moral codes, nor any life. There is no other lesson to be found in those attacks except that some people are full of hate and represent a danger to everyone else on the planet. I’ve come to the conclusion that this, alone, is all that groups like Al Qaida and Hizbollah stand for. Any other claim or profession of faith by those groups and their admirers is self-delusion and denial about the worship of hate at the core of their organizations.
However, like millions of other Americans trying to fathom why crowds of folks who may not be active participants in violence, would root for others who are, I’ve spent a lot of time since trying to understand the roots of anti-USA sentiments, especially in Middle East countries. Via internet forums about US foreign policy, online and offline resources about Islam and Arabs and Iranians and folks in Central Asian countries, and discussions with folks around the world, I’ve learned a great deal.
And not just about the modern day thoughts and faiths of many cultures. Quite often I sidetracked into their arts and literature and ancient histories. After all, many critics of the US claim we don’t understand, that we don’t listen, that we’re too arrogant to ‘get it’. I wanted to make certain I listened well.
I think many Americans are aware that the area of ancient Mesopotamia is often called the cradle of civilization, that it encompasses the area from today’s Syria, to Kuwait, with Iraq at its center, and that by 700 BC, Iraq –then called Assyria- was the strongest empire the world had ever experienced previously.
I now understand there was a time in Islamic history known as its Golden Age, reaching its pinnacle when Harun al-Rashid reigned. And that Muslim scholars made important contributions in math, chemistry, medicine and astronomy, inventing the astrolabe, advancing agriculture and introducing new foods to medieval European diets.
I’ve picked up a smattering of the works of various cultural contributors – classical and modernist - like the philosophers al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd, poets like al-Mutanabbi and Jamil al-'Udhri, cultural historians like al-Mas'udi , authors like Al-Jahiz, Ibn Qutaybah, Abu al-'Ala al-Ma'arri, al-Hamadhani and Hamid al-Damanhuri. Ibn Khaldun’s sociological insights, which arose from his travels, also provided rich portraits of many of his destinations.
I have long been an admirer of Lebanese poet Gibran Kahlil Gibran, perhaps the best known regional romanticist in the West today. Far fewer know of Ibn Firnas, who brought to Islamic Spain a broad swath of inquiry not unlike da Vinci would some centuries later. Music, math, flight and astronomy were some of the disciplines he contributed much to. Or the Persian al-Biruni, one of the greatest scientific scholars ever, who made contributions in astrology, astronomy, chronology, geography, grammar, mathematics, medicine, physics, and philosophy.
My learning does not come close to mastery, as that would take a lifetime of study and would require much linguistic training, which I’ve never done particularly well at. My point is I’ve gained a much broader understanding of the important contributions of Middle Easterners than I’d had before. One thing that impressed me greatly was how Iran, due to its geography and location between Europe and Asia, and invaded from several directions, became a melting pot of cultural influences, something the US prides itself on achieving via immigration as a source of its strength.
And I’m not done listening.
However, as events have unfolded in our nation’s counterattack on terrorist organizations and governments who sponsor or grant safe harbor to them, I recognize that there remains a great lack of understanding that continues to limit the capacity for so many different cultures to build safe and secure bridges across our divides. Chief among these is the simplistic notion that the major difference is in our sources of spiritual faith.
Only very narrow thinkers trying to exploit the difficulties to further very selfish goals would characterize them as a struggle between two great world religions. And it is not enough that US citizens start listening to the complaints and constructive offerings of Middle East citizens. If there is to be a bridge that all can trust to traverse, the folks in the Middle East must also be willing to listen to US citizens.
I don’t mean the politically motivated words of our government leaders, because that’s just a small expression of our nation’s heart and government leaders in Middle East countries have similar political motivations to twist those words so they lose all meaning. I’m suggesting that citizens of those nations listen more to the words of US citizens whose motives are more likely to match their own. |
