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If the history of this planet's climate over millions of years is any guide, we are about to enter a new ice age.
CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper indicated in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he wants to see the United States become a Muslim country.
Would You?
By Sally Bishai (04/20/06)
Would you trust someone after they looked you in the eyes and lied (more than once)?
Would you look someone in the eyes and tell a lie, if only to keep someone else’s secret?
Would you hide your cross (or Star of David or whatever) if someone told you to?
Would you tell your best friend if her husband is running around on her--and you saw him with some chick at some shady coffee shop?
Would you tell your best friend that her husband had made a weighty pass at you?
Would you speak up in a room full of people who are in favor of something you're against?
Would you complain about a pornographic billboard that's situated near a pre-school?
Would you complain if the explicit content in the billboard showed kids?
Would you be grateful if someone told you the truth--something that you needed to hear--in a way that was less than ideal?
Would you let it go if someone trampled on you in some way that they were likely to repeat, and that you weren't afraid to confront?
Would you keep it a secret if you'd made a blanket promise to keep a secret... but it was that your friend was going to rob a bank? Or kill himself? Or kill another?
You may be wondering where I'm going with these questions, despite having enjoyed the imagination game they conjured up.
You may have an answer ready for each of them, and you may not care one whit for the bigger issue each represents.
See, I’ve had an especially taxing day.
Not one, not two, but seven separate people have behaved in ways that have sorely tested my promise to God to “be slow to anger.”
Each time it was a shock. Meaning, there was no buildup. It just happened, and broadsided me, hit me between the eyes in the midst of an especially sunny smile I was throwing at no one in particular.
My integrity got called into question today.
Wanna know how?
Well, sir, first I was dissed and dismissed for having made a judgment call about an especially skimpy outfit.
On one hand, my Middle Eastern-ness is to “blame” (thanks be to God) for the modest ideal that had me criticizing a billboard that depicted a girl, dressed in strings, who stared smokily into the camera with “come-hither-for-I-shall-devour-thee” eyes.
On the other hand, my American-ness kicked in, for I fully expected the right to my own opinion, and the right to say my own opinion. After all, I’m no parrot.
After this fracas (which included a diatribe against both Christians and Muslims as “psycho” or “wrong” for having moral absolutes and moral codes—I’m sure you can imagine how I reacted to this), various and sundry unpleasantnesses came my way, but they were more mundane ones.
Until.
The hell of my dreams happened, and a person I was trying hard to trust—a person I’d been warned about from colleagues and underlings alike—betrayed this fledgling trust.
I was proclaimed to have overreacted to this betrayal (finding that this person had looked into my eyes and told the same lie more than once—and recalling that this person had gone out of his or her way to bring up a topic I hadn’t otherwise thought of or even cared about to convince me that what I suspected wasn’t true) and decried as having blown the incident out of proportion.
It wasn’t so much the lie that hurt as the fact that I gave this person a chance—chance after chance, actually—after several people that I trusted implicitly warned me against this person’s pushiness, and told me that this person was a phony, a flake, a fraud, and any number of other shining traits. (A liar, a cling, a psycho, and a user, were their words.)
A final dig I would like to get in (since it was the order of the day) is the fact that the people who consider themselves to be “liberal” are the least liberal people of all.
They want to defend their own “rights” (which generally include something about wanting to obliterate anything that could offend them) whilst propagating the type of lifestyle that would offend most decent and God-fearing people.
If they were truly liberal, they’d say, “Ok, you’re a rabid right-wing fundamentalist, but I’m gonna defend your rights, anyway!”
“Liberals” get mad if someone says “I don’t drink,” but expect people to be happy when they announce that they do.
If liberals were truly liberal, they’d say “to each his own” and live and let live.
They don’t, however, want anyone to speak unless the words spoken are words that they themselves approve of.
A tru(ly) free-thinker must allow for differences of opinion.
If I were to say “Well, I don’t approve of extramarital sex, but that’s a romantic story anyway,” to an unmarried pregnant woman who asked me what I thought of her love story, then that’s liberal thinking.
But telling me that I’m wrong for having such a belief and saying “You’re wrong to be so narrow-minded, you should not have said that!” (making a judgment call on MY judgment call) or even saying “Well, that’s all fine and well, but you should keep your opinion to yourself!” is just errant thinking that is anything but liberal.
Just as they have the right to say wacky things that no one agrees with, so do I.
We should stop thinking solely about who we’re offending (which, theoretically, could be anyone and everyone by anything and everything we do) and live our lives the best we know how, and to the moral standards that we subscribe to, whatever they may be.
It is my belief that the sour face that graces a liberal upon being told “I don’t drink beer” or “Oh, I’m waiting for marriage...” is a function of a (very) deep-seated guilt they may have (but not realize) about their practices.
A man claiming to be a Christian reiterated this, and told me that I shouldn’t impose my beliefs on other people, that I should keep my head down and keep on truckin’. He told me that the best thing to do is keep my faith to myself and to realize that liberals were like this, and that most people in academia were liberals, and that they would punish (where they could) anyone who disagreed with them. (My point there was that people don’t come to America so they can sit there and be quiet! People come here to be free, and I am no different.) Still, I can understand the advice of this friendly man who doesn’t know me all that well.
But if I do, if I look the other way and pretend not to see the people I don’t approve of (not that I’m the grand arbiter, and not that THEY are) doing things I don’t approve of, I will keep looking at the wall, and not be able to look at anyone, or else, I’ll only be able to look at the people who are exactly like me, which would be kind of scary and cultish, if you think about it.
So let’s revisit the questions we discussed at the beginning of today’s program; WHO is the one with the more integrity, the one who does “the right thing” or the one who allows people the opportunity to make their own choice, however wrong it may be?
I don’t know. I can’t say.
All I CAN say is that I’m constantly surprised that life gets HARDER (as I get older and have more experience under my belt) than it could ever be when I was young, stupid, and as green as the Irish grass.
(May God help everyone to not only know their own minds, but may He give them the strength to follow these standards and do the right thing. And we all know what “the right thing” is in my mind..!)
(Printer friendly version) Email: Sally Bishai
Sally Bishai is a writer and journalist who founded X Culture Magazine in January, 2004, and Photo X Quarterly in January 2005. She is also president of the Copt X Fellowship, a non-partisan group dedicated to promoting love, harmony, and respect among Egyptians (and friends). Sally is Egyptian American (or, more specifically, Coptic) and loves to tell people what that means!
Her previous titles include "Mid-East Meets West: On Being and Becoming a Modern Arab American," and "Date like An Egyptian: The Egyptian's Guide to Finding a Mate...Or Date."
Sally is the host of "Sally Bishai's 30 Minutes With," a webshow that largely focuses on Coptic, civil, and human rights issues, as well as topics dealing with the Middle East.
Her documentaries include "Back To Square One? Fifty Years After Emmett Till," "Strange Behaviour: How Westerners Feel About Gender Roles in the Middle East," and the soon-to-be-released "Children of Kemet: The Copts, Culture, and Democracy of Egypt."
Sally's blog, "The AntiSocialite," holds information about current projects, as well as impassioned articles about politics, current headlines, the trouble with society, and many other things that will probably end up getting her killed. (Check it out at http://sallybishai.blogspot.com )
Sally's Bachelor's of Science was in psychology, but her Master's and the Ph.D. she's currently working on are in speech and intercultural communication. She teaches various classes at the university level, and finds time to lecture (off-campus) about her books, her culture, and other controversial topics.
Sally has worked in radio (international and "domestic"), fashion photography, and film, most recently working as a documentary filmmaker (as mentioned above). Her current project deals with the persecution of Egypt's Copts, which, if you'll remember, she happens to be.
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Site: http://sallybishai.blogspot.com/
UPSSA
United Progressive Socialist States of America
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