"international burn a koran day" or why i think pastor terry jones is a member of the kkk

speaking of my little foray into multimedia on my text-heavy blog, i have two videos here for you. i'm gonna venture that most people have seen at least one, but i'm hoping one might be new for you.

when the whole controversy around the mosque being built around the site of the fallen world trade towers begun, i ignored it. i skimmed over the headline, but discounted the whole thing as too ridiculous. "who cares? it must be only crazy people trying to fuss. are they hot? the weather needs to cool down..." then more and more people started jumping on it, having their say. i still didn't get it. what is wrong with building a mosque around the 9/11 site? they want to build a site of worship, a site of god, of goodness - damn, if anything, it's a stand of solidarity by the american muslim community.

then the whole "international burn a koran day" blew up. with crazy white dude trying to burn a holy book. and, man, i'm not religious or anything, but i'm not trying to burn a koran, or a bible, or any number of items considered sacred to anyone. i mean i'm not trying to fuck up peoples' prized possessions, period. like, girl, i am not borrowing that beautiful scarf of yours that means so much because it was your grandma's. wanna know why? because i know there's a good chance that i'll spill something on it and i'm just not trying to do that.

so, i finally sat down and read this nyt piece about the whole thing. and crazy dude doesn't really give much explanation for shit - just says it's what god would want. now, i'm a tolerant person, but i refuse to tolerate people acting crazy and using religion as an excuse for said craziness. na, god don't like ugly. why was this crazy christian extremist somehow given a global arena to talk about his nonsense? now, to all the muslims around the world, what does the u.s. look like but fanatical, ignorant and hypocritical (hiroshima, nagasaki anyone?) christians. luckily, however, the world isn't like the u.s

now, i do have to admit, i still have a difficult time wrapping my head around the whole argument. i keep having to ask myself, so what's the big deal? people love to cite their rights when it works in their favor (ie. the bastardization of the "freedom of speech," the now unnecessary right to bear arms, etc.) but conveniently forget about such things as the freedom of religion. the fact that we have no one official religion in the united states. the fact that people can build whatever they want to, whereever they want. if the supreme court found that the kkk could march around a town full of holocaust-survivors (see national socialist party v. village of skokie), that means anti-american "terrorist" muslims could march around the 9/11 site with signs all day and their speech is protected. now, backtracking, this certainly means (non-wild'in) muslims can build a mosque near the site.

i think the problem comes in when people wrongly and dangerously conflate muslim terrorists with muslims. and in this lovely youtube clip below from a special episode of the west wing (that always makes me cry) entitled Isaac and Ishmael (done following 9/11 and acting as a stand-alone episode), josh gives us a little enlightening with the non defunct sat analogy:

so when you think of extremists, think about the people who burned down the world trade center, think about the kkk who lynched black men all over the south, don't think about rational, logical and peaceful muslims and christians, don't even think about pastor terry jones with his stupid nickel-and-dime ass. now, speaking of youtube videos, i promised two of them. so, here is one of the illest female poets ever, Suheir Hammad, with a poem that makes me tear up no matter how many times i heard it (which is a lot - i saw her live for my 16th birthday suckas):

she's amazing right?

love and peace,
k h l

side note: now if csi and west wing glorified the police department and the government, respectively. and then, the wire turned csi on its head and gave us a glimpse of what police life is actually like, and we loved it. but, i can promise you this, when that show comes around, i'll be pissed. i love me some west wing. i like to think that's how my man barry runs shit.