The Road to Morocco

Shiva_TD · Mar 18, 2017

No, this thread isn't about the wonderful 1942 movie starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour but it is about a trip to Morocco.

There are those today that oppose the immigration of Muslim refugees to America today and don't believe that we have any need for or desire for Muslims in America. President Trump received wild applause and cheering when he proposed his Muslim Ban as a candidate and there are those that continue to support both of his (Muslim) travel bans believing there's a threat even though the DOJ has been unable to produce any evidence that the (Muslims) born in the countries specified represent a threat. Trump's own DHS has already informed the president that "citizenship" does not provide evidence that a person is likely to be a terrorist.

In any case I have to step forward and speak because my maternal ancestors came to America in about 1750 to escape religious persecution in England and my wife's grandparents came to the United States after WW I to escape religious persecution in Eastern Europe. In both cases it was the mainstream "Christians" that were committing the persecution although in my wife's families case they were Jewish and in my case my more distant ancestors were Quakers. We both understand religious persecution and oppression.

My family has not been Quakers for several generations but I still relate to the official religious persecution of the Quakers during the 17th and even well into the 18th Century long after the official persecution by the Crown of England ended in the 1680's. Today I was curious about how the Quakers of today relate to the Muslims and it was almost as if destiny took me to the following story. I'm going to extensively edit the story and suggest that people take the time to read it all.

The story is about a young teenage Quaker girl's religious trip to Morocco to celebrate the Muslim Eid al-Adha, the second of two major holidays in Islam. as a Quaker.

I grew up under the care of Frankford Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and owe much of my moral and spiritual formation to my father and the hour of silence I was afforded each week. I grew up in a sphere of relentless tolerance, hunger for knowledge, and love for others. But I also grew up under the rubble of the Twin Towers, under the sole of the shoe thrown at George W. Bush, and under the burdens of patriotism versus terrorism.

I am part of an unlucky generation. We were in elementary school when the Twin Towers fell, children raised under the War on Terror. Our afternoon cartoons dealt with more than just making friends and learning to share: we learned to support our troops, where to send care packages for kids in New York City, and how to cope with tragedy. I was ten years old and inundated with the idea that terrorists looked like the bad guys in Aladdin or Indiana Jones; that to be Muslim meant to be an extremist; and that America was the top of the food chain, seeking out and taking down sneaky, Middle Eastern bad guys that we should be scared of.

I never learned that there are over 25 different varieties of Arabic, each beautifully complicated in its own way. I didn’t learn that the hijab is a choice of fashion, femininity, and faith, not a symbol of an oppressive religion. When we learned about Egypt, we only talked about pharaohs, tombs, and scarab beetles. No one told us about Gaddafi or the difference between Sunni and Shia or the tribal histories of the Amazigh people of North Africa.

So when all of my family and friends told me to be safe in Morocco, I didn’t flinch. Everything I had absorbed through my childhood had screamed at me: Terrorists are Muslim! Muslims are dangerous! Even through high school and the Arab Spring, it was the terror and oppression of an authoritarian, Muslim government that the people were fighting, trying to break free of. It never occurred to me that people could desire freedom, democracy, and Islam. It never occurred to me that my militant stance on equality was being undermined by my unconscious stigmatization.

Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, is a religious holiday celebrating Ibrahim’s sacrifice of his son, Ismail, to God. In the biblical story, God intervenes and stops Ibrahim from killing his son, giving him instead a sheep. Muslims celebrate this holiday by sacrificing a ram on the morning of the first of the three days. In Morocco this means that rams (often two or three) live on the roofs, patios, kitchens, and hallways of homes for sometimes weeks beforehand, being fattened and preened by the families before their death.

What would I do when they slit its throat? Would I watch and accept the processes of other religions, or did my faith call on me to turn away from violence? Was this in fact violence—a senseless act of murder—or was it prayer and thanksgiving? What would it look like?

It was brutal, to be totally honest. ..........

“You do not have to watch the slaughter,” our assistant director had told my group of study abroad students. I did not have the right to pick and choose what moments I wanted to experience. Their death, the act of them giving their life so that others may benefit and continue living, was so human yet so divine. To turn my back to that sacrifice would be a refusal to acknowledge my equality with these sheep.

And that is what Eid represents to Muslims, the equity of all things—of sons and sheep—under God. The sacrifice of the sheep was a statement of personal sacrifice and thanksgiving to a larger, divine spirit.

In September 2014, religious scholar Reza Aslan appeared on the live news show CNN Tonight to address the question “Does Islam promote violence?” On the show, he explained the dangers of making general assumptions about Islam. Notably, while countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran do not promote a gender-equal state, that is not true in many other Muslim countries, including Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Turkey. In fact, he stated, “Muslims have elected seven women as their heads of state in those Muslim majority countries.” The show host, Don Lemon, then responded with more generalizations, “Be honest though, for the most part, it is not a free and open society for women in those states.” With this, Lemon implies that it is the hand of Islam that is suppressing women. And isn’t that exactly what we Westerners have been taught: inequality and violence are inherently Muslim? After all, what do we see on the news but young Muslim men throwing molotov cocktails; members of the Islamic state beheading Westerners; veiled women unable to drive, go to school, or leave the house.

Unfortunately, the stories from the Middle East and North Africa that are covered by the media focus mostly on the jihadists and Islamists, small but terrifying factions of religious terrorists. On January 15, Maajid Nawaz, an ex-Islamist and current British Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate, spoke on NPR’s Fresh Air about his time in an Islamist group and their tactics for recruitment. “We mainly frequented mosques for the purpose of recruitment,” he said. “The other thing with Islamists to know is that they look upon the traditional, conservative religious Muslim community with disdain. They see them as having secularized their religion. They see them as being socially backward.” Nawaz explained that even the extreme religious groups have detached themselves from the Muslim community.

“You’re talking about a religion of one and a half billion people,” Aslan reminded the hosts on CNN before demonstrating a common misjudgement outsiders make of Muslim women:

Certainly it becomes very easy to just simply paint them all with a single brush by saying, “Well, in Saudi Arabia [women] can’t drive, and so therefore that’s somehow representative of Islam.” It’s representative of Saudi Arabia . . . It’s extremist when compared to the rights and responsibilities of Muslim women around the world . . . We’re not talking about women in the Muslim world: we’re using two or three examples to justify a generalization; that’s actually the definition of bigotry.

As a Quaker, I feel it is my obligation to lead my own life in the most peaceful and nonviolent way possible. I must also live with integrity to my personal beliefs and an understanding of others’ beliefs.

In the quiet meditation of that (Eid) dinner, I could physically feel walls within myself crumbling down. As smart and openhearted as I liked to imagine I was, I had still come into this holiday with a fear of violence and a disbelief in the beauty of Islam and other religions. Watching the sacrifice and being able to participate and immerse myself in something I understood so little opened my eyes. I was able to realize that there is no true definition of any religion: the Qur’an, the Bible, the Vedas, all are just words. It is the people and the communities that make a religion what it is.

“Islam doesn’t promote violence or peace. Islam is just a religion, and like every religion in the world, it depends on what you bring to it,” said Aslan. It can be hard to reconcile personal bias or ingrained beliefs. For me, it was hard to accept that one can sacrifice an animal in love and equality. It was hard to understand some of the interpretations of the Qur’an about how women should dress or men should pray. However, all people have the choice to act in their own ways, and I will hold all people in the Light, regardless of whether or not I agree with their interpretations of their Scripture.

Nawaz said it quite finally, “No religion, whether it’s Islam, Christianity, or any idea based on Scripture or texts, is a religion of anything. Islam is a religion. It will be what Muslims make of it. And it is the sum total of the interpretation that Muslims give to it. So it’s not a religion of war. It’s not a religion of peace.”

As Eid came to a close and I shut myself in my room,... sat silently peering out the window at the fires still burning along the medina street and... I finally relaxed into peace. I felt my eyes well up, and my breath hitched in my chest. I had been wrong. I had been wrong to disregard and stigmatize. Not only that, but I had been wrong in being so afraid. While there are any number of different religious groups and names, all people can be moved by the Spirit and by God, and I must face the movements of friends in fairness and love.
Click to expand...

https://www.friendsjournal.org/quakers-muslims/

An amazing journey of realization by a very young Quaker girl experiencing Islam personally with a Muslim family in Morocco where "Islam" is what they make of it. Islam is not a religion of peace, it is not a religion of war, it is a religion of people.

It is sad that there are those in America today that fail to see and understand that. To them Islam is violence, it is gender oppression, it is religiously intolerant, it hates freedom, it is terrorism and they're wrong. Islam is "the Muslim People" and while some are violent, some oppress women, some are religiously intolerant, some do seem to hate freedom, and yes there are a few terrorists but they're not Islam nor are they the Muslim People.

Sanskrit · Mar 18, 2017

Stopped reading after disingenuous, slanted introduction, true to form for this OP.

Reasonable regulation of any kind of immigration from anywhere, in the context of applicable current events, is no more "opposition to immigration" than reasonable regulation of air pollution is necessarily "opposition to automobiles."

Moreover, please cite to some violent terrorism by Quakers comparable to Islamic extremist terrorism. Utterly inept, inapt analogy, and you damn well know it, but do enjoy your the faux "kindred spirits" analogy between Quakers and Jihadists in print, because you surely wouldn't make it in person for fear of appearing a complete fool. Finally, categorizing persecution of Quakers by "mainstream Christians" without including THE STATE is a huge stretch, and categorizing persecution of Jews pre WW2 as by "mainstream Christians" and not political interests is a flat out lie of omission.

Maybe you and some of the other leftists on this forum should adopt a more honest style in your posts... maybe phrasing less befitting a public union newsletter or a big newspaper Op-ed.

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The Road to Morocco

Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

Sanskrit Well-Known Member

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The Road to Morocco

Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

Sanskrit Well-Known Member

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