Remember

Hello Everyone:

Technical difficulties have forced yours truly to go mobile.  Fortunately, have iPad,will travel and travel Blogger did to the local bookstore cafe.  Given this unanticipated down time, Blogger has decided to put some thoughts out into the digital universe about current affairs.

What do Beirut, Lebanon; Ankara, Turkey; Mosul, Iraq; Lahore, Pakistan all have in common?  They were the sites of terrorist attacks that injured and killed scores of people; scarring the psyche of the survivors and the inhabitants of these places.  They are not the only non-Western cities that have come under attack by individuals with twisted ideas of religion.  Terrorists have attacked cities in the Middle East and Africa, yet no one mourns the loss of life.  There are no clever hashtags for the victims and the cities.  Monuments, around the world, are not lit up in the Turkish or Iraqui national colors in solidarity with victims.  Why is that?  Why do we not mourn the victims of terror in the Middle East or Africa?  To paraphrase the famous line from William Shakespere's Merchant of Venice, "If you prick them, will they not bleed?"

Blogger believes that we have become so inured to the senseless violence that we avert our eyes.  After all, we think, countries like Pakistan and Iraq are hotbeds of terrorist activities so another day, another explosion or shooting is not news.  Yet when it happens in Brussels, Belgium or Paris, France, we are horrified.  We are quick to demonstrate our solidarity with the victims.  Perhaps, this is the intention of those who commit these crimes.  Attack a Western country and shock the senses.  Attack a city in the Côte d'Ivoire and no one in the West will bat an eyelash.  This, unfortunately, is true.  When the news broke of the kidnapping of hundreds of school girls in Nigeria, what did the West do?  Protest, come up with clever hashtags, and then what?  There are girls still missing in Nigeria-there families may not ever see them again.  When a priest was crucified this past Good Friday, did it make the news?  Briefly but then it was back to matters at hand.

Racism, bigotry, and mysgony all factor into this seeming disregard for the Middle Eastern and African lives.  Terrorists know this and use it to their advantage.  They reason, the West does not care about brown and black faces.  They use our vile history of bigotry as a platform for recruitment.  Another factor of why we do not show our solidarity with terror victims in the Middle East and Africa is the current climate of religious fear.  In the United States, we have presidential nominee candidates who play upon Islamophobia to further their aims.  Islam, like Catholicism and Judaism before it, has become "the other."  Something suspect and feared.  Practitioners of Islam are always up to no good, would be terrorists or in contact with terrorist organizations.  While Blogger believes that everyone is entitled to practice or not practice any religion or no religion, however, when something beautiful as religious devotion is used as a pretext for violence, then it is time to take active measures.

What kind of active measures?  This is a hard question to answer because it is far too easy to fall into the trap of simplistic answers.  One presidential nominee candidate has suggested securing and patrolling Muslim communities; another declared that all Muslims should be banned from the United States until further notice.  Carpet bomb the Middle East?  Of course, drag the United States into a protracted conflict in the region.  In short, there is no simple solution.  We must acknowledge the victims of terror, wherever they are and turn our focus toward a long-term, multi-pronged solution.  The victims of terror, around the world, deserve our compassion.  They deserve better than hysterical solutions or worse, increased bigotry. They deserve to be remembered for the vibrant lives they have led.  Their surviving families deserve our empathy and love.  Beirut, Ankara, Mosul, and Lahore may not be glamourous European capitols but they are places where human beings live, work, play, go to school, laugh, and dream.  Remember this the next time someone comes up with a clever hashtag.