2005-07-08 - 2:15 p.m.
I slept in this morning, until around noon. I opened my mail box, and much to my surprise I found a rather touching email from a good friend:
Subject: How are you?
"I'm probably being silly about this, but after your tales about
harrassment after 9/11, I worry about you every time a bomb goes off
around the world. Hope that you haven't suffered any unpleasant
repercussions from any of the abundant supply of jerks out there."
I really was in the dark last night. Did I miss the sound of a bomb going off in Montreal? A quick jaunt to the CBC website lead me to this:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/07/08/london-mayor050708.html
Sigh, oh shit. That's what I think every time this type of thing happens, for entirely selfish reasons. Now it's going to be harder for me to travel, to cirucalte like an active member of the human race-because I have dark skin and a middle-eastern name.
I remember hearing once that Woody Allen is a self-hating Jew. Well, I wouldn't exactly call myself a self-hating Muslim, but this identity, as secular and liberal as I believe and claim to be has been the cause of undue strife in my life. It's a situtation and a condition that I feel is beyond my control. I can't identify as agnostic or atheist, because then I'm lying to myself, and not being true to who I am. Then I'd be a sell-out, which is probably the worst thing to be, almost as bad as being a terrorist-of any ethnic group, I might add.
After the World Trade Center fell, I never appeared in a protest of any kind, and never spoke up, unless the protest was politically safe enough to draw a diverse, mass crowd, so I could fade into the background, and my ethnic identity wouldn't be the primary signifier for my presence in the protest. The recent cuts to Quebec student bursaries was a safe event in recent memory, where I could attend without fear of being branded a terrorist or an ethnic shit disturber, even though my presence and actions are always entirely peaceful. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever struck another living thing...ever.
The cynic in me is hoping that the recent London bombings were done by the IRA. At least that way, the pedestrian public just may for once understand that violence is indeed done by those who don't look middle eastern, and that every dark skinned person with a beard is not in fact not...I repeat *not* somehow connected to Osama Bin Laden.
Why aren't the IRA subject to a lot of press coverage in the war on terror?
Were the students who perpetrated the May 68 uprisings considered terrorists?
What about the protests of the same year in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention?
Were the National Guard who murdered the four students at Kent State University in May of 1970 considered terrorists? Or, I guess that's ok, being a uniformed murderer for the state. That's all these types of organizations are: the institutionalized justification for murder.
Why haven't members of the KKK been on terror watch lists, and had trouble at customs, and been under the close scrutiny of the Department of Homeland Security. It would seem to me that lychings would be just cause enough to keep this group under close observation.
Has FLQ terrorism in Quebec completely dissapeared? Somehow I find that hard to swallow.
Around campus today, you will see a series of green baloons, with the inscription "No place to pray". This is done by the Muslim Students Association as a silent protest in light of the fact that this group lost their prayer space on campus.
I considered taking a baloon and tying it to a post on campus, but then that would publically admit me membership in this group, that is no doubt under watch at some point.
I do miss activism and social change, or rather the chance to participate in it. But, as a lot of middle eastern looking people have had to do over the past few years, is be silent, because any kind word is immediately distorted and interpreted as hostility.
We've been forced to be neutral, complacent, and once again assume the colonial archetypical role of the smiling lackey, out of fear of losing our job, or worse, denied flight bording and possibly being on a government watch list, as did happen to a friend of mine who is an editorial cartoonist:
http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?aid=00003949&channel=civic%20center&start=0&end=9&chapter=1&page=1
I asked a mutual friend about this situation about 6 months after it happened. The mutual friend said at the time that he doesn't want to rock the boat. He could lose his job.
I wonder if I will see a time when we can have our own voice again, where we can be free to speak, exchange ideas, and participate actively in public discourse.
Enough of a rant for today. Time to get out and about with the day's activities. I have to call my relatives in London to see if they are ok, as well as a few friends who are in and around the London area.
