There are those sick of hearing that colonisation made Africa a cuckoo’s nest and every new African leader a dark shade of Jack Nicholson. There are those equally tired of hearing a non-white person cry wolf (racism) every time he/she is treated with disdain at work, at the mall or during sex. People treat each other badly, not only because they are racist, but because they are just imbeciles whose mother never loved them. But it doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean that Africa is still not feeling the vibrations of centuries of outsider control, and just because Israel is naughty, the Holocaust didn’t happen.
As a pet hate, I rarely listen to the imam screaming “Islamophobia” at the mosque, or on television or again at the local grocery store where people gather in the veggie section to talk about the grand conspiracy against Islam created by the Freemasons, propagated by CNN and sold in booty-shaped Coke bottles.
I normally prefer the political opinions of those with the least to gain, and perhaps the most to lose when confronting discrimination or unfair practices.
This means that I would prefer hearing the Pope say that gays and lesbians are treated unfairly or a Chinese academic say that his government has made chop suey out of monk meat, or Britney’s mother admit to having force fed her I-am-a-coco-pop as a child.
In short, there is often little point in hearing from our free-love brothers and sisters that they’re having a hard time, or from a digital monk that China installed a Nike sweat-shop inside a Buddhist temple.
Of course they are going to say that.
But then, does this mean that we ignore people who tell us their own stories of personal subjugation? Do we need need an anthropologist from Belgium to explain his country’s brutal occupation of Congo to take colonialist crimes seriously?
Likewise, do we need Germans to concur that the Holocaust did happen as brutally as the Jewish people (or their representatives) suggest, or do we need Ahmadinejad to trample over protestors in Tehran and deny the Holocaust to realise that the issue really requires some sensitivity?
I don’t think so.
If people are screaming at the top of their voices, spinning on their heads, swinging on vines between skyscrapers, or throwing their toys out their cots even it if is to exhort a shrilling accusation of ill-treatment, they deserve to be heard, and their cause considered, at the very least.
Black kids don’t swing from the umbilical cord and then tout “racism” as their first word. Jewish families don’t talk about their grandfather being force fed curry wurst in Auschwitz every night at the supper table and Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t talk about how Hollywood bastardises their religion every time they go to the movies.
People don’t enjoy crying wolf. There is no joy in saying, “I was robbed of my dignity,” every day. Such things don’t get you laid.
Okay, maybe Malema did get laid for saying Semenya’s gender test was a race issue.
But having just spent almost two months in Europe (especially Germany) living a daily life with friends, entering local circles far from the tourist charades, I discovered a world far removed from the Europe I believed existed; a far less tolerable place than I had first explored as a student five years ago. Stories of racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia seemed more normalised, embalmed into the psyche of non-native Europeans’ daily life more than ever.
As documented in my violent anti-terrorism kit piece, I’ve had some needlessly ugly experiences.
But we all know that like millions of Muslim brats worldwide, I was brainwashed in early morning whipping sessions at the local madressah to always defend the religion no matter how many times I disagreed with policies or actions.
I am Muslim. I am supposed to scream “victim”. I am supposed to burn embassies. I am supposed to kill my sister’s boyfriend.
And as many of your comments in that blog post suggest, that even you would prefer to read about racial profiling and Islamophobia from an atheist, an Aussie, a Japanese kamikaze pilot; anybody but me.
But I really wasn’t born to scream Islamophobia.
Thing is, the stories of Muslims being discriminated on my trip never ceased and my involuntary exposure to the issues and the denial thereof slowly became impossible to ignore. The silence began to overwhelm me.
It took a chilly evening in Munich and three policemen in plain clothes to surround me and tell me to take my hands out my pocket as they went about checking if I was on one-of-those-terror-lists, that I realised enough was enough.
There is a startling phobia of Islam that seems to be increasing exponentially, a thing called Islamophobia, and it is not going away.
In spite of being Muslim, and therefore naturally biased in your eyes, I should nevertheless be allowed to scream it from the roof tops or be able to talk about it in an open forum without sounding like an evil, brainwashed caricature from a bad movie throwing a jihadist tantrum.
Watch this space.
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