Bystanders in the Hands of an Angry Social Activist

That was a mouthful.

[I was inspired by Jonathan Edwards's sermon 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.' A bit of background on the man is that Edwards was an influential preacher from the colonial times' Puritan societies and preached during the Great Awakening. He used an emotional approach to implant fear and realization into the hearts of his listeners by giving vivid descriptions of hell and emphasizing God's wrath. And yes, he was in fact, influential, although I don't understand how.]

This post is not about religion, or God however. I simply want to touch on a few points I have been wrecking myself over because as much as I'd like to believe in us, as humanity, history is as determined to punch me in the face and kick me back into the black pit of misanthropy I have been trying to climb out of. 

History – we tell ourselves – repeats itself because we don't learn from it, but how long have we known that? Since 200 BC. We have realized that historic recurrence is a phenomena and then, in a cold-blooded frenzy we've made it such a generic thing that nobody really cares anymore about what it implies and how it relates to us. We simply use it to guide us through millennia and pick out the bolded similarities. 

Currently I am taking a US History class and the more I learn, the more my fascination with humanity grows (although it grows side by side with my disgust). We just finished our unit on the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era, and I am at a loss. 

Take a look at slavery. We had a civil war because half the nation (south) wanted to keep slavery while the other (north) wanted to end it. And here, we think – hey, at least there were people willing to fight to abolish slavery. But no. That came later. The north wasn't fighting to free the slaves, the north was fighting to keep slavery from spreading to the west because white men needed equality in economic opportunity and having slaves would hinder that. Two years of bloodshed and then we decided that if we didn't send off moral and righteous vibes we wouldn't get foreign support so we emancipated the slaves in the south (which didn't actually liberate anyone until the war was over because the emancipation applied to the southern states – which were rebelling and trying to become their own country). 

Of course, there are those who had good intentions, but the people with good intentions are rarely in positions of power. Just the concept of slavery makes me flinch. !People wanted other people to be seen as property. !People wanted to believe that some people were destined to be slaves because of their skin color. !People tried justifying enslaving other people through religion. !People wanted to purchase other people because who else was going to work their overambitious lands?

Of course, there are those who had good intentions but the people with good intentions are rarely brave enough to speak up. And thus, bringing me to my second ranting point. These two videos. Long 7 minutes short, two pseudo-social-experiments to see how the public reacts towards the 'Muslims are terrorists' stereotype and the hijab as an identity. 

I will start out with the shorter video. The content itself is upsetting and eye-opening, and could have been more influential if done under a more professional light. However my focus is not on the video, it's on the comments. Many people are trying to justify the guy's rejection of the hijabi with the very base and stupid reason that she wasn't his type.

This would have been a completely logical reason for rejecting a girl IF she was asking to get into intimate relations with the guy. However, she is asking for help but because she doesn't present any potential to the guy for later relations he rejects her requests for help. When have we become a race of beings that help others based on their looks?  

I mean, if this is supposed to be the case, then I should talk to only a handful of people in the world who all happen to be actors living miles and miles away from me. Can you imagine how horrendous and appalling we would become if our conversations went along the lines of:

Person: Hey, excuse me, I am looking for a way to get to the regional library, do you know how I can do that?

Me: WOW! You have brown eyes? How dare you talk to me!? You know I am married, right? I am married, you shouldn't even come close to me, in fact my husband is gonna come and beat you up because you don't have green eyes. Go back to your continent or something. You are an abomination, with your disgusting brown eyes and black hair. I cannot believe you even dreamed of me helping you. DO I LOOK LIKE A BROWN EYES AND BLACK HAIR GIRL TO YOU? 

We don't not talk to people just because they aren't visually appealing to us. How shallow is that? And really, this isn't a pick and choose females world. It's more about – wait for it – respect, oh yeah. We respect and help people for heir humanity. It doesn't get simpler. 

And the second video. The whole world watches while a man calls a hijabi a terrorist in the middle of the street. The whole world also laughs, encourages, ignores or agrees with the man, thus leaving the girl very much alone and at the mercy of only a few people who dare to try and put a stop to what the man is doing. In the comments section of this video you will see multiple debates. One is that people aren't interfering because they are afraid of the man hurting them. This should not be an excuse in this scenario because the whole thing is happening in a crowded and public place, and anyone could have flipped a phone and dialed 911 to scare him. 

This is how distant we are, and how apathetic. Some people argued that if a woman wearing a mini-skirt was being scolded in an extremist Islamic country, people would be just as ignorant. See, the problem isn't about Muslims. It's about people. It's about humanity. And yes, you could identify me as a fuzzy headed idealist, because we need to change as a species and I believe that we do have the potential. We just need to start realizing what we are doing wrong and have a clear sense of direction as to where we want to go as humans. If we keep feeding out greed and selfishness, we'll die out earlier than we anticipated. 

Lots of sighs,
∆ Belle

Where am I?

I start most of my posts with the source of my inspiration, and this topic came to me at 4:17 am in the morning as I was falling asleep thinking of how great of an author I wanted to become. Then it hit me, what am I to write about? Philosophical rants and humanity's faults compressed between two hard covers isn't what people want to read. We don't want to be reminded of our vices and our responsibilities. And that is why we read fiction: because we want to escape reality for a while, and think about other people or other creatures. And then a second wave of realization hit me like a strong aftershock and I thought to myself, even if I wrote fiction, my characters would be so out of this world because they hardly appear in any other fictitious work. What characters? Us, Muslims. 

I have noticed that Muslims are barely present in pop culture. We aren't in fiction books unless written by Muslim authors for Muslim readers (with a few exceptions). We especially aren't in dystopian books. So what? Is there an undercover conspiracy we will all be wiped out before the year 2100? We aren't in movies unless we are selling oil, committing crime or being involved in acts of terrorism (with a few exceptions). We aren't in comedies unless we are made fun of. We are not in TV shows that depict daily lives of people (with a few exceptions, those exceptions being when we are portrayed as suspicious criminals). We aren't present in schools in movies and TV shows while every other minority gets represented with and without their sad stereotypes. 

Why doesn't the protagonist have a Muslim friend who doesn't eat pork and dislikes gossiping? Why isn't there an antagonist who stops using drugs under the influence of a nice Muslim friend? Why isn't there a Muslim coworker who abstains from alcohol? Why isn't there a Muslim politician who is honest? Why isn't there a Muslim neighbor who brings over food in Ramadan? Why isn't there a Muslim fashionista with a hijab(head covering)?

We aren't that hard to write about or act out. A few dietary restrictions, no cursing, no gossiping, no lying, no flirting, no tight clothes. There you have it. Ideal Muslim teenager. Tries to appeal to the mind and heart of zer friends with the way ze leads zer life. Is confident, can't stand injustice, and performs selfless acts on a daily basis. Can make jokes and have fun as much as any teenager but can also lead intellectual conversations and discuss the importance of life. Is not perfect, makes mistakes -- because is human (SHOCKER!). We can be incorporated into any story, I guarantee it.

If you cannot find actors to play in your movies, you might as well ask one of us and we will do it. We do have acting talent in our community. After all, Muslims are only 1.6 billion of the 7 billion population of our globe, a mere 23%. In USA, we are a minority with a small number of roughly 2.6 million people. (Source)

So I decided to change pop culture and introduce some strong Muslim characters. (Belle dreams big #2) And I hope more people join in. If you aren't familiar with our lifestyle, I am certain you can befriend a Muslim and ask zer if you have questions. In the end, the life of a writer a movie maker and a public artist always contains large amounts of research and first-hand experience.


Lots of highlighters
~Belle

Let's Save Trees (!)

Stupidity will be the end of humankind because idiots have the pride of fools and the intellect of fish. You can reason with an intelligent person, but an idiot will never understand you -- and even if he does, he won't accept the truth because he is vain in his idiocy. A sad example can be seen in Turkey right now. 

1. A couple of environmentalists impetuously come together to protest against the government cutting a trifling number of trees in Gezi Parki, Istanbul.  
2. The main opposition party takes advantage of the harmless protest to spark a bigger event. 
3. Police uses 'unnecessarily' brutal tactics to dismiss the protesters such as tear gas and water canons. They backfire.
4. Secret groups, undercover organizations, communist clubs and other cliques of people who are against democracy emerge from their hiding spots and integrate themselves into the environmentalists community. During their devious emergence, they whisper into the ears of uninformed citizens, European countries,  and tourists, that the current prime minister is a dictator. 
5. In the blink of an eye, the peaceful protests of let's keep the trees turn into violent uprisings of the prime minister should resign.
6. The public, acting on their primitive instincts of bestiality and savagery, spill onto the streets to join the revolts. At this vital turning point, the public knows nothing, the environmentalists are lost, the government is struggling, and the opposition party is having a party.
7. The idiots on the streets tweet about unrealistic events and imaginary persons while the foreign media soaks up everything like a sponge. No filter, no affirmation, just pure bias.
8. Western countries shake their heads and do absolutely nothing to help. 
9. The idiots keep asking Europe for help. Because clearly, European countries are flawless and perfect and completely exemplary for every other country in the world. Why didn't the prime minister think of that?
10. The protests spread from Istanbul to other major cities such as Ankara, Izmir and Bursa.
11. The tree-lovers of yesterday cause damage to parks, plazas, public institutions, party quarters, police stations, ambulances, buses, schools, and roads. They set flowers and trees to fire (anyone see anything wrong here?), they take apart sidewalks and barricade streets. The hole left in the national budget is over 10 million dollars in the capital city just in the last day [6/18/2013]. You know we could have invested that money in medical research, we could have invested it in our children, we could have invested it in the welfare of our people and entertainment and more plazas and parks, BUT NO. Idiots will be idiots. The economy is also suffering due to millions of tourists cancelling their visits, leaving the country, or changing their future plans all together. 
12. The image of the developing and strong nation-state of Turkey has been hurt beyond easy restoring. The prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been working for Turkey for a decade now. He is the perfect leader a country could ever ask for. He is determined, focused, and has realizable goals for Turkey. He has saved the country from the black pit of hopelessness it was previously drowning in. And as soon as he has all this nonsense under control, he will keep moving forward. 

People's stupidity both upsets and angers me. I am so insignificant, and have so little impact on the world. How do I change this? How can I become a leading figure in the world? How do I educate the masses as a whole? How can I stop cruelty, violence, discrimination, and inequality? How can I realize these huge goals of mine? How do I cure humanity?

Lots of tears,

~Belle