An exercise more people should partake in. Sometimes on HN I find it shocking just how completely clueless some of our prolific commentators are re: prejudice, whether by race, gender, creed, orientation, or anything else. The number of times I've seen people in privileged positions try to downplay, trivialize, and belittle those struggling with prejudice has made me want to quit HN more than once.
Walking a mile in someone else's shoes requires some walking, not reading about it on the internet and making armchair theories.
[edit] Seeing the other replies on this post is definitely way too depressing for Saturday night - a lot of loud, moralistic victim-blaming without understanding. For my own sanity I'm going to take myself out of this post entirely.
Some of us have walked in the others' shoes, at least in this limited case of discrimination based solely on clothing. Guess what? Humans discriminate on clothing! You can drum up the social justice network and try to remove this neural programming without drugs, good luck with that. You can try and fight it, again, sincerely, good luck, I agree that clothing is irrelevant when judging other people, but I don't think you'll succeed.
However, unlike discrimination based on someone's skin color or gender, discrimination of clothing has a very easy solution for the person being discriminated against: change your outfit. Some people who love their t-shirt and jeans need to wear a suit every now and again if they want to be treated well or taken seriously by certain people (and vice versa depending on social context--some formal suit-loving people need to dress more casually if they go to certain conventions for a talk). If I were a muslim girl getting discriminated against for wearing a hijab, I'd stop wearing the hijab.
Terrible analogy. People aren't discriminating because they think hijabs are unfashionable. They're discriminating because they correctly interpret the hijab as a religious marker.
Did you notice that your advice basically amounts to "do your best to look like a straight, white, middle-class Christian"? And that you are basically blaming the victim? Both strike me as terrible advice.
What you wear -or don't- sends a signal just like hijabs do. Just as you see one and consider the wearer looks like a "religious entity", someone else will see you in jeans and consider you a "consumerist drone", or see your cellphone and consider you a "decadent bourgeois".
That you don't consider that part of "looking like people" is not the hijabs' wearer problem.
"like wearing symbols of oppression?" - According to whom is this a symbol of oppression?
This is exactly the problem, if you ever to encounter a girl with a hijab you would automatically treat her differently because of her clothing, you've already attributed a persons religious clothing as a form of oppression. The point is to be respectful of others beliefs, not judge based on your own.
I am not blaming the victim, just offering a solution for the victim's discomfort. It is not equivalent to the type of victim-blaming usually done against raped women--precisely because what a woman wears isn't strongly correlated with whether she is raped or not, few decisions on her part could have helped her situation before or after, so she can't reasonably be blamed for failing to e.g. never leave the home. (And discrimination triggered by a piece of clothing is recurring, meaning one's behavior can change before and after.)
I did notice my advice has similar forms, except I wouldn't generalize to middle-class or Christian. Another piece of advice I'd offer anyone in America is to learn how to speak Standard White English if you don't know already. But I'm not nearly the first to offer this:
"In class - in my English class - you will have to master and write in Standard Written English, which we might just as well call "Standard White English" because it was developed by white people and is used by white people, especially educated, powerful white people. [RESPONSES at this point vary too widely to standardize.] I'm respecting you enough here to give you what I believe is the straight truth. In this country, SWE is perceived as the dialect of education and intelligence and power and prestige, and anybody of any race, ethnicity, religion, or gender who wants to succeed in American culture has got to be able to use SWE. This is just How It Is. You can be glad about it or sad about it or deeply pissed off. You can believe it's racist and unfair and decide right here and now to spend every waking minute of your adult life arguing against it, and maybe you should, but I'll tell you something - if you ever want those arguments to get listened to and taken seriously, you're going to have to communicate them in SWE, because SWE is the dialect our nation uses to talk to itself... And [STUDENT'S NAME], you're going to learn to use it... because I am going to make you." -- David Foster Wallace, Authority and American Usage
Another piece of advice I'd offer is: grow a thicker skin. Not always a good piece of advice--I would recommend it to an atheist in the US struggling with discrimination from their family and local community, I wouldn't recommend it to an atheist in Egypt--they should get out as quick as possible.
I'll explain to you the core of where my position on this matter comes from. I'm an engineer, and if I see a problem, I look for a feasible solution. The problem expressed by the submission is "people are being discriminated against--whether they deserve it or not, whether they're even muslim or not--because of a piece of clothing that in American society gives off a bad first impression." There are three obvious solutions: stop wearing the hijab, force away the concept of first impressions (not really a good idea) from human minds, or force everyone who harbors resentment towards muslims in general to stop it and love them. Only one of these is easily accomplished. Furthermore, it opens the door for real cognitive dissonance that can actually change people's minds. "Oh, you're a muslim? But you don't wear the thing!" "Not all of us do, and those that do don't just wear it for religious reasons..." Very few people ever learn to notice themselves completing a cached pattern of thought, and even they don't always notice consistently. People typically have to face with premise-defying reality to really change their minds.
It is precisely equivalent to the kind of victim-blaming that goes on when women in short skirts are sexually harassed or groped, which is indeed correlated with what they wear.
If somebody is treated poorly for being who they are and all that comes out of your mouth is "hey victim, you should change" then yeah, you're effectively blaming the victim.
Suppose tomorrow I made a cheap pill that would make black people look white. By your logic, your position would be: "Hey, black people: Racism is hard to change, and it'd be much easier if you just stop being so darned black."
Can you see why that's obvious bullshit? And therefore your "Honey, stop looking so darned Muslim" is similarly bullshit?
Sorry if this is rude, but this post feels like a bleeding hart white liberal voluntary experiencing with discrimination caused by obvious self sabotage - and then discovering that discrimination exists indeed, and blogging about her discovery.
The obvious next step is converting to some religion or faith which requires unusual clothing or body painting, to "make a statement"/ taunt/provoke and then complain about how unfair the world is, for her VOLUNTARY CHOICES.
It's not about blaming the victim - here I would like to blame someone who wants to play the victim, while people are actual victims.
Such a voluntary self sabotage is insulting to people who suffer from discrimination for something they can't change (such as unusual appearance coming from different ethnicity, disease, etc.)
I'm sorry it got me in an uproar, but I really think what she did is offensive.
She made a change, noticed the negative difference - end of the story.
Some people may want to make a change (even if they know it's vain to try and conform to other people expectations) to try and experience a positive difference - but they can't.
What is offensive to me is how unfair it is for some people to complain about they own choices why other suffer from their lack of choice.
If I were a muslim girl getting discriminated against for wearing a hijab, I'd stop wearing the hijab.
So you would, I guess, also suggest that Sikhs should stop wearing turbans, Jews should stop wearing a kippah, nuns should stop wearing habits, pagans should stop wearing pentangles, etc.
Not only is your suggestion frankly both offensive and pretty idiotic, but the world it would lead to would have even more discrimination than now and be a hell of a lot more boring.
Excellent point. But "if the result of happiness_from_identification_with_current_religion + happiness_from_how_people_make_me_feel" is negative, maybe a) you are unhappy, b) it's not an untractable problem because c) there is something you can change in the equation, and there is something you can't change.
You know the saying - you can't change the others, only yourself.
Even if you only consider personal happiness as important, you should reflect on the quote I posted. Some temporary unhappiness and struggle may be preferable in the long run.
Only from a very narrow set of perspectives. There are many perspectives on life and for many of them a 'utility function' would seem nonsensical at best. Economics is not as all-encompassing a discipline as some people would like to make out.
Would you care to come up with such a "perspective on life"? I bet that for any actual, constructed perspective (rather than an a-priori incompatible one like "a perspective on life such that it doesn't admit a utility function") a utility function can be defined.
Just because a utility function can be defined for a given perspective doesn't mean that it automatically makes sense from within that perspective, given that defining a utility function is choosing to view things from an economic perspective and even in economics there is a difference of opinion of what that actually means, with some economists viewing it as something abstract that is only used to discuss more fundamental things and with others saying that utility functions are in themselves fundamental.
Saying that utility functions are the "what there is to life", is a bit like 42 being the answer to life, the universe and everything in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What meaning you can draw depends totally on what question you are asking, or what perspective you are looking at it from.
For instance, if you are a squirrel, then an economist might be able to calculate a utility function for your behaviour, however the concept of utility functions themselves have no bearing (as far as we know) on "what there is to life" from the squirrel's perspective.
Right, and this is basically saying that we should be aware of how much anti-Muslim prejudice sucks to experience, so that we can start changing ourselves.
> So you would, I guess, also suggest that Sikhs should stop wearing turbans, Jews should stop wearing a kippah, nuns should stop wearing habits, pagans should stop wearing pentangles, etc.
Only if said individuals of the group are uncomfortable with their experience of discrimination. Others have thicker skins and ignore it, and some don't face any discrimination at all. Some want to rebel against society like a teenager and knowingly do stuff that gets them disapproval. My advice is an obvious solution to a specific problem, it does not generalize to "all members of X".
So you are saying that if you are uncomfortable with your experience of discrimination then you should change your appearance to appease your persecutor?
Do you make this crap up yourself, or does it get sent to you through the mail as part of your subscription to Batshit Monthly?
Its a matter of psychological dissonance; when you're under that much pressure, you either change your thought (ignore the haters) or change your actions (stop wearing Hijab), it's a subjective thing, no point on arguing whats right or wrong here.
Closest I've gotten is traveling in other countries. Being the only white guy in a sea of non-white faces is... a bit unsettling. Not speaking the language makes things doubly hard, but even without that, it's at best challenging. In my case I know these situations only last a couple weeks, and I can go back to my comfortable world - everyone is not as fortunate as me.
I totally realize it's not really even in the ballpark, but it was close enough for me.
I'm a white guy, but I wear a trimmed beard and sometimes a skullcap when I'm exercising. I do get some funny looks, like people are trying to figure me out.
I agree, and I wish we could do that, but how? I won't look half as convincing if I wrap a scarf around my head. I have thought about this after reading about Günther Wallraff[1], and I haven't found a nice way to try this out. Maybe I should "dress up" on the internet?
So far, the closest experience I have is being white and understanding Chinese - but it doesn't hurt nearly as much, the worst people regularly think about me is that I am an unreliable, eternal frat boy.
When it comes to skin color it's definitely a tall order - but it's realistic to do it re: orientation, wealth, or a large number of other factors where major discrimination happens.
The whole masquerade part also isn't strictly necessary, putting yourself close to the issues at hand is also helpful. I've never been homeless, but I've worked at three separate organizations related to homelessness (an employment/retraining program, a transitional home, and a straight-up shelter) and met many people that way. I will likely never gain a complete understanding of what it is like, but hopefully I've picked up enough of the big things that I'm being less of a net-negative on the world.
Mark Twain once said (or perhaps according to the Internet Mark Twain once said): "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." - purposefully exposing yourself to different types of people along all arbitrary lines of division in a substantial way may be the next best thing.
Right, but I am white as paper and it takes a while to grow a beard. I would look like a male convert, something that (to me) seems much more exotic than a tanned person wearing a turban.
Well, that was basically Ela's experience as well, and it was educational for her.
If you really want to do skin tones, you'll need decent makeup. If you're in a big city, just go by a serious makeup store. (In San Francisco, Kryolan is great.) Otherwise, call up your local community theater and ask them to put you in touch with a makeup artist.
The complexion doesn't matter, they are religions, not ethnicities. Also you are likely to get an even bigger reaction as you would probably then be viewed by some people as some kind of traitor.
If you have walked a mile in someone else's shoes, you can then say whatever you like. For one thing, you are now a mile away, and for another, you also have their shoes.
(Not meaning to make light of what was an excellent post. Is just that I read your edit, and I thought you might be cheered up by sillyness.)
Total western white-male stereotype-infused ignorance here but...
Perhaps people avoid muslim women because we don't want them to get in to trouble. I'm surprised to see women dressed like that out in public on their own, because I've been led to believe they need male escorts, and assume that one might be around. if I make eye-contact, I might be contributing to an honor-killing, or perhaps some acid-splashed on her face.
When I was in high school I used to hang out with some of the muslim girls and we would do elicit high school things ie smoking pot. Interestingly enough I am a Jew, one generation away from Israel. Anyways, definitely got approached multiple times by muslim dudes telling me I needed to stop being a bad influence on their culture. I always laughed it off. Soon after one of the girls stopped wearing her scarf, everyone realized she was a knock-out, and then I would say the majority of the girls followed. I could really sense them striving for identity and its why I liked hanging out with them.
I want to be clear I never had a problem with any of the dudes beyond a conversation. I think they were confused too because they wanted to defend their culture, but really had no moral objections.
> I'm surprised to see women dressed like that out in public on their own, because I've been led to believe they need male escorts, and assume that one might be around.
That's a very, very small subset of hijab wearers, and you're unlikely to see any of them at a Western mall.
Possibly, but how can I be sure? Really not trolling at all, but trying to make any assumptions about what's 'safe' in situations where someone's life may be at stake, I err on the side of caution.
Don't you think that your thinking that she might be killed for you looking at her is prejudicial against Muslim men? Seems offensive to me if you won't look at someone because you assume a man will kill her for it...
Do you not look at all women because they might have insanely jealous boyfriends who will then kill them for that too, hey it's technically possible right, so you should err on the side of caution?
I tend not to. Yes some may have insanely jealous boyfriends, but it's harder to tell in the absence of visual clues. Typical muslim garb is a signal which does tend to stand out in some circles, and that's one of the things I infer.
No, I don't think every time I look at a woman in a hijab she will be killed, but it does come in to the back of my mind more often than it does when seeing other women in local shops/stores/malls.
Is it prejudicial, as in pre-judging? Yes. People wearing certain types of garb send out signals intended to portray specific meaning. Sometimes extra meanings they didn't intend are also inferred.
30+ years of experience has given me enough confidence that the chance of that happening is pretty low. Honor killings and female mutilation is statistically higher than non-head-covering eye-contact-killings.
I'd be astounded to actually see a case of an honour killing which was caused by fleeting eye contact, none of the ones in that article are, why not just treat them the same as you would anyone else?
Many American-Muslim women wear a hijab by choice and are very friendly/social people who would be glad to interact with others.
There is a difference between culture and religion. A person who practices Islam in America might have entirely different cultural customs than a person who practices Islam in Afghanistan. (i. e. male escorts, eye contact, etc)
Please don't rely on FUD to inform your opinions/prejudices/judgments. And when in doubt ask.
To the extent they're in the US, they may have been westernized to some extent, and yes culture and religion can be separated, but again, my understanding of the culture is that women are not as free/liberated/equal as men.
It's true. Is it so strange that people would be nervous around a culture where even drawing a picture can get you in trouble? People who know that they don't know enough about the culture are probably right to be cautious until they can learn more
Have you or a friend ever been hit? I can say from personal experience approaching thousands of girls with guys nearby that it's actually pretty hard to get into a fight. I think this is an urban myth predicated on the fact that most guys don't make the move very often.
So? If I were to go to Saudi Arabia and wear jeans and a wife beater I would get looks as well.
You find it strange that people look at you funny when you wear a hijab in a western country?
I have a Muslim cousin and she sometimes wears a hijab to university but stopped because people would stare at her. Obviously! She stuck out like a sore thumb amidst a sea of people with no hijabs. She got tired of people asking her if she had cancer, if she was arab (lol at this one, people automatically think muslim == arab), etc.
Who's complaining about funny looks? Funny looks are what you get when you wear and ugly shirt, or fuzzy reindeer antlers on your head around Christmas.
What she's complaining about is aversion, fear, and prejudice. And I don't think the solution to that is "Try harder to look like an attractive, middle-class white person."
So, its not as obvious to some of the rest of us. I honestly had never thought that wearing a hijab would change 99% of your social interactions with strangers in a negative way.
I probably ignore women in hijabs more often than other women. I'm not going to any more.
The latter was said by a child, so it's not even worth talking about. The mother acted wrongly, not the child.
But lets twist it, only without the masquerade: Imagine 'Ela' is on holiday in the Near East and wears a tank top. Don't you think that people would 'look funny at her'? She also might get molested for not being dressed properly. Local women even get stoned for that.
> The latter was said by a child, so it's not even worth talking about. The mother acted wrongly, not the child.
Chances are the kid's asking the question because the parent or another adult equates a head scarf with terrorism.
> But lets twist it, only without the masquerade: Imagine 'Ela' is on holiday in the Near East and wears a tank top. Don't you think that people would 'look funny at her'? She also might get molested for not being dressed properly. Local women even get stoned for that.
NONE OF WHICH IS THE LEAST FUCKING BIT OKAY, EITHER!
No it is not enough, but it could be worse. And for most regions in the world IT IS worse.
Stop implying such bullshit into others statement. All I said was that in those countries people treat foreigners much worse. I didn't justify or judge either side.
Total false equivalence. We aren't responsible for what happens in other countries. We are responsible for what happens here. And if Ela is on holiday and wearing a tank top, she wouldn't be doing it for religious reasons.
I wonder what they would do in one of those countries that attacks and kills people at embassies or sends jihadists off to crash planes into buildings. Probably a little worse than look at you funny or call you a name.
I wonder why you choose to compare your country to "one of those countries" when you clearly indicate you think they are not as good as yours?
You are like the coach of a sporting team pointing out all the teams that finished lower than yours on the ladder and saying "We did great compared to them. Good job. Keep it up."
Surely, if you were actually interested in improving your team, you would point out the teams that finished above you on the ladder and say "We can do better. Here's where to improve."
Somewhere along the line, America was so busy congratulating itself that it has forgotten it should be striving to do better.
"One of those" saved time over naming off each country, considering everyone knows which countries I'm referring to. And is my country better? Um... Yeah. By orders of magnitudes it's better.
> And is my country better? Um... Yeah. By orders of magnitudes it's better.
You missed the point. Everyone knows the sports team that constantly finishes in the middle of field is better than those below. OK, we get it.
Why are you so concerned with comparing America to the countries that everyone knows are "lower" than America?
If you actually had any interest in improving, you'd be looking at those countries higher than America, and you'd notice the gap between America and the top of the ladder is growing very, very quickly.
The difference is that propaganda taught us that the "West" is educated, culturally sensitive and inclusive. The "West" loves to spread high ideals like "Democracy" and "Freedoms". And it seems most have internalized that attitude.
Saudi Arabia makes no claim about being open or tolerant of other religious practices, sexual orientations and so on. So at least they don't pretend, in that respect, they also don't get criticized for hypocrisy, while the "West" does.
One aspect that is probably being confounded here is that hair plays a huge role in attractiveness. By putting on a hijab and hiding her hair this girls attractiveness (at least by western standards) probably went down a bunch of points. So part of what she may have just experienced is what it's like to be an uglier person.
An interesting experiment to come up with would be to wear something that clearly indicates you are muslim but doesn't change your physical attractiveness (again by western standards).
Just visited dubai, even Arab men cover their whole body in traditional dress like women.
The whole point is dont look attractive to other people, just like abstinence.
People get judged all the time. I can give you examples where I felt people judged me because of Eating with hands, drinking coffee with milk and sugar, wearing sandals instead of shoes.
If wearing a hijab cause people to call you names, throw bad looks or more generally makes you feel discriminated against, what about trying not to wear an hijab??
Maybe I'm clueless and prejudiced and all that but it seems to me that religion was a perfectly "open" choice, ie something you can change at any time.
Comparing that in any way to racism is insulting. People do not chose their ethnicity. People can chose their religion.
Your religion makes you feel bad? Then change it since you can!!
Wearing a hijab doesn't cause anything. People having prejudice is the cause. The hijab just allows this white girl to experience it.
People CAN choose their religion, but should they based off of how other people make them feel about it?
You're missing a step... "Your religion makes you feel bad" NO! Other people make me feel bad about my religion. That's pretty obviously prejudice.
Also for most groups of people they don't chose their religion and can't simply change it (family pressures), and while what is described in the article refers to religion (hijab) having dark skin and speaking farsi or urdu is just as likely to cause the reaction in people due to fear of muslims, the prejudiced people are just as likely to filter on ethnic/nationality grounds as religious ones.
This "white girl trying to wear an hijab" screams to me as a kind of self sabotage. She won at the genetic lottery : she conforms to the usual expectations about "looking good" in the country she lives in - did she never realized that privilege/advantage before??
There's a big difference between knowing that you have an advantage and actually experience what's like not to have it. It's extremely easy to take things for granted, even if you once didn't have them; it's much easier if you had them all along.
I'm an atheist, but it's quite clear that many of my religious friends can no more easily change their religion than their ethnicity - particularly for reasons as absurd as other people holding unreasonable prejudices.
I suspect this may just be a case of lack of religious competition in the area your friends live and work in. I grew up in Utah, so of course few people changed their religions, but Mormonism is fairly successful at converting people outside Utah. They do so best by establishing communities and inviting others to join their fun activities. Sure, in America most conversions are just to a different denomination of "Christianity", but religious conversion happens all the time. (A Pew study indicated that 44% of Americans have a different religion than the one they were raised with.)
People don't believe in a religion because it's convenient. If it were simple like that, everybody'd be atheist, there are no rules attached to that whatsoever.
People have a belief because they believe. Or perhaps because they think a certain lifestyle is a good one (isn't that what bhuddism is? I know too little about this...).
There are different schools of Buddhism. As it spread through SE Asia local peoples incorporated local customs,etc. For example, the 'laughing buddha,' was a Chinese fertility god, IIRC.
How many people simply have their religion forced on them?
I've known Muslim who'll eat pork when not in the presence of other Muslims who would frown on that. I'm not sure how important trying to remain within their community is to them, but maybe they would stop practising if they could do so without prejudice from their own community.
I'm sorry, my sentence was ambiguous and unclear. What I meant was that the reason people believe in a religion, is not because it is convenient. Also read the rest of the reply, it should make sense now ;)
> Comparing that in any way to racism is insulting.
errr. prtty sure 'racism' was never mentioned. This is an issue of stereotyping and possibly also religious tolerance.
Sure you can change your religion, but do you really think that social norms should be enforced on wider society through ridicule? What century are we living in?
When I see a woman in a hijab, I also tend to look away - but it's because they're worn for modesty and I worry it would be disrespectful to them to "gaze" longer than necessary. Can somebody more familiar with Muslim thinking comment on this? I've visited muslim households where modesty was so important, the women would not even present themselves (however well covered they were dressed) in front of men outside their family. So although this style of hijab is much more "modern" - I still don't want to make a muslim woman feel uncomfortable.
You might also appreciate Black Like Me (1961)[1]. I think I read this in middle school or high school. A white man poses as a black man for several weeks in the racially segregated South.
Not being given looks by people passing by is exactly the reaction headscarves, burqas and other similar garments are supposed to produce. They represent chastity and modesty, and showing off your bodily features definitely doesn't fall into those categories. The concept of sending a message to people by fashion is very simple actually, and I personally think that reacting to such a message does not represent ignorance. Take the scarf off and let your face and hair be visible - people will look at you. Cover yourself in wraps - people will turn their looks away, and that is exactly the intended effect. It might seem strange to a white girl in a western society, but that doesn't change the fact.
As far as terrorism reference goes, that's a perfect example of generalization, another thing the whole humanity exercises daily simply because that is the way our reasoning works. Unfortunate it might be, but people generalize everywhere and about everything, and especially so when they are frightened.
I am brown guy who sports a light beard. This combination alone has got people discriminate against me. Something as simple as being refused a bacon sandwich thinking I am a Muslim. I can imagine how these prejudices affect us and especially people wearing a turban or hijab. The outlook has to change, not the hijab. She can remove the hijab but what about the color of the skin? That cannot be changed.
However, I also agree that we, human beings, run to stigmatize an entire community rather quickly. For example, much of the Indian community in India thinks that "white" folks are more promiscuous. All of them. It is a widespread notion that they are ready for sex. There is no research that I can cite and only a few personal experiences and examples. e.g. http://www.whiteindianhousewife.com/2012/04/the-other-side-o...
It's all about symbolism. People simplify, people make fast judgments, people use visual cues to make their life easier. If I walk into a job interview in a suit and a tie I get a slightly different reaction than by walking in wearing swimming clothing.
And if it is more than just a fashion statement, but a symbolism of religion, then we open up a whole new can of worms. The wearing of burqa'esq clothing is highly controversial, as its banning in various countries across Europe is discussed and in parts even implemented [1].
This is an exemplar of how much courage it takes for women Muslims to dress in a manner to upkeep their beliefs. Women who wear the hijab should be praised to the utmost. The society they operate it is xenophobic, and at times very bigoted. I for one, as a late 20's person of faith, would struggle to muster up such strength.
I was walking through TSA about a week ago and someone about 5 people in front of me was wearing a hijab, and of course they didn't have to take it off while I had to take off 2 of my layers and then be patted down. I wouldn't have had to do any of that if those same people who wear hijabs hadn't taken many American lives over the years. I'm pretty sure I have a right to have my well reasoned and justified prejudices. If nothing else, I am much more aware of my surroundings when I see someone wearing a hijab. This heightened awareness is simply my human nature taking over.
I'm relatively new here. Why did this thread disappear off the front page? At 72 points in an hour, it ought to be by far the top post. The current leader is 67 points in 5 hours.
Are things that get up-modded that fast dropped as off-topic?
Imagine if a 17 year-old Saudi/Persian/Pakistani girl decided to wear a tube-top and skinny jeans and no hair-covering out on the town in Mecca or Qom or Islamabad.
I am sure the only response would be remarks from children who are not yet attuned to social norms, e.g. not commenting on peoples appearances. After all, we do live in a globalized society.
The point that I was attempting to convey was that tolerance needs to be a part of both cultures. We as westerners cannot be reasonably expected to treat Islamic culture as equal to Western culture if we treat it with 'kid gloves', or make meaningless accommodations in the name of political correctness.
I am not afraid to say that I have a relatively low opinion of the current Islamic culture. Sure it may have been great 1000 years ago, but with the executions for homosexuality, stoning in Pakistan/Afghanistan, and murder of westerners [Theo van Gogh et al] not to mention the horrible treatment of women, it honestly just pisses me off. Mabey in some parts of majority-Muslim nations it isn't that bad after all, but it doesn't really matter as I am unlikely to have much contact with strict Muslims in the first place.
But the person who wrote this article was presumably playing the part of an American Muslim, so what do other countries have to do with this at all? It's OK to be prejudice against Muslims from your own country because some Muslims in other countries aren't nice people?
It has everything to do with Islam and Islamic culture, which are two different things, both of which have different presences around the world.
For the record, I don't like Islamic culture. I don't judge individual people, but I believe that a religion that was founded by a pedophile [aisha] and murderer [jews and others] should not have any influence on the world today. The best way to get rid of Islam is to stop believing in it, but oddly enough Muslims have a habit of stoning apostates.
I honestly believe America is captivated right now by fear itself.
It could be nuclear fallout from Japan, or Islam, or H1N1, or drug cartels in Mexico, or Canadian healthcare, or communists, or the Arab Spring, or any number of other things that for all intents are purposes are almost entirely non-threatening to the average citizen on the street.
The focus of the fear is completely irrelevant. The primary goal is perpetual fear itself.
Funny thing about Americans; if they mind their own business, other nations laugh at them for being stupid and ignorant only concerned about their trash TV and oversized drinks.
On the other hand, if the average American does show some interest in international affairs or political ideas, people say he's in perpetual fear and mind controlled by politicians.
Walking a mile in someone else's shoes requires some walking, not reading about it on the internet and making armchair theories.
[edit] Seeing the other replies on this post is definitely way too depressing for Saturday night - a lot of loud, moralistic victim-blaming without understanding. For my own sanity I'm going to take myself out of this post entirely.