SF Ali, I’m disheartened by what I hear. Before the war, I’ll call it the war because it a war to cause all wars. On 9/11/2001, we were attacked by an enemy, a cunning enemy that struck at not only the United States, but the world. Because when the towers and the Pentagon were attacked, many thousands of men, women, and children were killed. The dead were from many counties around the world, but at that moment, we became one world, one nation drawn together by loss.
We all had losses on that day. The loss of our piece of mind and our feelings of security. We lost our husbands, wives, children and friends. But we lost our sense of being safe from these kinds of acts, they happen in other places like Germany, or Israel but not in America. On that fateful day, we became a target to the world of terrorism. If a terrorist organization could strike at the heart of our Financial lives and strike at the heart of our military, we are no longer the greatest nation in the world!
It was then that there were people around the world that wished to inflict harm on a whole Religious group of people. A group of people that were of many different nationalities but were all of one Religious belief, Muslim, Islamic. A religious belief that is very misunderstood by American’s as well as many countries around the world. With certain rabid forces coming out of the woodwork, instigated by racist factions to encourge their followers to incite riots and to get many of these people to leave. Their reasons like Trump’s is that the more that they can blame some malaise on this group of people. A way to explain the underemployed or unemployed workers that it’s not their fault, blame the Muslim Communities. It’s easy to get power from the people when you choose a common enemy, no matter how innocent a group of people may be.
In Muslim communities, these rabid people, set free by Trump’s speeches and his hated rhetoric in his rallies to incite these people to act on their anger. So they strike out at the nearest targets they can, they go to the Muslim communities in the cities and yell Racial Slurs at the Muslim women as they walk down the sidewalks to the store to a friends or just for a walk. They would wear their hijab when they appear in public, as they have since their childhood, a way of showing modesty, not understood by people who have been insulated from other cultures and do not understand their ways, and for the most part, don’t want to. In more appropriate terms, morons. These people believe that they can go and grab the hijab or headscarf of a woman’s head, to they attack the woman and try to make them take off their Hijab and if they don’t they try to grab it. These methods are why our country that was once a place that welcomed people of all nationalities like the Statute of Liberty has written on it’s base; “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breath free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these , the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” This poem was written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 to help raise money for the base for the Statue. Little did anyone know, but this became a beacon for refugees and immigrants for over a hundred. We were a kinder and gentler nation and it was a place of welcome and of opportunities.
But SF Ali, never let this period of chaos get under your skin. There are many many millions of American’s that will fight for your rights to live in your country. We are not all bad and evil. The people in the shops you you by food in, you may find one person that is going to be vocal and shout obscenities at you, but there will be a dozen good people to tell her to shut up and to mind her own business. All that glitters is not gold, sometimes it is the heart and soul of a person who brings us joy and happiness or enlightenment, about a whole new culture or a place that we don’t know. That glitter is knowledge and education, learning new things.
SF Ali, I hope that my word will make an impression on you, a good one.
Bless you and your family. Stay well and stay strong.
