A 27-year-old Muslim man who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State shoots and kills 50 people and wounds at least 50 others in a rampage at a gay club in Orlando. The presumptive Republican Nominee for President of the United States is suggesting the current President, a black man with a Muslim-sounding name is involved in this and other terrorist attacks.
Before I, like everyone else, condemn the gunman for being a fundamentalist malcontent with an AR-15, I’d like to make it clear that I understand his actions. Not the wanton disregard for human life, but the feeling of fatelessness and strangeness in the country of your birth. The unmitigated bitterness that heats my face every time I watch these cloned white people on CNN debate whether or not Donald Trump is a racist for suggesting that all Muslims be “identified.”
I’m a 26-year-old standup and comedy writer and I don’t actually believe in Islam (haven’t since I was nine), but a drone can’t make those distinctions, am I right? If I didn’t have my education and a visceral distaste for religion, I could very well have become Omar Mateen.
Mr. Mateen didn’t choose the Islamic State — he chose a sense of belonging. There’s a reason Islam is the religion of choice in prisons throughout the United States. It isn’t all that different from the way men my and Mr. Mateen’s age in inner cities join gangs, a choice I considered but ultimately decided against. The inherent lie is the belief that those groups value the individual, that they care about you. But they don’t in the same way and for the same reason America doesn’t.
The solution we will be hearing over the next few weeks or months is a plan to prohibit Mr. Mateen and people like him from buying the weapons he used in his massacre. That is sound public policy, but that conversation serves to maintain the illusion that the United States has done nothing to elicit this violence. We ignore our political and public rhetoric, foreign and domestic policies, and, more importantly, the foundation of systemic racism upon which the country was built and continues to expand.
Despite this, I would ask those would-be ISIS martyrs in the United States to just fucking stop it, already. Oppression doesn’t give you the right to take a life. Mr. Mateen chose to target gay people, a population that has experienced the same kind of institutionalized marginalization Muslims now encounter regularly. Instead of recognizing their similarities, though, he decided to slaughter them for their differences. Mr. Mateen’s brutality is something men like Donald Trump and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi incite and depend on.
I know how hard it is to resist the temptation of hatred. I know your breath quickens when a cousin talks to you about the thousands of children killed in Iraq and Syria by the U.S. military. Those kids look like me, too. I have those cousins, too. Some here and some there, but all nowhere if you continue to play into the hands of extremists both Islamic and, consequently, American. The United States and ISIS are both ruled by an obstinate group of wealthy zealots and they are all guilty of disguising profiteering in the cloak of patriotism and religion.
In late September 2001, I was kicking it with with my friend, David, who is equal parts Haitian and Nigerian, in an empty classroom at our junior high school. An old, white custodian opens the door and asks, “Would you two niggers please leave so I can get my fucking job done?” We both laughed because it made all the sense in the world.
That was right after the attacks that unsettled a deep-seated claim to ownership this country bestows upon what it considers its “natural citizens.” That act of terrorism gave the current brand of bigoted populism its populace.
Last December, my mom was on a flight to New York, and because she is an asshole, she was reading the Qur’an on her iPad. The woman seated next to her asked my mother if she would stop; it made her uncomfortable. My mother responded by reading the guttural arabic passages out loud. Did I mention my mom’s an asshole? The woman got up and demanded the flight attendants “do something about this,” to which they replied “Sorry, we can’t.” She ended up moving seats, you know, to the part of the plane that would be unaffected by the explosion. My mom happily stretched out across two seats and started playing Candy Crush.
Now, one may consider this progress. After all, my mother’s first amendment rights were seemingly upheld by benevolent sky people. I disagree. I am more concerned with her air neighbor who felt it possible, or, more likely, moral, to prevent my mother from being Muslim in public. And it’s not the woman’s fault. I mean, it is, but in reality she was simply expecting America to hold up its end of the unspoken contract it signed with her and people like her — to keep them coddled and in control. Imagine my mom reading Between The World and Me; Ta-Nehisi Coates would have her converting all of coach to Islam as a form of rebellion.
I’ve always been predisposed to agnosticism and doubt, which has made it tough for me to avoid poking fun at Islam, and therefore, even tougher for me to relate to Muslim-Americans. At a show a few months ago, I told a joke about Muhammad’s marriage to a 10-year-old and how 10-year-olds make for terrible spouses because they always want to be banker in Monopoly yet lack the necessary math skills. Also, their hands are frequently sticky. After my set, I was approached by two Muslim men who threatened to “kick me in the dick.”
It would be easy to say that Muslims can’t take a joke (you remember the reaction to the sophomoric cartoon in Charlie Hebdo). But this was different; those men weren’t upset by my joke. They were American and had surely heard worse from televised political pundits. Their anger was borne out of a perceived betrayal. The dick kick was their way of saying “You, too? You’re going to do this to us? Fuck you.” To their credit, I’ve never felt more guilty. I didn’t get a chance to tell them that I was also working on a bit about Jesus and Catholicism, but I know it wouldn’t have mattered. I also know the next time that joke will be paired with another making it clear that while I may not be Muslim, I’m certainly aware of who owns my right to define myself or my religion.
The custodian who called me and my friend “niggers,” was acting as a mouthpiece for his enabler, the United States, who owns all of our bodies, black and brown and Huang alike. She owns our houses, our land, our labor, too, but her most important possession is our flesh. The prized marrow she gets to destroy or expurgate when she feigns fear. She is safe in the knowledge that once her biological children start wringing their hands, our necks can follow shortly thereafter.
Xenophobia, racism, bigotry, naturalism and the like are manifestations of control. They are employed when the country’s authority is questioned. America’s internal and uneducated response to the Islamic State is no different from the way Scar let the hyenas over-hunt the Prideland in The Lion King. Weird metaphor? Good point.
The issue is not political. It doesn’t matter if Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, demagogue or bought, wins the election. It is the heritage they inherit that practically forces them to pilfer our agency.
I believe that the only available option for the colored and the impoverished is resistance. Wouldn’t it be hilarious to resist by regaining control, if only for a moment and if only to subject yourself to what your supposed home would have done to you anyway? You’re Chinese? Die while building a railroad. Black? Work for no pay. Japanese? Move into an internment camp. Mexican? Deport yourself.
As for me, I’m going to try my hand as a prop comic and bring a bucket and cheesecloth on stage for my next set.
And it won’t surprise me when the audience laughs.
