LIGHT UPON LIGHT

Mantiq al-Tayr

September 21, 2012

1.

The pic above is a screen shot from another WordPress blogger whom I quote from time to time, Mayada al-Shareef, an Egyptian woman with a very nice bi-lingual blog called Mermaid’s Sea. The text in the photo is text she found on another site (and can be found on many others as well), but she found that it expressed pretty much how she feels about things and her thoughts on this reflect those of many people in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Our Egyptian mermaid also sent me a link to this article which I feel is a must read. It is entitled “The Innocence of White People” and is written by a white American Muslim named Michael Muhammad Knight.  I’d like to just put the whole post up here, but on the other hand الله يهدي الى نوره من يشاء  so I figure the people who will benefit from the whole piece will click on the link.  Here’s a good quote though to get you started.

“The reason for my silence on 9/11 is that I am not only Muslim. I am also American. I am also white. I am male and heterosexual. However, I am not asked, as an American, to reflect on the yearly anniversary of our atomic bombs falling upon Japan, or our countless military interventions throughout the world.

"There is no date on the calendar for me, as a white person, to demonstrate that I have properly reflected on slavery and the generations of inequality and naked white sadism between the slave era and our own unjust present; we could potentially have such a day, but often turn it into shallow self-congratulation.

"As a white person, I am not asked to consider the wanton murders of young black men by white cops or white civilians, or the white terrorism of shootings in gurudwaras, as directly relevant to my identity.

Nor do I have a designated anniversary for reflection, as a straight man, on the horrifying statistics of rape or the ways in which heterosexism makes this country unsafe for so many.”

The piece is full of excellent points, so go read it. Here’s just one other short take from it:

“I am not trying to excuse violence. As an artist, I support everyone’s right to make shitty, cheap-looking art, and I do not believe that bloodshed is ever an acceptable way of responding to art. But in the big picture, this isn’t really about violent religion vs. nonviolent art; it’s violence vs. violence.”

Nice work Mike.

2.

Thanks to Antiwar.com for linking to this excellent piece by Chris Floyd entitled: “The Howling: Embassy Riots Pale Next to State Terror Tempest”.  The post is also on Counterpunch and probably is linked to by every decent web site on the Net.  Floyd understands that western violence is so ubiquitous that other violence is miniscule in comparison.

That’s why we need the main stream media, so stupid Zionist-bullshit-fed Americans will continue to ask the stupid dumb-ass questions I keep getting asked in my daily life and then have people look at me with absolute dumbfounded stupidity ~ like a dog that has just been shown a card trick ~ when I explain that we’ve killed millions of “them” and “they” haven’t even scratched Romney’s balls in comparison.

As Floyd notes:

“In fact, the Dominationist extremists have far more support in their native lands than the riot-provoking Islamic extremists have in theirs. Muslims overwhelmingly reject violence, even in response to the relentless, murderous provocations of the Dominationists ~ as anyone who actually lives among large numbers of Muslims (as I do) knows perfectly well. Nor are the vast majority of Muslims taken by cheap tricks like the video posted by extremist Christians

“As Ghaith Abdul-Ahad notes in an excellent analysis in the Guardian, “only a few thousand” Muslims ~ out of 1.6 billion ~ have taken part in the protests, which, he points out, are being exploited by fundamentalist Salafi sects that have been marginalized by the Arab Spring revolutions and are now trying to claw into positions of power. ”

This brings me back to Ms. Al-Shareef’s post.  One of her reader’s commented:

”I asked an American person to see this post. He said it is the dumbest thing he had ever seen, since those who died on 9/11 were civilians, but Taliban and Saddam were warned..so..you can’t really compare between Americans and others.”

And that is the kind of profound Zionist-bullshit-fed stupidity that is leading this country to destruction.

3.

Maybe this video might shed some light on what’s wrong with the Dominationists.

Warning: Racist Zionist war mongering thugs will find the images offensive.