I fucking hate my life.
killingbuddha reblogged
Actually, can someone please start a line of t-shirts featuring prominent Christian heretics?
See also: ROCK N ROLL
Why Escape Plan is Interesting
So I just finished watching Escape Plan, and the entire movie is essentially a metaphor for how Stallone and Schwarzenegger are trapped in the action hero archetypes that made them famous, yet are unable to move forward with time. The prison in which they are trapped is, in fact, this macho archetype, an enclosed and dehumanising environment in which men (and only men) are forced into conflict with one another. They are also menaced by inhuman shadows, literally faceless enemies who brutalise and mistreat them. The entire operation is overseen by the frankly psychopathic warden who unironically preserves butterflies in glass jars. His measured, calm, sometimes flippant attitude, even as he faces his own death, highlights how utterly insane he is. The only thing he seems to care about is a) the finesse with which his prison has been constructed and b) the money he can earn. When Javed dies and salutes God in his last moments, the warden merely quips, “Whatever.” In fact, throw-away one-liners are littered throughout the movie in an anachronistic attempt to firmly establish the ‘badassness’ of characters, but now only seems to turn them into caricatures.
While Stallone’s character has made his fortune by moving within the confines of the prison (the macho stereotype), he has ultimately succeeded when he has escaped, when he has broken through into genuine humane reality. When Rambo breaks down in horror and defeat at the end of the first film, the character goes beyond a simple action figure. When Rocky… well basically all of Rocky. That character, better than any other, proves how important the heart and soul is, no matter how action-oriented the film. So that’s how Stallone has succeeded, by proving that the prison can be escaped from. But he himself confesses that due to his own personal tragedy, he wants to make sure that the prison can never be escaped from, that once someone goes there, they never come back. In other words, he wants a simple world where men are men, and personalities are fixed, and ambiguity is resolved into neat little boxes.
But look what happens when he’s faced with the possibility of someone suceeding. When it’s HIM in that box. Then he really understands what’s at stake.
Within the prison / macho stereotype, there is no room for sentiment and love, and yet Schwarzenegger repeatedly puts his life on the line to help Stallone, right from the start. While this is later explained to be part of a larger plan for Schwarzenegger’s escape, this doesn’t change much. There is an unspoken affection between the two of them that comes from nowhere within the film itself. You could argue that they just so happen to be kindred spirits, but that also works as part of the meta-narrative as well.
Schwarzenegger’s character’s have often failed to provide that compelling and human warmth that have come from Stallone; he is typified in the cold stiff Terminator, and sometimes (awkwardly) transcended in films like Last Action Hero, Kindergarten Cop, and Jingle All the Way, where he tries to play someone personable and real. Undoubtedly this is partly to do with his accent and (initial) unfamiliarity with the English language, but it has evolved into a recognisable on-screen persona that would be difficult to move beyond. But even so, he also wants to escape the prison. He no longer wants to feel trapped in a world where the bad guys are faceless drones led by boss-psychopaths, and where he is forced to express every emotion through his biceps. And that is the world where these two actors made their most lasting mark, how we remember them now, and why they still make films like the Expendables, even if they might want to do something different.
There’s a sort of hollow, sad victory in this film. They manage to escape, Schwarzenegger rides off into the sunset, Stallone punishes the man who betrayed him (in keeping with the cartoonish, 80’s style of the film), and then makes a depreciative remark about his friend’s (co-worker and possibly lover?) cooking as they end on a freeze-frame. A freeze-frame!
Nothing has really changed. He hasn’t altered in any appreciable way from the character we saw at the beginning of the movie. He suggests that he might leave further work for 'another time’ or words to that effect, but ultimately he’ll go back to escaping from prisons because that’s what he does. That’s probably what he’ll always do, even if there’s a part of him that fears the very pigeonhole he has created.
But then is he solely responsible? After all, who is the warden? Who is the senseless, amoral douche intent on keeping dinosaurs like Stallone and Schwerzenegger making 80’s action movies in 2015?
Ah. It’s me. Or rather, us. Or rather, that subset of the population who pay large amounts of money to watch these films in the cinema and buy them on DVD. We are repeatedly saying to these men, “We like it when you dehumanise yourself, when you roll around on screen with big, nameless men and knock seven bells out of each other. We put you in that situation and we reward you when you do it.” And we’re that psychopathic warden who just wants to have his perfect prison where everyone follows protocol and things go just right. We’re in control. We, the paying public, dictate the terms of this arrangement. That might be overstating things a little, but not completely. There's even a moment where the warden watches Stallone and Schwarzenegger fight on CCTV, smiles, and says to no one in particular, "Boys will be boys..."
There’s another intesting character, who is the doctor, played by Sam Neill. Given the general tone of the movie, I genuinely expected the white-lab-coat-wearing prison doctor to have a German accent. Speaking of which, there was an oddly moving section where Schwarzenegger - in trying to create a distraction - starts throwing himself around in solitary, wailing in English and German, eventually collapsing and saying the Lord’s Prayer in German with what seems like more emotion and better acting (acting within acting?) than most of his films put together. Anyway, the doctor. Neill plays him like he plays most of his characters, straight and simple. He has a good core, but he’s in bad circumstances. We never find out why, we never really find out anything about most of the characters, but he seems to offer a glimmer of hope. He’s part of the system, but he has a book literally called MEDICAL ETHICS, which he consults to re-read the HIPPOCRATIC OATH, which caused him to HAVE A CONSCIENCE and realise he is WORKING FOR PRICKS.
So I suppose Neill’s nearly meta-narrative corollary is a movie agent, someone who ministers to the actors and makes sure they’re okay, who looks after them but accidently winds up serving the wider audience / box office agenda by forcing them into situations that are intolerable for them. Eventually he calls in the cavalry and helps them to escape, although we don’t see what happens to him after the prison riot, so his fate is anyone’s guess.
The Muslim character dies. Of course he dies. But he goes from prop villain to accomplice to 'he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother’ territory. He bravely ignores the option of getting to safety, preferring to embrace the bullet wound that might - with medical assistance - be remedied. He sacrifices himself on the bullet-ridden altar of friendship. Perhaps this is the movie’s way of acknowledging that Muslims are not the real enemy; the bullshit narrative that pits man against man in an inhumane cage and refuses to allow him to feel sensitive and emotional is the real enemy. So, y'know… I guess that’s good.
Anyway, it’s a film.
Tips for stressing Luke out:
Call to ask for his help.
Do not listen to the advice and support offered.
Accuse him of not caring.
Repeat 3-4 times or until Luke hangs up.
killingbuddha reblogged
I, speaking now as Negro, have been described by you for hundreds of years. And now, I can describe you. And that’s part of [your] panic.
James Baldwin, 1964 (via likethebrimofahat)
killingbuddha reblogged
Israel has admitted that it forcibly and without consent gave birth control injections to Ethiopian Jewish immigrants, according to a report in Haaretz. An investigative journalist uncovered the fact that most of the women who were given the birth control shots were not aware they were being given birth control and did not consent. Since that discovery, Health Ministry Director General Prof Ron Gamzu has acknowledged in a letter to Israeli health maintenance organizations that Black Jewish immigrants were given the shots.
Gamzu issued the letter after Sharona Eliahu-Chai of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel lodged a complaint on behalf of multiple women’s rights and Ethiopian immigrant groups. The letter specifically instructed gynecologists in the HMOs “not to renew prescriptions for Depo-Provera for women of Ethiopian origin if for any reason there is concern that they might not understand the ramifications of the treatment.”
Investigative journalist Gal Gabbay interviewed 35 Ethiopian immigrants along with Sava Reuben. Some of them reported that while they were still in transit camps waiting to complete the immigration process, they were intimidated and threatened into taking the Depo-Provera birth control shot. One woman stated, “They told us they are inoculations. They told us people who frequently give birth suffer. We took it every three months. We said we didn’t want to.” Another woman reported that she believed she had been given a flu vaccination. Shockingly, 25 of the 35 women interviewed were still receiving birth control shots at the time they were interviewed.
One woman, who declined to give her name, says that the only reason she complied with receiving the birth control injections was because she was threatened with her immigration to Israel being blocked. These women represent a handful of the women affected by this unethical act. In just the last decade, more than 50,000 Ethiopian Jews have immigrated to Israel, with almost 100,000 immigrating since the 1980s.
According to a New York Times report, Israel has historically made birth rates and demographics a political issue as the country focuses on trying to promote Jewish birthrates in order to retain a Jewish majority. It is estimated that Israel’s deceptive use of the birth control shots could be a significant factor in why the birthrate of Israel’s Ethiopian community has dropped by some 50 percent. Sava and Reuben produced a documentary regarding this drop, instigating a popular outcry.
Six years prior to the discovery of the forcible use of the birth control, Women and Technologies Project head Hedva Eyal questioned the Israeli government abut why Ethiopian immigrants were disproportionately receiving 60 percent of birth control shots in the country, but she was not given an answer. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Eyal states, “The ease with which a woman’s testimony is dismissed – certainly that of a Black woman and a poor Black woman at that – is shocking.”
Israel’s health ministry has vehemently denied the forcible use of the birth control shots. A spokesperson for the department states, “The Israel ministry of health neither advises nor encourages the use of Depo-Provera injections and if they are being administered this is in despite of our view.”
Dr. Mushira Aboodia, a gynecologist with Jerusalem’s Hadassah medical center, states, “This is a policy that no one will admit. No one in Israel will take responsibility for the treatment in the camps but someone must have instigated it and it would not be in Ethiopia’s interests to treat women preparing to leave the country. Something is definitely wrong here.” It is disturbingly ironic that Israel has engaged in something eerily similar to the dark eugenics experiments carried out during World War II against Jews.
This is not the first time the birth control shot Depo-Provera has been embroiled in controversy. In the United States, between 1967 and 1978, 13,000 impoverished women in Georgia were part of an experiment where they were given the birth control injections with many of them not being aware that they were part of an experiment. Half of the women in the study were Black.
Rosie bought me a book for Valentine's Day =D
Today has not been a good day. I feel a little as though I'm doing everything exactly right during the week, a little robotic at times, but straightforward and simple. Then the weekend comes and all of my control slips away and all the ugly emotions come tumbling out of me like vomit. Like every emotional reaction I suppressed during the week in order to behave like a nice normal human being was still there, just waiting for a quiet moment to go, "Hi. Still here fuckface."
And that is an unpleasant experience and I don't know really what to do with it.
Rosie says I repress things and instead I should write down my feelings on a regular basis, so that if I won't express them in the moment, at least I'm off-loading so that they don't all accumulate and wait to ambush me. And I really resist that interpretation of my psyche, because I suppose it suggests that my self-control is actually sort of flimsy and superficial, and that beneath the surface there are currents that I cannot ever hope to control. I can just direct them, sort of. And even that is paltry compared to the force of emotion that is waiting.
I have the strong sensation that I just want to be alone for a while so that I can be authentic and honest and not worry about how my experiences or ideas or behaviour might affect those around me. And realistically today was exactly that opportunity, but I was overwhelmed with all of my despair and frustration and confusion and desire and the futility of my position.
It strikes me as a special kind of irony - and I know I am not the first - that now that I have found myself
a) a partner in crime who understands me and love me, and who also facilitates my emotional and sexual desires
b) a job that places me in exactly the sort of environment, doing exactly the sort of work I wanted to do
c) in receipt of a paycheque that does not make me wealthy, but supports us and allows us to live comfortably
d) a place to live that has all the modern conveniences, as well as all the furniture and accessories that we have delayed or abstained from for so long
that now, now of all times, I find myself wondering... well what now? What else? I've ticked all the boxes. I've even enrolled in a part time degree so that I keep my mind exercised. Literally all of the desires I thought were important, I have gone to great lengths to satisfy, and I don't really know that it's solved the underlying sense of discomfort. Which is unsurprising, because desire blah blah, covetousness, blah blah, buddhism blah blah. I know. I know. But here I am, comfortable, supported, loved, and wracked with such emotional instability and immaturity that a Saturday to myself leads to self harm and despair. What? How... but... what am I doing wrong here? How is this not working? There's a very really sense of frustration every time things go wrong, because I feel like Job, like, fuck, I'm doing all the things I'm supposed to be doing, and it doesn't seem to count for anything. Except I'm not petitioning the deity, I'm just losing my mind at the walls and the cutlery and the poor fucking degus. And what? What do I do? Write more? Meditate? I try and I try and nothing ever sticks, nothing becomes habit. I just want to get back on the right track, but I don't know what that is, if I was ever on it, and who I should trust to direct me. Rosie seems to know what she's talking about, but then she loses HER mind and it undermines the message. The prophets and the sages seem to know what they're talking about, but they're often contradictory. I don't know who I am, what I am, where I should go, or what I should do. All of my concepts are suspect, all of my values are inherited. I don't know anything worthwhile that I didn't have shoved down my throat or was emotionally blackmailed into believing. What? Just... what? I'm lost. More distraction.
killingbuddha reblogged
He’s been condemned by other Muslim leaders, and some local imams have even refused to greet him. But Imam Daayiee Abdullah – believed to be the only openly gay imam in the Americas – is proud of his story.
He was born and raised in Detroit, where his parents were Southern Baptists. At age 15, he came out to them. At 33, while studying in China, Abdullah converted to Islam, and went on to study the religion in Egypt, Jordan and Syria. But as a gay man in America, he saw that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Muslims had unmet spiritual needs and he became an imam to provide community support.
“Sometimes necessity is the mother of invention. And because of the necessity in our community, that’s why I came into this particular role,” he told America Tonight about his journey.
His first act as an imam? Performing funeral rites for a gay Muslim who died of AIDS.
“They had contacted a number of imams, and no one would go and provide him his janazah services,” he said, referring to the Muslim body cleaning ritual. That pained him.
“I believe every person, no matter if I disagree with you or not, you have the right as a Muslim to have the proper spiritual [rites] and rituals provided for you. And whoever judges you, that will be Allah’s decision, not me.”
It’s one of the mantras he lives by in his work, even as others condemn him.
This man is doing the world a great service. Best of luck to him. Honestly
killingbuddha reblogged
slimgiltsoul:
☆ SELF CARE WITH DOG zine is free to download here! ☆
(press the zip icon in the bottom right)
please look after yourselves and your friends you’re so important
killingbuddha reblogged
aurevoir-mes-amis-deactivated20
rhyse
When I was at the lowest spot in my depression I locked myself in my bedroom for three days and lied to everyone I knew. I called in sick to work. I told my mom I was seeing a doctor. I told my friends I was busy. I had successfully fooled everyone who loved me that I was making healthy changes and getting better. I wasn’t, but it was so much easier to hide and pretend that I was than to actually go outside and do something.
Depression is weird. I feel like a lot of people think depression means being sad and crying all the time but it’s the exact opposite. Depression, for me at least, was the complete and utter lack of emotion. I was so apathetic to everything that I couldn’t care if I wanted to. Sometimes I would work myself up to tears by thinking about how fucking miserable and pathetic I was, but almost as quickly as they came I was back to “what’s the point?”
Same with happiness. I could watch the cutest cat video on the whole internet and I would smile and laugh and the alarm in my brain would start screaming KITTEN ALERT EVERYBODY FREAK OUT
but as soon as it was over the power would go out and the little workers inside my head would take a vacation to the brain of someone who could sustain an emotion for longer than the average youtube video.
So there I am, laying in bed, my entire body recoiling in horror at the pitiful excuse of the mind that it’s been permanently tethered to. I start to wonder if things will ever change or if I’ll just be like this forever. I become vaguely suicidal. I don’t really want to end my life, but I wouldn’t be opposed to the idea of me suddenly ceasing to exist. So I hide in bed all day, every day, for as long as I can manage.
I wait for something. Anything. A satellite to fall through my roof and crush me in my sleep. An earthquake to part my street from the avenue that crosses it and swallow my house to the middle of Earth’s giant rumbly belly. A friend to kick down my door and drag me to the hospital or mental institution or maybe a secret underground lab where the government keeps people who don’t have feelings anymore.
Fortunately, none of that happens.
My friends eventually catch on to my shenanigans and despite their best efforts, are useless. They would try to get me out of the house almost daily but I would make up some bullshit excuse to get out of it.
Eventually, they stop trying to help me, and even though they weren’t successful before, their lack of empathy becomes my new favorite excuse.
It wasn’t their fault, of course. It was mine. They had done everything they could and I was not ready or able or willing to cooperate. Did I understand that at the time? No fucking way. Why I would take responsibility for my problems when I could just blame them on someone else?
In the early stages of my depression I would sometimes compare my affliction to The World’s Worst Roller Coaster!™
I knew that eventually I would get to the top, the ride being so emotionally exhausting that I would simply be ‘okay’ enough to not throw myself over the railing and ruin some random passerby’s day. I would instead begin the long and weary trek down the 312 steps towards sanity.
But I never reached the top.
In fact, my ascent to the peak of the coaster was so slow that renovations had already begun and construction on the rest of the track had started while I was still onboard. Nobody cared to notify me or maybe slam the big red button that says “HEY THERE’S SOME ASSHOLE STILL ON THE RIDE!”
As my depression continued, The World’s Worst Roller Coaster!™ slowly began to morph into an episode of The World’s Deadliest Train Crashes!®.
My train car began to pick up speed along the newly appointed rails. I passed through tunnels and forests and cold mountain ranges but no cities or towns or warm inviting parties filled with people I wanted to see or be around. My train was on a journey to God knows where, but it was going too fast for me to hop off or for anyone to hop on and help me.
I tried to make the best of my train ride by keeping myself busy (in my own solitary one-person train car, of course) but it only made me more lonely and depressed. No matter how many video games, books, movies, or internet memes I devoured I still couldn’t feel like I was doing anything right.
Eventually I realized my train wasn’t taking me anywhere good.
I knew I still had plenty of time before I needed to start worrying, but it was hard for me to accept the fact that the light at the end of my tunnel was actually a fallen-apart rickety wooden bridge over a 200 foot drop into freezing polar bear infested waters. I figured I would just hold on as tight as I could and pray I would survive the fiery plunge off the bridge and that maybe, just maybe, someone would pull my shivering body out of the ice-water.
You see, I had no desire to change anything. I was ready to ride my stupid train right to my death. I just didn’t care enough to save myself.
While riding my train, I spoke to a friend. She told me that I was running out of track and that she was afraid. She began to cry and told me that she wanted nothing more than for me to get off the train. She wanted me to fix my stupid brain and convince the little workers to ditch their vacation plans and come back home. She wanted me to watch cat videos that would make me laugh so hard my eyes would roll back into my head and my spine would constrict into the letter R. She wanted me to get back to blogging the way I had in the past and use it to build a name, and possibly a career, for myself. She wanted me to find love in someone who loved me back, rather than the useless people I had spent the last year chasing to no avail. She wanted the best for me. She wanted me to be good. She offered to do anything she could to make me that way.
This person had so much love for me that she was willing to do anything to help me.
I snapped.
I realized I wasn’t ready to let go.
I began to cry. I began to cry in a way that I hadn’t cried in months. I felt genuine emotion and I wanted to keep feeling it. I used to hate crying, but after weeks and months of indifference and pure concentrated lethargy, the tears felt like the best thing ever. Each salty glob was a sigh of relief. All the emotions I had repressed were leaking down my face and I didn’t know if I should smile or laugh or sob loudly. So I did all three.
I stood up in my train car and leaned over the side. I could see the bridge out at the end and I knew it was now or never. I closed my eyes and jumped feet first.
I did it! I got off the train! I didn’t explode into tiny little pieces and get devoured by polar bears! I ran back to my friend and I thanked her for saving me.
"I didn’t do anything, Rhyse. You made the decision. You got off the train."
I was aware that I wasn’t right the whole time, but I was perfectly content to just ride it out, even though I knew it wasn’t going to end well. I had spent so long not feeling anything that I believed the first active choice I had made was all due to someone else. But it was me all along. I had made the first step to getting better.
Now I have a long walk back to civilization. My path won’t be easy. It will be a slow and arduous journey peppered with therapists, medication, and return-to-work forms, but I am ready to try, and that’s already an enormous development from the way I’ve been.
I know it’s probably weird to be reading this on my blog, especially considering this is about as much an actual ‘blog’ as cheese slices are actual cheese, but I felt it was extremely important to share my story with people who might be going through the same thing.
I am not cured of my depression and I won’t pretend that I’m perfectly okay now, but I am ready to start getting better. Knowing you’re not alone is huge. Depression weakens people by isolating them from the ones they love. Know this, if you are feeling like I felt, you are not alone. Reach out to the people who surround you, you never know who will be there to catch you.
I’ve never had something convey what depression is like more clearly than this
Reflections on a week and a bit in an FE college
I started my new job last Monday, and I thought it might be helpful to record my thoughts and feelings thus far.
Everyone seems quite pleasant, if a little frazzled and busy. The college seems to have set a high standard for itself in terms of quality, and there seems to be a reflection of that in almost everyone I've spoken to.
The job itself is still only just becoming a clear entity, since they have taken baby steps to introduce me to it (my predecessor only lasted three weeks due to information overload and stress). I think I would have benefited from a more structured system of training, particularly with the various IT systems, but these are also beginning to cohere into a manageable mass of information in my head, and in any case, I have been given opportunities to dip my toe in the water with student enquiries and the like.
I struggled in the first week with lack of sleep, I have to catch an early train, so I'm out the house at half past six and home again about twelve hours later. This leaves twelve hours to apportion socialising with Rosie, cooking and eating dinner, household chores, and sleep. Which is perfectly possible, but requires a degree of forethought and structure in my evenings that I had not entirely prepared myself for. I also had been over compensating for my fatigue with caffeine, and this has been keeping me perky during the day, but irritable elsewhere. I'm trying to dial it down to sensible levels / get by without it.
So aside from the stress of getting to know twenty or thirty new people, learn a new job on the job, and manage my time effectively even at home, it's been basically okay. I'm enjoying spending my lunch breaks exploring the city, and my commute gives me time to read. I've finished two books already!
I guess that's all for now.
killingbuddha reblogged
As the world watched in horror while two gunmen slaughtered 12 people at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris last week, a massacre of a different kind was happening halfway across the world.
In the Nigerian town of Baga, Boko Haram insurgents carried out one of the bloodiest attacks in the group’s history, killing an estimated 2,000 people. Most of the victims were women, children and elderly people who couldn’t escape after fighters drove into the town firing rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons at local residents.
"The worsening conflict in northern Nigeria already has suffered more casualties this year than the world’s most publicized contemporary wars."
snndkdkdkkkgkskjs199291
Americans are so sad about 9/11 (and they should be) but they hardly bat an eye when many more people die in some far away place that has brown or black people. Americans need to care about people everywhere, not just in their white countries.
killingbuddha reblogged
Anonymous asked:
listen, outside of this France incident, Muslims have engaged in ridiculous amounts of violence against other religions and groups of people and have been oppressors. Asking other Muslims if they oppose it isn't wrong.
No, fuck that. You listen.
The only reason you’re using actual instances that Muslims have the capabilities of acting as oppressors is to assert your own pre-existing prejudices against Muslims in a completely different context. Where the fuck were you people when the Clinton administration sanctioned Iraq and killed half a million Iraqi children by deliberately cutting off essential resources? Oh wait, I’ll remind you. Madeleine Albright praised the deaths and claiming she had no regrets of her colleagues’ decisions. And then we occupied Iraq again. Where are you when Israel unloads white phosphorous on populations in Gaza (where Christians exist) and jail men who dress up as Santa in the West Bank? Hold on, let me refresh your memory. Senator Ted Cruz antagonizes Arab Christians by insisting that they either support Israel, or lose his support. Coercing people into becoming Zionists and collaborators against their own? Such an earnest act of solidarity, I’m sure.
And since we’re on the topic of sectarian violence, I’ll give you my personal experiences with it. Muslims have been massacred in Ethiopia for over a century. My own family refuses to go back to their ancestral villages for fear that they’ll be spied on, detained and even worse for simply practicing their faith. Not only is the rampant violence against Muslims in Ethiopia a severely neglected and under reported issue, but now that Ethiopia (which is an imperial power in the Horn of Africa, currently engaged in several occupations and sieges, both within its own borders and out) is the one of the US’ biggest ally in the “global war on terror”, the state’s heinous grievances against Muslims is not only excused, but lauded as a necessary evil.
And with all this, never once has it ever crossed my mind to ask Christians from Ethiopia, let alone Christians from around the world who have absolutely nothing to do with genocides that occur globally to routinely condemn them by the dint of sharing basic theological tenants. And I realize that reductive positionalities such as “Muslims vs. Christians” wholly reduces the point of religious oppression. Both Muslims and Christians, throughout history have used (or exploited) their faith positively and negatively. As resistance. As oppression. As a moral compass and a normalizer of calamity. A person’s faith will only be exemplified in the aspect of their characteristics. And I realize that most Christians would abhor the awful shit that’s supposedly done in their faith’s name.
And because Muslims from my region have been historically oppressed and international media, my natural inclination, by politics and morality is to stand with the oppressed and those on the receiving end of violence, regardless of their background. There’s even a verse in the Qur’an that reiterates this stance.
[O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives. Whether one is rich or poor, Allah is more worthy of both. So follow not [personal] inclination, lest you not be just. And if you distort [your testimony] or refuse [to give it], then indeed Allah is ever, with what you do, acquainted]. Al-Nisa (4:135)
Nuance however, only exists for few groups. With most people, it would be unthinkable and in poor taste to conflate the KKK and Black American Christians who they have terrorized for the better part of the past 100 years in an attempt to condemn Christianity. Given that the vast majority of those victimized by violent factions acting in the name of Islam have been other Muslims, it would seem inappropriate to group the oppressed and oppressor, and yet, Muslims are consistently asked how we feel about the very groups that seek to destabilize and wreak havoc against us.
Part of discourse surrounding Islam has been to homogenize the ultimate goals, principles, objectives, lifestyles and traditions of every Muslim, even in the most precarious ways. Any attempts to compile a fourth of the world’s population who span every continent, geopolitical situation, socioeconomic position, race, etc into an ambiguous body is laughably absurd any way you stretch it. By the very definition, this is bigotry. Do you seriously anticipate me, or others to support people being heinously killed? What kind of monsters do you think we are? Why do you expect us to answer to this kind of demonization? I never will.
I’ll say this once and never again. I refuse to legitimize discourse with the pretext that I, or other Muslims are terrorizing subjects. If that’s a problem for you, then that can stay your problem, but it won’t be mine.
killingbuddha reblogged
I’ve had this one sitting in my to-do pile for a while, and was finally galvanized to draw it up after going to a talk around intersections of sex, gender, and race this weekend. The topic of pronouns and terminology came up and the speaker just sort of smirked and said ‘yeah, we all know who wrote the dictionaries, don’t we?’ and I was like YES I HAVE A WHOLE THING ABOUT THAT.
My proudest moment of this comic is that I managed to sneak a penis joke into it.
Relevant!