2009-12-02
What is happening? Where are we going? Where do we draw the line? When are we going to understand that the world is not flat? When will we realize that the world actually is shrinking?
Different cultures and ethnicities are spread all over the world, some "righteously" situated, others not according to some people. The 20th century did hopefully teach mankind a few good lessons, and that is that xenophobia (and the escalation it
ALWAYS leads to) and cold mental wars have no winners. Unfortunately we have still not learned a lesson. Generations of hate is driving Muslims and Jews in Israel and Palestine to hurt and kill each other. The polarization of east and west is constantly pushing the limits. Iran has a nuclear program (the purpose of it is in this post not of interest, jut the existence of it), and most of the rest of the world disapproves this program. A new cold war is being fought. An armed race is feared, similar to that of the 20th century. Did we really not learn anything from that?
The polarization of the world is certainly nothing that appeared as a result of Iran's nuclear program alone. Decades of conflicts and poor relations have resulted in it. The terrorist threat hasn't really helped in brokering peace. Truth is that illiterate and self righteous assholes created a demon depiction of Muslims around the world, claiming that their actions were justified by their God (which according to "true" Muslims is the same God that Christians pray to). The sad result of all of this is that your average Ali or Mohammad are victims of the relatively fresh phenomenon islamophobia. A lot of people in the west fear Muslims as if they were all dangerous. Their traits, their lifestyles and their culture(s) are feared and despised. They are not believed to belong in the western world.
I would just like to point out a few things before I am bashed for what I am saying here:
I am neither religious nor in favor of any particular religion! In my world the coin always has two sides. The world is not exclusively black or white.
Over the years, I've experienced a lot of fear from neutral westerners when it comes to eastern cultures, eastern traditions and naturally eastern religions. This is something natural, a human instinct. Even I am suffering from it, and I am honest to admit it. However, the problem is that the fear is not one sided, a lot of eastern people fear the west, their cultures and religions. One of the most recent examples to that are a series of articles published by
Newsweek related to the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. The articles and interviews were about the despite and fear that young Russians have today for the western influence in their country. Twenty years ago young Russians wanted to pull down the iron curtain and to westernize their country. Twenty years later they have had enough. An older parallel can be drawn to the Iranian revolution in 1979, which was a result of many different factors, but some of the most prominent were related to people's discontent (read fury) over Iran's dependence on the west culturally, socially and financially. One of Khomeini's (the leader of the Islamic revolution of Iran) slogans during the revolution was "
We are not afraid of the threat of violence and weaponed assault, we are afraid of cultural dependence!". Earlier this year, a lot of people in Iran manifested their discontent (read fury once again) over Iran's Islamic rule, the same rule they wanted and revolted for 30 years ago.
Anyway, back to my main point. What I am trying to say is that it is wrong to see easterners (or whatever ethnicity/group one is despising/fearing) exclusively as something "misplaced" in the west, and to blame integration issues on them and only on them. It is wrong because integration is something that has to be done interactively, not by one entity alone. There is a reaction to every action. Those who want to pursue their lives in foreign countries, while fully embracing their native cultures (with limited adaptation to western lifestyles) are most probably doing so because they feel that whatever they do, they will never be accepted by the local populations. They do so because they cannot identify themselves with the values and traits of their country/culture of residence. It is not a crime, it is a burden. Much of this is happening subconsciously, because foreigners feel unsafe and threatened by western lifestyles and western culture. The problem is just that westerners are afraid simultaneously.
People (regardless of where they are on earth) that claim that certain foreign cultures or religions are misplaced in their countries are afraid deep down. Some of them consciously, like me, and some subconsciously. We mythologize and romanticize our own cultures, we believe that we are a little finer, a little better than the others. We do not want and cannot have others that deviate from us around us, because we are afraid that they might contaminate the purity of our own superior culture(s)/societies. We don't want it rubbed in our faces. We don not want to see their cultures and their religions in our beautiful and safe countries. Maybe, just maybe, we deep down don't want to see them at all.
World War II did maybe not teach us a true lesson after all.
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