Hasta La Gadget!

But many French are angry, shell-shocked and traumatically stressed, as are people in other locales who have been victimized by terror. They want safety and justice. They want their loved ones and their towns as they were.

If they can’t have that―which they can’t―they want to go back to the beach….and find some respite.  They want to listen to the waves, or feel the sun, or gaze upon the exposed flesh of the bodies they like to look at, and ignore or belittle the exposed flesh of the bodies they feel superior to.

They don’t want to see Muslims there, at least not Muslims who can be identified as such. (Though it is convenient that hijabs and burkinis make it easy to know whom to deplore and exclude.)  It is perhaps worse when Muslims, who are not in identifiable garb, wander among the ‘clean’ folk, surreptitiously ‘tainting’ the water and the scene.

How about yellow crescents?

For Muslims who are not instantly identifiable, would it, perhaps, be a good idea to ‘tag’ them?  A yellow crescent might do the trick.  Maybe tattooed, along with an identification number, or, implanted, as a chip?

Those who would exclude Muslims from the beach forget that vast numbers of Muslims in France, and elsewhere, have been primary victims of terrorism.  They forget that Muslims are a part of the community, presumably paying taxes that maintain it.  They forget that Muslims, too, lost their loved ones to terror, and also seek some small respite at the beach.  But that is not to be.  Instead, some of these people are to be victimized again, made to feel unwelcome, inferior, unclean, and excluded by their own local governments, as well as by those people who agree with the policy, or who ‘go along’, or who don’t object, or who simply ‘mind their own business.’

The history of ‘going along’

This history of ‘going along’ is well-known, and very dangerous.

I live in a neighborhood to which Orthodox Jews have been progressively migrating, some might say “encroaching”, as the community has shifted from predominantly Catholic, to mixed and secular, and now, increasingly, to an observantly Jewish population.  As a secular Jew, I still feel somewhat marginal, although the neighborhood now hosts ‘my people’, many Jews who likely carry our people’s Holocaust memories or associations, whether we are secular or observant.

The Orthodox women wear long skirts, long sleeves, and cover their natural hair with wigs, in their own practice of modesty.  Do their husbands, or the fact that they are born into patriarchal Orthodox families, dictate these choices?  Certainly, there are women in all cultures, influenced or directed to wear something modest, or immodest, by someone with power over them.  And we are all under the sway of the fashion industry, of media, and those who gain from manipulating our choices and purchases.

Many Orthodox men in my community wear yamulkes on their heads, and fringes beneath their shirts.  Some grow long locks of hair at their ears.  Some dress in the anachronistic long black coats and fur hats of their Eastern European ancestors, even in summer.  To me, the men in their black hats and garb look hot, stand-offish, insular, and, I admit, rather off-putting.

I have to also admit that, in general, these men look free.  Because they are. They are free to dress as they choose, at least according to the law and to the norms of our culture.  They certainly don’t ask my approval.  If I have any feelings about it, I am free to not live in this neighborhood, or free to deal with my issues in the privacy of my own head.  An argument made by those who deplore Muslim garb is that Muslims so dressed represent some sort of encroaching indoctrination of everyone.   No one dressed modestly, whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Mormon, or any other religion, has ever tried to tell me how to dress, and I’m fairly certain that this is widely true elsewhere, and in France.

My town council has not decreed the proper length of Jewish womens’ skirts, or mens’ hair.  If there were to be civic debate about this, I am certain the discussion would be fraught with raised voices and raised emotions, that would, very quickly, and rightfully, veer into evoking the Holocaust. 

Standing up

So, why, I wonder, is it that Jews, everywhere, France included, aren’t front and center; fighting for a principle that is equally critical to our own history and our own rights? Will the next Anne Frank be a girl in a hijab, hiding from the locals, writing of her longing to walk safely in the world, as a commenter to a piece I wrote predicted?

Why aren’t huge coalitions of all people who choose to dress in accordance with their cultures, their religions, even their own fashion sense, standing against policies and laws, which are a slippery slope to oppression, discrimination, and even destruction of entire groups of people?

The big conversations being played out in our current media characterizing all, or almost all, Muslims, are based in absurd ignorance, including shrill claims made by non-Muslims, spouting forth about matters of which they have no understanding.  But just because something is repeated, or shouted, does not make it true, no matter how convincing it may seem.

Good information

Where can we get good information?  How about authentic sources?  If you are not Muslim, how many Muslim women who wear headscarfs have you met, befriended, and asked to share their personal reasons and choices for what they wear?   

How many Muslims, or Jewish men in yamulkes, or people who wear crucifixes, or Sikh men who wear turbans as an integral precept of their religion, (which is utterly distinct from Islam), do you know, before making general judgments about them?  How many people―who were born into whatever families, cultures, ethnicities, and religions in which they landed, and who are, like you, trying to make their way in this world, to be productive and happy―do you make snap judgements about, based on some superficial feature or stereotype?  

Where have you derived your ideas about the autonomy and stature of masses of Muslim women?  After Donald Trump made absurd, ignorant comments about Ghazala Khan, a gold-star mother, too grief-stricken over losing her son to speak in front of millions of people, Muslim women worldwide, many who choose to cover their heads, created the #CanYouHearUsNow campaign, highlighting some of their awesome accomplishments.

Women who choose to wear burkinis include doctors who might save the life of someone you love, include scientists seeking cures for cancer, include people who would eagerly share information of any impending act of terror, if they knew about it. 

Does it matter that whenever groups are profiled and smeared, innocent people are inevitably harassed, hurt, sometimes even killed, by those who take the cue that hatred is now sanctioned? Does it matter that teasing and bullying of Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Arab and South Asian students is now rampant, and that our children routinely witness this? Mean and intolerant behaviors, trends and policies are, in themselves, virulent contagions, which impact everyone in a culture―perpetrators, victims and bystanders.  Ask an entire generation of Germans.  Is it acceptable that large numbers of innocent people have been victims of assaults, and even murder, by Islamophobic and xenophobic perpetrators?  

Beach bags vs burkas

Those who purvey the most facile, superficial anti-Muslim stereotypes the hardest are those who have the most to gain.  And they don’t care about the impact and consequences.  They are garnering votes, or viewers, or selling their books, or collecting huge speakers’ fees.  They are happily scapegoating Muslims because it is convenient to have a group to blame for deep and complex problems our societies face, or because some vestigial aspect of our tribal origins clings tenaciously to having an “Other” to target.  

Are we humans advancing, or regressing to barbarity?  In answer, please do not cite, in comments, the barbaric acts of individuals and tiny percentages of people, to justify wholesale labeling and smearing of vast groups of humanity.  Obviously there are vile, destructive evil-doers among us, of every ethnicity, religion, and color; people who commit horrific, despicable atrocities.

People who can just as easily pack an automatic weapon in a beach bag, as under a burka.

Our job is to deplore the real acts of the real perpetrators of terror, of every stripe, and to work against becoming a culture that bounces stereotypes, fear-mongering, incitements, hatred, and atrocities back and forth, exacerbating trauma and destruction, until we are universally submerged in it.  Yet it’s obvious that there are people who get off on the idea of a ‘clash of civilizations’, who exhibit satisfaction, even glee, over any tragic events they can use to justify their positions.  

Taking innocents’ eyes, for innocents’ eyes taken; volleying destruction back and forth

There are those who justify taking innocents’ eyes, for innocents’ eyes taken.  (Those who perpetrate this are not innocent.)  

Can we not agree to condemn the destruction of innocents, anywhere, in any circumstances; also to not glory in our victimization when we are targeted, or revel in victories that involve the innocent sacrifice of others?  We take full offense when the following behaviors are directed at us.  Can we concede that it is equally offensive and inciting to others, when we casually or purposefully direct these same behaviors to ‘their’ side?:  

• smearing entire groups 

• disregard for innocents, or intentional targeting of innocents

• generalized destruction, dismissively termed “collateral damage” to innocents

• holding entire groups responsible for independent actions of individuals, over whom the groups have no control or influence 

• fomenting of generalized stereotyping, fear, suspicion and hatred 

• incitements to mass eradication, whether by anonymous online commenters, general populations, media pundits, politicians or leaders 

Tragically, we’ve been all-too-easily indoctrinated to engage in such stereotypes and behaviors. Our human fellows have fallen for perpetrating and justifying the destruction of innocent Native Americans, blacks, Armenians, Jews, gays, Roma, Bangladeshis, Cambodians, Bosnians, Tutsis, and…the list goes on. We are masterful at spiraling animosity and hate, at fomenting war and annihilation, even inciting the destruction that ricochets back to ourselves, in response to the tensions, animosities and grievances we stir in the world.

Relinquish our role as bystanders and take serious matters seriously. 

What we desperately need is to think, hard, about the role we must play, to foster creativity and cooperation on this planet, so that it, and we, its inhabitants, may survive.