Let’s say you’re eating a bag of grapes. You like sweet over sour grapes so with each reach in you hope to place a sweetened fruit into your mouth. After minutes of eating sweet grapes you place a sour grape into your mouth and are shocked by the tart taste. At this moment you have a few options; to throw the bag away, continue eating, or set the bag down for later. Now apply this scenario to the average American and how they perceive Muslim Americans. Most Americans have labeled Muslims or Islamic affiliated people terrorists because of September 11, and as a result, interactions between both cultures have changed. The fear of Muslim culture has become so great that the religion of Islam has been misconstrued and twisted to appear as if it were a facilitator to terroristic beliefs. The importance of this issue is dire as even today complications with Muslim Americans and Americans continue. Most Americans have condemned an entire culture based on the actions of a few and as a result; cast them away like the bag of grapes. The events that started the persecution of this culture occurred nearly ten years ago and yet the culture is still under scrutiny for what transpired. Referencing the metaphor, I wonder how long it will take all of America to pick up the bag again, some I know have completely thrown the grapes away, but many have set the bag aside waiting try again. If you were to place yourself into one of the three categories, which would you choose?
Unfortunately,the sad truth is that it might take a while for most americans to want to pick up that bag of grapes again. The most misunderstood religion today is that of Islam. People so easily fail to distinguish ordinary followers from extremists. And the terrorist attacks on 9/11 weren't because of some religious conflict, it was simply because of vengeance. And the extremists justified their vengeance by their own interpretation of the Koran: which was the belief that they were doing the right thing by killing in the name of Allah. So people quite easily ignore the real motives of the attack and instead blame it on religion; this happens because people fear what they do not thoroughly understand. And that's what most americans are doing, they are afraid and skeptical of muslim americans because they do not comprehend their religion or have a biased opinion of it. However i do think that the younger generations will eventually be able to pick up the bag of grapes again and might even find the previously sour grapes quite nice. Actually, I doubt that the younger generations ever put the bag down, they merely picked the sweet grapes for a while because of adult influence
ReplyDeleteI find it overwhelmingly sad that Americans have formed harsh and unreasonable judgments against a whole culture and group of people based on the acts of a few. In some ways likening Al Qaeda or radical Muslim fundamentalists to Islam is much like comparing the Ku Klux Klan to all of Christianity. The extremist beliefs of one subset of a religion are not relevant to the whole. I think your metaphor of the bag of grapes to Islam is an insightful way of commenting on the overall American perception of Muslims. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, Americans will come to the conclusion that despite the sour grapes that are few and far between, we should not throw the whole bag away.
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