Ten Years...

I had no idea how to approach this.  The statuses of friends sickened me, as they preached nationalism, the othering of others and violence in many cases.  Anger may have subsided some, but most talked about watching all the footage on TV again or re-listening to interviews on the radio.  Bin Laden is dead--finally caught this past May--but most folks never mentioned this in their reflections on 9/11.

One of the most interesting things to come out of 9/11, for me, is how many end up spending that day now.  Most of the Muslim community here in St. Louis is involved in a day of  community service.  While I sincerely wish that this was better noticed by the community at large, I can't help but feel that it's as if it's purposefully ignored. Politicians stand around the hole in the ground in NYC, excluding firefighters and other emergency workers who were there that day so that other talking heads can show up and pontificate.

The president says something about not bowing to fear, and for the first time in this whole process, I roll my eyes.  Nine years I put up with this, but no more.  Enough with the talk of fear, enough with revisiting the footage.  Enough of toying with emotions in people's lives.  I fully believe that grief is still there for many, that wounds run deep, but that re-airing that footage does more harm than good.  We have dwelt on the anger, fear and violence too long as a nation.

On the other hand, the origins of this dissertation project really began with 9/11.  I'd just come back from teaching ESL and music ministry in Japan the month prior.  I'd seen Hiroshima and been amazed at the attitude of the Japanese--the focus on recovery and rebuilding and reformation rather than on the violence itself.  I spent 9/12 talking with classmates who insisted that we needed to "bomb the hell out of whoever is responsible."  I wore the T-shirt I'd bought in Japan--black, with the white silhouette of the one building still standing close to the Hiroshima epicenter: the domed building.  Underneath, it states in red letters: August 8, 1945.  NO MORE HIROSHIMAS.  Their response to the violence was to try to prevent it from ever happening again.

Our response over 10 years?  To get involved in 3 major wars.  My own response?  To the words of hatred for Muslims and fear of terrorists?  I started learning more about Islam.  I had to read part of the Qu'ran for my masterpieces of world lit that year anyway, so I started investigating.  Often things attributed to Qu'ran in the papers--on violence and the infidel--came from Haddith, not Qu'ran.  That's like saying the bible tells Christians not to smoke or drink or play cards when it's coming out of pamphlets written by denominational tracts decades/centuries later.  The Haddiths about violence and infidels are sort of like the books of the bible that no one prints--they were rejected as scripture. But no one within the American community seemed to understand or listen to this information. Every  time I talked with someone about faith in the years following, the most articulate and thoughtful and informative and peaceful persons I talked with were Muslim or Buddhist--the Christians I knew (the American Christians especially) were more concerned with things they DIDN'T agree with or believe were right than what they believed in or knew they should do.

This project continues, but while I use 9/11 as an important event, I focus on the POST part--to me, 2001 is over.  What lingers is the pain revisited every year in the ways in which we 'remember,' and in our ignoring of the ways in which the Muslim community attempts to connect with mainstream American of that day.  I'm not asking us to forgive and forget--but I AM praying that we start paying attention to the ways in which most Muslims articulate their faith and spend 9/11.  This could be about unity and healing and standing together to reject violence and hatred, but it hasn't been--not yet.

I had the most wonderful interview on Saturday night with the director of CAIR-St. Louis.  As I was already familiar with the organization in general, I'd just called up and mentioned my project asking to interview the director as a community leader, if possible.  It turned out that he was YOUNG--just out of college, and I wasn't sure what I'd find.  Of course, I was pleasantly surprised by his articulateness and ability to relax into the conversation.  Though we didn't know each other well,  we chatted comfortably and he talked about some of their work and the youtube videos he's making on upcoming events for the organization.  He talked about John Esposito (a very well known scholar and writer on Islam) coming to help with a fundraiser this winter--and he talked about his experience as the only Muslim family in their suburb of St. Louis growing up and for him.

He would have been a young teenager in 2001--he said that for him and for his friends, 9/11 changed their lives in that they had to revisit family heritages--what did it mean to be from Pakistan?  Was he then an Arab-American, and what WAS an Arab-American?  (Hint: Arab usually refers to someone who speaks Arabic as a first language), and what IS Islam?  What do you believe and what was this Hezbollah group?  Tough questions for a teen--but what a heck of a way to learn about heritage, belief and to affirm an identity--or to reject pieces of identity assumed or forced upon him! After all, if you were asked what it means to be American and German/Italian/Irish/Dutch?  What IS Christianity REALLY about, and do you really believe that...? How would your faith and identity be challenged and/or strengthened if you had to answer these questions in high school or college?

What does the 10 year anniversary mean to me?  Missed opportunities--for dialogue, for unity, for a chance to say that we're not a people who define ourselves around an act of violence and hatred.  We should learn from Hiroshima and the act of restoration.  We should learn that the act of violence could inspire us to a day of community service and dialogue--and for those of us especially who did not lose loved ones, we should think about those who did and ways in which we might serve them, rather than serving our own anger and violence. It also means that this paper needs to be written and all I can do is pray that others will read and understand that this, too, is a possible reaction to 9/11--reflection on who each of us is as an individual and a call to redefine Christianity not by what we reject and those we disagree with, but by what we DO believe, the stereotypes we reject, and the life of sharing our love and service we are called to.