WE FORGET ONE THING What is so terribly ironic about the current discourse is that both the bigots and the progressives have fallen victim to the same trap: that when we express our thoughts in these moments we have reduced Muslim life to only its coarsest biological definition. For when we express outrage at these murders or respond to that outrage only with arguments about disregard for Muslim life and white/Christian/secular/imperialist murder, we forget one thing: it is precisely that the people who have suffered the most attacks on their freedoms in these democratic countries and the nations they occupy, bomb, and destroy are Muslims. ... The bigots in this conversation are demanding that Muslims respect their freedom of speech, while they show total disregard for even the most basic forms of human rights and dignity for Muslims. Even progressives have been criminally silent on the eroding of our civil liberties and that is because of one fact. Most progressives have no reason to believe they will suffer from these violations. To say it all more concisely, the way people are talking about these events shows that freedom of speech and other fundamental rights are simply not important when concerning Muslims. For the political right, this is true because of a total disregard or disdain for Muslims at large, and for the left it is because this issue has been lost in the list of priorities. - Samee Sulaiman, a recent graduate with an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies and is pursuing further graduate studies. He is from and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. smpalestine/2015/01/09/muslim-freedoms-do-not-matter/
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 08:53:54 +0000
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