This is Me

I started my day yesterday with the same routine I follow almost every morning. After getting up and making some coffee, I switched on my Mac and started dissecting the news for everything that I had missed in the last hours I have been away. It seems more recently that I have become an addict to the news. The day does not feel complete without reading the first 15 articles of every news source that I have bookmarked.

The more I continue to read day after day while I live in the West, the more a story unfolds itself in front of me. The love story between the West and the Orient has a long deep seated history of myth and imagination. The fascination with the dark and mystic has created a mirage that has yet to expire. It is a history of struggle, hijacked by those victims of their imaginations and their prejudices in the name of what perhaps can be most easily referred to as an urge of perverse exploitation. The most frightening aspect of this love story however, is not that it exists, but that its effects can blind even those who must stand up and fight against it.

The struggle of maintaining an identity as a liberal Muslim man living in the West has become as hard as ever. With the advent of Western academia and its models, the Muslim male identity finds itself under an attack which seems almost impossible to defend. In as much as I believe in assimilating into the environment that I now live in I cannot deny who I am. The blood that runs through my veins cannot let me renounce nor can I forget. In a sense, the pride that has been developed inside me and the history of my people finds itself fading into the darkness.

The land that I come from is not the land of Aladin. We do not speak the same jargon that you have heard in Syriana or Team America. Blood thirsty terrorists are not my neighbors. The only Klashnikovs I have seen have been on TV and I did not learn how to make bombs in school. These statements may come a shock to some, its not so often that something that may seem obvious is said so seriously. However these statements represent some of the realities that Muslim men must live through day after day - not for unorthodox behaviors or customs - but instead because of unique names and color of skin. The stereotype of being an oppressive, rough, inarticulate, "brown-town" - towel head permeates even in small bits through almost every encounter between virgin West and un-foreseeing Orient.

In reality I was born to a family not a harem. I am not prince but I do guard my reputation like it was of royal importance. I do not believe in honor killings but in honor. Family is my biggest priority and my nephews and nieces are my life. Oppression is my personal Jihad, and I believe in changing the world through love and not in violence. The language I speak is thousands of years old and environmental preservation is written throughout the pages of the book that I revere. Yes I am a feminist and the only thing I inherited from my father was my name.

How many can say that they have had the perversity of experiencing 3 wars? Bombs have never stopped falling. No one that I know started the fight, but my sin is that I live through it day and night - even when I am not there. When all are allowed to speak I must hold my tongue and yes I am labeled. Airport searches are never random, and my pockets never hold more than a phone and my passport.

Why do I tell you this? Because you fear me when I fear you.