The new year has only just started – but our promise to stay confused is already being challenged. Reading the news about the terrorist attacks in Paris makes us feel that we now – maybe more than ever – need to hold on tight to the promise.
By stereotyping and painting a picture of “the terrorist” we are creating a world where people are divided into good and bad. But doesn’t that belong in fairytales?
On Tuesday this week, around 24 hours before the attack in Paris, another attack was carried out in Colorado, in the US. “A balding white man in his 40s” placed a bomb outside of the NAACP (National association for the advancement of colored people) office. Luckily nobody got hurt. The insightful Jamilah Lemieux, senior digital editor at the African American magazine Ebony tweeted:
“Today’s news will assert that a crazy white outlier attempted to bomb an NAACP office, and that Islam carried out a terror attack in Paris.”
And that is pretty much the core of the problem about how we talk about violence. We create stereotypes about people who do bad things, and when they don’t fit the reality (they don’t) we call the people who committed the deeds completely crazy.
We neeeeed to change this, we have to be smarter than accepting that evil looks like a man with a dark beard.
At least if we feel like actually having a world where people don’t kill each other because they think that the other side is evil.
And there is hope. When the hostage situation took place in Australia, the amazingly confused Rachel Jacobs realized the danger of increasing Islamophobia as she saw a Muslim woman remove her hijab on the train. She then created the hash tag “I’ll ride with you”, making sure that hundreds of thousands of people showed their resistance to stereotypes and support for fellow human beings.
And it is in this way we need to handle the world today. Because there are serious threats to the confusion of human beings.
The following is an excerpt from a Reuters article:
“This bloodbath proves wrong those who laughed or ignored the fears of so many people about a looming danger of Islamism”, said Alexander Gauland, a regional AfD leader. “This gives new clout to PEGIDA demands.”
PEGIDA – Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West – has been mobilizing people to join their weekly manifestations in the German city of Dresden and already found a couple of imitators across Germany. This week the number hit an all time record of 18.000 people and next week it’ll be sadly even more. After the attack in Paris, their Facebook page read:
“The Islamists, against whom PEGIDA has been warning over the last 12 weeks, showed in France today that they are not capable of (practicing) democracy but instead see violence and death as the solution.”
A quick google search shows that Muslim leaders from Egypt, Iran, Australia and other countries all over the world has condemned the deed, saying “This is not what Islam does.”
Now if we would like to raise our voice about these issues, we have to do it carefully and question if re-posting caricatures, which hurt a lot of people, is the most sensible act to make peace and end seperation. Basically, we have the right to say everything but in order to meet, communicate and share peacefully, we have to talk with empathy and see the other persons needs, next to ours.
Let’s not fall into the trap of stereotypes and hate. We sure know that is not a good place to be. Let’s get rid of simple truths and create a world without extremism and violence. Let’s (well, I guess that if anything is a bit extreme, but maybe we could try it) talk. To each other. And listen too.
Aaaand, amazing human beings out there, let’s stay confused!
getconfused 