Farewell for now

Dear Reader,

I hope my blogging over the past 8 months has shown you an interesting perspective on the politics around us.  Although I do not always claim to be unique, I can promise that every post came with deep thought, consideration, and questioning of my opinions.  This year in my English and history classes has been a great intellectual journey for me, much of which has been charted in this blog.  As I write my final post of the year, I want to leave you with one final thought:

Everyone has reasons for believing what they believe.  Understanding those reasons is not the same as abandoning your own beliefs.  On the contrary, it can make your own beliefs stronger.

I started off the year in English class discussing the book The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.  My class learned about the unique power of stories to communicate actions, thoughts, and feelings.  We discovered that we chart our own lives in terms of stories, even though our lives do not always follow a series of coherent events, and that the narratives we use to describe our lives can define us.

In reading The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, we saw the dangers of failing to understanding the stories and perspectives of another, in this case those of the Africans the Price family encounters.  From Azar Nafisi's novel Reading Lolita in Tehran we learned, just as Nafisi's students did, that reading the literature of lives far from us can teach us much about our own.  And in Shakespeare's Hamlet, we saw how failing to see past a ghost and its craving for revenge can drive a man to madness.

But outside of literature is where I have come to see the truth of my above statement.  The political world, especially here in the US, has become in many ways a more polarized place than when I began blogging.  Every issue, from the national debt to the killing of Osama Bin Laden, has come with two stories: the Democratic one and the Republican one.  Americans can watch their favorite news channel, read their favorite newspaper, talk to their favorite people, and never hear the other story.  When those two stories are forced to collide, collide they do.  There has been little cooperation and understanding across the aisle, and it has left every American worse off.

Worst of all, we have lost respect for others' beliefs.  We think only our reasons are valid, and that others are somehow faulty.

This is not acceptable.  The United States is one of the most cosmopolitan nations in the world, with an infinite number of stories making up the patchwork we call America.  Our greatest strength comes in our variety of perspectives.  If we chose to learn from them, we could learn so much.  But instead, we choose to force these stories into a simplistic narrative, preferring a series of 30-second sound bites over a true discussion.

So I challenge you to this: start up a conversation.  A controversial one.  Talk about religion, politics, morals, values.  This will force you to put your beliefs to the test, to find out where you truly stand, not just where it is easiest to stand.  You will learn something about yourself by learning something about another.  Do not plan on changing your beliefs - if you have good reason to believe them -  but do not swear it off either.

On a billboard in my English and social studies classroom, there hangs a bumper sticker.  It asks, "If you can't change your mind, are you sure you still have one?"  As I continue my educational journey, starting with Harvard University in the fall, I hope to further solidify and understand my beliefs, and I hope to change my mind again and again.

Thank you for reading my perspective, and thank you even more for commenting with your own.

Always,

Daniel

Otherizing

This week in my world literature and global issues classes, to accompany our study of Reading Lolita in Tehran, we have discussed the concept of "otherizing."  No, that is not a word in the dictionary, but allow me to explain:

"Otherizing" refers to idea that we have certain norms with which we classify our culture, and that anyone outside of these norms is the "other," and therefore completely different.  Take the example of the US.  Cultural norms of America say that we are white, Christian, English-speaking, and middle class.  Most Americans fit within these categories, and we thus define how we perceive ourselves and the culture we live in through this lens.  The "other," therefore, is anyone that doesn't fit into one or more of these categories - in the case of America, this can mean a black person, Jew, Muslim, Spanish-speaker, etc.  Once we have labeled someone as the "other," we tend to believe that, for everything we do and believe, they do and believe the complete opposition.  Take this example:

Part of the narrative in Reading Lolita in Tehran (see a previous post, where I talk more about the book) takes place during the 8-year long Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).  During the war, the Islamic regime in Iran creates propaganda against Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime and all of Iraq, calling Iraqis "heathens," and even "Zionists."  First of all, most Iraqis are Shi'a Muslims like Iranians, although Hussein's regime was Sunni.  And second of all, I wouldn't exactly call Saddam Hussein a Zionist (one who supports the Jews' right to a state in Israel).  But the Iranian regime sought to classify Iraq as the "other," and therefore assert that Iraq believed the opposite of everything Iran believed.  If Iran was good, Iraq was evil.  If Iran was Muslim, Iraqis were heathens.  The people of Iran could not understand the commonalities between themselves and Iraqis.  Maybe, had they not characterized them as the "other," but rather as similar peoples under rival regimes, they could have prevented such a destructive war.

So what does this have to do with our lives today, as Americans?  Well, today we fight in two wars against our nation's greatest threat: terrorism.  Robert Pape's article, "It's the Occupation, Stupid," in Foreign Policy, explores the narrative Americans have created of Muslims, and how that has affected our "war on terror."  He writes:

A simple narrative was readily available, and a powerful conventional wisdom began to exert its grip. Because the 9/11 hijackers were all Muslims, it was easy to presume that Islamic fundamentalism was the central motivating force driving the 19 hijackers to kill themselves in order to kill Americans. Within weeks after the 9/11 attacks, surveys of American attitudes show that this presumption was fast congealing into a hard reality in the public mind. Americans immediately wondered, "Why do they hate us?" and almost as immediately came to the conclusion that it was because of "who we are, not what we do." As President George W. Bush said in his first address to Congress after the 9/11 attacks: "They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

The growing belief among Americans, propagated by our President, that Islam caused the terrorists to attack us formed within our minds the concept of Islam as the "other."  Bush claimed that Muslims didn't believe in freedoms of religion, speech, voting, and assembly.  How could they?  We do, and they are the "other," so they must not.  Pape goes on to claim that our mission to Westernize countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, to bring democracy, women's rights, free trade, etc., stemmed from our belief that only our way of life was right, that it was either Western peace or Islamic terrorism.  This forced dichotomy created when we refer to Islam as the "other," or, in Bush's phrase, the "axis of evil," has brought us to equate Islam with terrorism.  Thus, this war on terror has truly become a war on Islam.

Unfortunately, the more we allow for this otherizing, the more the split between America and Islam grows, and the more the terrorists are out to get us.  Instead, I suggest we take a more open-minded approach, finding the commonalities and valuing the differences between us and the 1.4 billion Muslims in the world, most of whom have never even considered terrorism.  By humanizing, instead of otherizing, the Muslims, we can turn this un-win-able ideological war into a more pragmatic approach to counterterrorism.

Who is Iran?

When I say "Iran," what do you think of?  An enemy nation, part of the "axis of evil?" A fundamentalist Islamic regime and a bastion of anti-American sentiment?  Millions of covered women and bearded men observing Islam and preparing for holy war, possibly with nukes, against Israel and America?

Although you may not believe all of the above statements to be 100% true, I'm sure some of these descriptions of the country a plurality of Americans consider to be the our nation's greatest enemy sound familiar.  Indeed, they have come to define the media and political discourse on Iran for years, especially since the "war on terror" began.  But as I learn more about the government and people of Iran in my global issues and world literature classes, I have come to realize the dangerous fallacy in viewing all of Iran in such an antagonistic and closed-minded light.  Although there are those in Iran that wish to see the fall of Israel and the demise of the West, to understand the scope and extent of these beliefs in Iran is the responsibility of every American, especially those in charge, who wish to see a more peaceful Middle East and world.

Reading Lolita in Tehran, written by Azar Nafisi, an English literature professor who taught in an Iranian university before forming her own private class of seven bright Iranian women to study banned literature (more complete summary here), exposes the thoughts and experiences of the students' lives as they explore other people's fiction as well as their own.  As the women seek to discover their own identity under a regime determined to eliminate, or at least homogenize, it, the reader sees the complexity of these women underneath the chador (traditional Iranian veil).  Most of these students wear bright colors, western clothing, party with bootlegged alcohol, and all of them have an identity more individual than the Islamic regime - and our own media - would have us know.  In fact, in 2008, only one-fifth of Iranians surveyed held an unfavorable view of Americans, and most wanted more exchange between the two countries (according to Juan Cole's book Engaging the Muslim World).  Although many in the Islamic regime hold anti-American views, it is clear that the government and the people are not the same.

From a historical standpoint, the divergence between the people and government of Iran is clear, if we take the time to look.  After two revolutions to overthrow the monarchy ruling Iran were thwarted by Western nations, Iranians were finally able, in 1979, to overthrow the American-backed Shah.  Leftists, communists, feminists, Islamic fundamentalists, and many groups in between revolted against the Shah, but the religious Muslims under Ayatollah Khomeini was able to form a government.  The Islamic Republic of Iran was born before many revolutionaries realized it, and the Ayatollah silenced his opposition enough to centralize power.

The current Islamic regime does not represent the vibrant Persian culture veiled in Iran.  To understand this difference is a crucial first step in facing, or, perhaps optimistically, in working with, our nation's "greatest enemy."