Listening to the Sand-Niggas

[Another political post....but it has all-too-much to do with raqs.  If you can't figure out why, leave a comment...but I'm sure the connection is easily made, sadly.]

Racism, bigotry, and similar problems aren't at the root of Man's Inhumanity to Man, but they are the cover for the acts that define evil.  That so many Americans are casual bigots towards "swarthy" people, is disturbing in itself.  And I remind convinced that our horrific repudiation of habus corpus is centered around the belief that "they" will be the targets, not "me and mine".

Just wait, you stupid, stupid fools.  Just wait and see where such laws lead, if left on the books.  Many of us are going to fight to have them removed, because that's worth fighting for.  I was naive to believe that it would never get on...but I'll not make that mistake twice, I assure you.

And others fight in other arenas.  Jousting with the right-wing extremists is never a fun and happy moment; as the core of the so-called "anti-Islamofacist" movement, they have a religious zeal in avoiding all aspects of the religion, lest they be...hell, I dunno what the hell they're thinking.  And neither, in some ways, does Ali Eteraz, an American Muslim who has taken the time to go into online fora devoted to right-wing causes and talk about Islam.  His last adventure along those lines was in the Ann Coulter Official Chat space, where he encountered...well, I'll allow him to speak:

[...] I want to say that getting Muhammad called a pedophile, terrorist and misogynist didn't hurt me. Neither did it hurt that Allah was not even recognized as the same God as that of the Jews and Christians. It didn't even hurt that the thread was shut down. What hurt most was the way in which I was blatantly excluded from the conversation as if I were completely invisible. There were postings and conversations in which the commentators spoke to each other about "he," "the guy," "the Muslim apologist," "this experiment." It was as if I was not there. I was not Ali Eteraz. I didn't have a name. They described and discussed me without acknowledging me. I was no more to them than a vague idea. Not a person, but a pronoun. It was the most blatant case of linguistic exclusion I have ever experienced because even when a man has called me sand-nigger, it has been to my face and I have felt his spittle hit me and felt the actual tangibility of the moment. [Emphasis his.]

Knowing a bit about that sort of reaction, I concur.  It's always easier to be confronted by hatred, at least for myself.  The passive/aggressive approach is painful; it means someone has taken your voice away, and considers your word as less important than, say, their pet.  How much more demeaning that than to be called "boy", or spit at, or have bottles thrown at you.  At least then, you know there is hate, and you can confront it.  Ali's confrontation is to be commended, and I strongly recommend the full reading of at least the entry referenced above.
What Ali describes is the work of the worst type of coward.  The kind that hides behind the anonymity of the Internet, the distance between the computer and the world.  The kind that distances themselves from acts that rip the Constitution in half, because it's all just on a computer screen.  You can almost hear them saying "it's not real, now is it?  When IO help those in power advocate laws that threaten "those" people, it's not real either; they don't count as people, after all. No real person would support Bin Laden; anyone who does, anyone who's part of that world, deserves whatever they get.  And every Muslim is part of that world."

This is how they think.  And the after-shocks of their thinking will display, to one and all, why they deserve the title of "narrow-minded".

If we, as a country, as a world, survive them, that is.

[Hat tip to Michael J. Totten for the initial reference; he's another blog you should be reading.]