I Am Also An American Citizen; Elizabeth Moon, Citizenship, and Muslim Americans
So, here’s the thing. I really do take things like my citizenship and civic duty seriously. It is important to me to be active and informed in my local and larger-scale governmental processes like elections, for example (sometimes I fall down on this but, hey, we don’t have to be perfect). I am a FAN of jury duty and I may laughingly complain about how often I’ve been called in the past few years because I find it funny but I do not begrudge a single minute of my time spent on it because that is how the system WORKS. And I take this stuff seriously both because I want my representatives to actually represent me but also because when I dissent, I want it to be informed dissent.
This practice of active engagement is how I went from being president of Young Republicans in high school (there was no other Young anything club, it must be said) with serious political aspirations to where I am now - a radical progressive. Because once you start looking at people as actual people, well, rights and wrongs start looking at lot more clear.
Elizabeth Moon, an author I have, in the past, greatly enjoyed and who is slated to be the upcoming Wiscon Guest of Honor, wrote a blog post recently. She started out talking about the citizen’s duty to the nation. It was kind of pompous stuff, a lot of it, and, sure, I agree that we should be loyal to our respective nations - but that loyalty doesn’t extend to, you know, supporting the things that our nation does which are wrong. I’m not looking to bring the U.S.A. down - but I’m hoping to make it better for all of us. I think most voices of dissent in our country are trying to do that (unless they’re only trying to make things better for rich, white, men - yeah, I’m looking at you, Tea Party). So even though I think people should take the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of citizenship more seriously in general, I can’t really get behind her whole big screed on that topic.
And I think she has fallen prey, as well, to the national tendency to romanticize the founding of the United States. For the record, the U.S.A. was not founded with an overt appeal to the universal rights of mankind; it was founded with an overt appeal to the "universal" rights of those the founding fathers defined as mankind - white male landowners. People of color, women, the disabled…. The U.S.A is an amazing social experiment and I think what they did at the time was radical and revolutionary in so many ways. But it wasn’t a great universal experiment despite their wording at the time. Hell, people of color were barely considered human at the time. So when people rhapsodize about the values on which our country was founded…. It speaks to me of someone who has bought into our national mythos a little too keenly.
It’s just too nationalistic for my taste. Nationalism is not patriotism.
And then Elizabeth Moon descends into anti-Muslim hysteria. Did you know, for example, that all Muslims are immigrants? I think she probably did not mean to imply that, honestly. It’s just sloppy, fearful writing on her part. But she’s a professional writer so I think it’s probably a good idea to call her on it.
Did you know that Elizabeth Moon and others like her have been bending over backwards to "allow" Muslims here in the U.S. to be free even though they aren’t fit for citizenry? Who the hell died and made Elizabeth Moon the arbiter of who gets to be a citizen? Because, seriously, if Glenn Beck and his ilk still get to be Americans then she’s got no room to beef with anyone else.
Seriously, "I do not dispute that there are moderate, even liberal, Muslims, that many Muslims have all the virtues of civilized persons and are admirable in all those ways." Did Elizabeth Moon really just say that, well, SOME Muslims are almost civilized people???
I loved my great-grandmother very much. She was born in 1910 and a lot of my tendencies toward old-school hand crafts come from her. I think she was probably the single most influential person on my life and I am fighting back tears even typing that because I miss her every day. Granny DePratter was an amazing and incredible woman and even so. Even so, one day a 16-year-old me was driving her through the predominantly black part of Lake City when she observed that "those Coloreds sure have done real well for themselves." There was a sort of pleased and surprised tone to her voice, as though she had not anticipated it, the ability of people of color, to, you know, thrive as a citizenry. At the time, I didn’t know what to say. But even then it struck me as a hell of a thing to say, as though people everywhere, of all types, aren’t trying to make lives for themselves and their children and their community that are better than the lives they had before.
It was easy for me to forgive her that, though, knowing her background and how far she had traveled and how much she had seen in her life (and I am her great-granddaughter, white, and predisposed to forgive her anyway, I admit). It wasn’t ideal, but even then she was in her 80s and starting to decline. It was easier to forgive her that than it would have been if she’d turned around and tried to limit what people of color were allowed to accomplish through fear-mongering and rhetorical, straw-person arguments which is what Elizabeth Moon is doing.
So.
Some American Muslims are immigrants. Some American Muslims have been here longer than your family (this, of course, depends on your family). Some American Muslims were born into the religion and some are converts. As with Christianity and other religious, there are some Muslims who are… I don’t know what the equivalent is of Christmas Catholic for Muslims, but I think you get the idea. As with Christianity and other religions, some small proportion is fundamentalists. As with Christianity and other religions, there are people practicing everything in between - and I think that’s where you’ll find the largest group. There are also several different branches of Islam, so unless you ask, you probably won’t even know what KIND of Muslim a person in. There’s no such thing as a unified Islam with a single vision, just as there are lots of different flavors making up the other major world religions. In fact, unless it comes up, there are lots of people you can’t identify as Muslim at all!
That’s sometimes people seem to forget in these up-swells of distrust for brown people.
I don’t talk about religion much. I figure it is a private thing. The tendency of many conservatives to work towards recreating the U.S. as a theocracy is deeply troubling to me because I really don’t think religion and government have any business holding hands. I kind of think the best president would be an atheist, actually.
The idea that our Muslim citizens, by the simple virtue of their Muslim existence, are asking more than they are giving back to the rest of us as a nation…. It actively sickens me.
It takes this whole thing, for me, beyond the shouldn’t-even-be-a-question of the Islamic community center that isn’t even all that close to Ground Zero and into the realm of feeling like Elizabeth Moon is working to damage the country she purports to love so much. All Americans are equal but some, like Elizabeth Moon, consider themselves more equal than others. And I think we know how that story ends.
When Orrin Hatch and Wil Shetterly (seriously, he is making sense in the comments to Elizabeth Moon’s post) are the mining canaries of rational discussion, Elizabeth Moon, you might reconsider whether your opinion is founded in logic and respect for the U.S. or if it’s grounded in fear of the unknown, the unknowable, and the supreme self-righteousness that can come from thinking you have no more learning to do.
Does it need to be explicitly said that I support the freedoms that were, through no small struggle, eventually won for more of us than just the rich white guys? That I support freedom of religion, freedom of speech (after all, Elizabeth Moon has just as much right to her opinion as the next person - and I have just as much right to passionately disagree with her), the freedom of some people to just not give a fuck about our governmental process without fearing their citizenship will be revoked? I also, for the record, support a person’s right to bear arms - and I don’t think a 3-day waiting period impinges on that right. I support the right of Muslim Americans to worship and to build community centers and to build community, just as I support it for other religions.
As for Muslims who are not Americans - I think it’s pretty ridiculous to be afraid of them, too. I fear other governments (including the U.S. government sometimes), I fear the interactions between nations (and, again, that includes my own) with historic and systemic hatred between them. But I’m not afraid of people, living their every day lives. I’d ask why Elizabeth Moon does, but I don’t think she’d answer. I’m not entirely sure she can.
This entry was originally posted at http://onceupon.dreamwidth.org/1264849.html.
This practice of active engagement is how I went from being president of Young Republicans in high school (there was no other Young anything club, it must be said) with serious political aspirations to where I am now - a radical progressive. Because once you start looking at people as actual people, well, rights and wrongs start looking at lot more clear.
Elizabeth Moon, an author I have, in the past, greatly enjoyed and who is slated to be the upcoming Wiscon Guest of Honor, wrote a blog post recently. She started out talking about the citizen’s duty to the nation. It was kind of pompous stuff, a lot of it, and, sure, I agree that we should be loyal to our respective nations - but that loyalty doesn’t extend to, you know, supporting the things that our nation does which are wrong. I’m not looking to bring the U.S.A. down - but I’m hoping to make it better for all of us. I think most voices of dissent in our country are trying to do that (unless they’re only trying to make things better for rich, white, men - yeah, I’m looking at you, Tea Party). So even though I think people should take the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of citizenship more seriously in general, I can’t really get behind her whole big screed on that topic.
And I think she has fallen prey, as well, to the national tendency to romanticize the founding of the United States. For the record, the U.S.A. was not founded with an overt appeal to the universal rights of mankind; it was founded with an overt appeal to the "universal" rights of those the founding fathers defined as mankind - white male landowners. People of color, women, the disabled…. The U.S.A is an amazing social experiment and I think what they did at the time was radical and revolutionary in so many ways. But it wasn’t a great universal experiment despite their wording at the time. Hell, people of color were barely considered human at the time. So when people rhapsodize about the values on which our country was founded…. It speaks to me of someone who has bought into our national mythos a little too keenly.
It’s just too nationalistic for my taste. Nationalism is not patriotism.
And then Elizabeth Moon descends into anti-Muslim hysteria. Did you know, for example, that all Muslims are immigrants? I think she probably did not mean to imply that, honestly. It’s just sloppy, fearful writing on her part. But she’s a professional writer so I think it’s probably a good idea to call her on it.
Did you know that Elizabeth Moon and others like her have been bending over backwards to "allow" Muslims here in the U.S. to be free even though they aren’t fit for citizenry? Who the hell died and made Elizabeth Moon the arbiter of who gets to be a citizen? Because, seriously, if Glenn Beck and his ilk still get to be Americans then she’s got no room to beef with anyone else.
Seriously, "I do not dispute that there are moderate, even liberal, Muslims, that many Muslims have all the virtues of civilized persons and are admirable in all those ways." Did Elizabeth Moon really just say that, well, SOME Muslims are almost civilized people???
I loved my great-grandmother very much. She was born in 1910 and a lot of my tendencies toward old-school hand crafts come from her. I think she was probably the single most influential person on my life and I am fighting back tears even typing that because I miss her every day. Granny DePratter was an amazing and incredible woman and even so. Even so, one day a 16-year-old me was driving her through the predominantly black part of Lake City when she observed that "those Coloreds sure have done real well for themselves." There was a sort of pleased and surprised tone to her voice, as though she had not anticipated it, the ability of people of color, to, you know, thrive as a citizenry. At the time, I didn’t know what to say. But even then it struck me as a hell of a thing to say, as though people everywhere, of all types, aren’t trying to make lives for themselves and their children and their community that are better than the lives they had before.
It was easy for me to forgive her that, though, knowing her background and how far she had traveled and how much she had seen in her life (and I am her great-granddaughter, white, and predisposed to forgive her anyway, I admit). It wasn’t ideal, but even then she was in her 80s and starting to decline. It was easier to forgive her that than it would have been if she’d turned around and tried to limit what people of color were allowed to accomplish through fear-mongering and rhetorical, straw-person arguments which is what Elizabeth Moon is doing.
So.
Some American Muslims are immigrants. Some American Muslims have been here longer than your family (this, of course, depends on your family). Some American Muslims were born into the religion and some are converts. As with Christianity and other religious, there are some Muslims who are… I don’t know what the equivalent is of Christmas Catholic for Muslims, but I think you get the idea. As with Christianity and other religions, some small proportion is fundamentalists. As with Christianity and other religions, there are people practicing everything in between - and I think that’s where you’ll find the largest group. There are also several different branches of Islam, so unless you ask, you probably won’t even know what KIND of Muslim a person in. There’s no such thing as a unified Islam with a single vision, just as there are lots of different flavors making up the other major world religions. In fact, unless it comes up, there are lots of people you can’t identify as Muslim at all!
That’s sometimes people seem to forget in these up-swells of distrust for brown people.
I don’t talk about religion much. I figure it is a private thing. The tendency of many conservatives to work towards recreating the U.S. as a theocracy is deeply troubling to me because I really don’t think religion and government have any business holding hands. I kind of think the best president would be an atheist, actually.
The idea that our Muslim citizens, by the simple virtue of their Muslim existence, are asking more than they are giving back to the rest of us as a nation…. It actively sickens me.
It takes this whole thing, for me, beyond the shouldn’t-even-be-a-question of the Islamic community center that isn’t even all that close to Ground Zero and into the realm of feeling like Elizabeth Moon is working to damage the country she purports to love so much. All Americans are equal but some, like Elizabeth Moon, consider themselves more equal than others. And I think we know how that story ends.
When Orrin Hatch and Wil Shetterly (seriously, he is making sense in the comments to Elizabeth Moon’s post) are the mining canaries of rational discussion, Elizabeth Moon, you might reconsider whether your opinion is founded in logic and respect for the U.S. or if it’s grounded in fear of the unknown, the unknowable, and the supreme self-righteousness that can come from thinking you have no more learning to do.
Does it need to be explicitly said that I support the freedoms that were, through no small struggle, eventually won for more of us than just the rich white guys? That I support freedom of religion, freedom of speech (after all, Elizabeth Moon has just as much right to her opinion as the next person - and I have just as much right to passionately disagree with her), the freedom of some people to just not give a fuck about our governmental process without fearing their citizenship will be revoked? I also, for the record, support a person’s right to bear arms - and I don’t think a 3-day waiting period impinges on that right. I support the right of Muslim Americans to worship and to build community centers and to build community, just as I support it for other religions.
As for Muslims who are not Americans - I think it’s pretty ridiculous to be afraid of them, too. I fear other governments (including the U.S. government sometimes), I fear the interactions between nations (and, again, that includes my own) with historic and systemic hatred between them. But I’m not afraid of people, living their every day lives. I’d ask why Elizabeth Moon does, but I don’t think she’d answer. I’m not entirely sure she can.
This entry was originally posted at http://onceupon.dreamwidth.org/1264849.html.