London

[Doc]

The grass roots Muslim is not someone you know, unless you travel a great deal to and correspond with to the Arab world.  The grass roots Muslim does not have to apologize to a Westerner in a civil setting, unlike your associates.  Sort of like the blue hairs don't call some folks by certain epithets in public, but in private, in their hearts . . .

You probably recognize the forces in action in light of your experiences in the Civil Rights battles.  The emotions are that powerful, the sense of injustice that strong.  You know how compelling those forces are, what they can drive folks to risk, to do, for their cause if they feel it is just.

The rhetoric is explicitly chosen to evoke powerful cultural symbols.  These are not stupid people who do this.  These are Eric Hoffer's "True Believers."

Occhi
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That certainly puts it in a different light.

Some of the Muslims I know were born here. Some, some came here to escape the growing turmoil brewing in the Middle East. The madness that has swept their people.

And yes, now that you put it that way, in terms of my own past, it has me thinking. I mean, I knew about the similarities and such. But something about how you worded your post has me thinking about it now in a slightly different bent. I don't mean to make all the comparisons that I do about the Civil Rights Movement. I know that people get sick of me talking about it and comparing everything else to it. People down me all the time for comparing this and that to events in my past. People roll their eyes and start to sigh when I even begin to mention the words. But really, the Civil Rights Movement is my life and my story. It is all I know. It's all I can compare anything of any significance to. It was so all consuming that it has become my standard on how to formulate a thought to compare anything. And hearing you draw up a comparison in terms that I know all to well made a lightbulb go off.

It has made me realise just how hopeless this situation is. :unsure: It's going to get worse. The more we do to make it stop the more we build the pressure, which in turn will only give more reason to lash out. It has become a martyr factory, much like the pressure cooker that the 60's and the 70's was. (The 50's too, and earlier decades, but I was to young or did not exist at those points in time and space.

We are damned in this venture.