As I wrote earlier, I had this sticker on my laptop:
Had. Past tense. The reasons for its removal are two.
My supervisor was the first to object, basically handing down the edict that I wouldn’t be allowed to bring the laptop (on which I do 99% of my work) to any meetings if the sticker remained. Considering at least two of my coworkers are religion-soaked god-botherers who don’t hesitate to share their religious views with any who will tolerate them, this seemed, if you’ll accept a mild understatement, extremely hypocritical. The hypocrisy is all the more obnoxious when you realize that I work for a government agency, theoretically under the restrictions of the First (and Fourteenth) Amendment.
The sticker itself was printed on Office Depot bumper sticker paper, which is easily peeled off and repositioned. So I ‘repositioned’ it from the laptop to the wall of my office. This was generally considered acceptable; they apparently don’t mind me holding my beliefs (or lack thereof), only being uppity enough to remind the Christaliban that there are people who disagree with them.
But that’s not why I took it entirely down.
One of my coworkers (and a friend I knew before I started working there) is a devout Muslim. He pointed out that the sticker was, in his eyes and the eyes of those attending his mosque, an endorsement of hatred. And after reflecting on it a bit, I realized I agreed with him. Some small-minded xenophobes could take that as an attack, not on religion in general, but specifically on Islam… and specifically endorsing violence. That’s not the message I want to send.
I’m not ’shying away’ from criticizing Islam because I agree with it, and not because I somehow think it’s ‘better’ than Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism. I most certainly don’t. Islam is the religion most easily corrupted into fundamentalism and hatred, and it easily ranks among the worst in terms of widespread abuse. And I certainly didn’t take it down due to fear of a fatwa death sentence. I took down the sticker because Muslims in the US are already suffering persecution (and I mean honest persecution, not the “waaah, someone said something mean about us” sense that many Christians profess), and the last thing I want to do is give the right-wing mouth-breathing god-wallopers another excuse to commit violence against the innocent.
#1 written by Bob February 6th, 2010 at 19:59
The truth of that bumper sticker hit me like a 2×4 across the forehead. Thanks for sharing.
There could me no hate displayed in those words. Perhaps your Muslim friend sees hate everywhere – especially in the mirror…..