Criticizing America, America Criticizing

Somehow many Americans think that their fellow citizens have no right to criticize the words, actions, and stated policies of their elected leaders. This is not just wrongheaded, it is inimical. The Founders made it clear that speech - honest dialogue - was not just a right but a responsibility, and that the public has the most vital role in making a democracy work: the burden of watching its public servants carefully and demanding them to be unswerving in their commitment to equal treatment of all persons under the rule of law.

What we have instead is a system that aggressively prosecutes the kid on the corner selling drugs because he can't find a decent job, and lets the wealthy drug lord with his house in the burbs go free, because the latter can buy justice through his fat cat lawyer.

What we have instead is a mother who is jailed for misrepresenting where her domicile is located, while not even charged, let alone prosecuted or jailed are the super-rich on Wall Street who stole billions of dollars from ordinary working people, forcing many, including the undersigned, out of their homes even though they work multiple jobs trying to cover the mortgage, and destroying any hope they might have had of a comfortable retirement.

What we have instead is the Koch brothers feverishly fueling the finances of falsehood - the so-called tea bag movement, which is in the business of lying and distorting those pesky little facts.

Yet, while no one dares truly speak out in the United States, still somehow Americans think they have the right to criticize (often without knowing the facts!) any other country on the globe - but, if another country dares criticize them - as France did, quite correctly as it turned out, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, Americans go all pious and say those dang foreigners have no right to say a word simply because they aren't American.

"Freedom Fries" indeed! That particular food item was invented at a restaurant called French's, in Buffalo. It has nothing to do with France.

Many times I have heard Americans insist that Muslims convert by force, that they have a different deity, that they are all, or mostly, untrustworthy, unsavory people who are plotting overthrow of the United States. And I've heard a lot worse that I won't repeat here. Sadly, people actually believe these things.


I have had the pleasure of knowing many Muslims. Among them are some of my dearest friends. They are as a group fine human beings. Frankly, I'd trust my life to one of them before I'd trust a lot of my so-called Christian friends.

I ask my Muslim friends how they can stand all this prejudice. They say they're used to it. They say they can't speak up because, if they do, people interpret their defensiveness as aggression, or "what they're told to say" by their imams, or both.

Men who come from a predominantly Muslim country often have a difficult time with police and their employers or customers because they "look Muslim". Muslim women have it even worse if they dress traditionally, say, by wearing a hijab (scarf) over their hair. Even liberals look down on them, assuming by the presence of the hijab that they are suppressed females. Rather, Muslim women have often assured me that for them the hijab is a kind of liberation: it is a signal saying, "Treat me with respect! Don't look at me for my physical charms, but look at me as an equal. Remember, when you look at me, that you wouldn't want a man to look in a certain way at your mother, your sister, your wife, or your daughter. So don't look at me that way, either."

Muslims must pray five times a day. When you are always close to prayer - when you either just prayed a few minutes ago or you are soon going to pray - you remain in your thoughts much closer to the Creator than if, say, you only pray on Sunday morning.

Muslims must give to the poor. It is not a suggestion or an option. It is a requirement. Even the poor must give to others.

Muslims read the Qur'an and the Bible - the Bible is Scripture for Muslims too, you know - frequently and carefully. They know all the Scriptures well; I am often amazed at Muslims who can quote the New Testament from memory at length. There is nothing in the Qur'an about converting by the sword. There is plenty about showing respect to people. There is one beautiful passage that says if you save one life it is as if you have saved the whole human race. There is more about Jesus in the Qur'an than in the Bible.

The word "jihad", despite the frequent misrepresentations of misinformed media people, does not mean "holy war". It means "struggle" - specifically, the struggle within the individual to overcome his or her temptations to do evil and become a better person. It means the struggle to submit ("islam" means "to submit") totally to the Creator of All. So often has this misuse been published in the Western news media that now, unfortunately, I see even Muslims use the word incorrectly.

Christianity has nothing to be smug about. Jesus says love your enemy. But so-called Christians bomb the heck out of their enemies. Jesus says forgive. But so-called Christians talk about how much they hate people unlike themselves. Jesus says those who follow him must practice peace. But so-called Christians are devastatingly warlike. How dare they say Muslims are warlike!

Take the Crusades. Supposedly they were to wrest control of the Holy Land away from the Muslims. Under those awful Muslims, there was religious freedom. When, following the only Crusade actually to reach the Holy Land a Christian monarchy was established, religious freedom was choked off and Muslims and Jews viciously subjugated. Every other Crusade failed even to reach the Holy Land - instead, these Roman Catholic Christians brutally attacked Orthodox Christians.

Africa was decimated by the empire of slavery. The Americas were stolen from its inhabitants only occasionally by conquest, and far more often through the use of outright, deliberate chicanery. The Holocaust saw the lives of six million Jews go up in smoke - and millions of Gypsies, Christian Scientists, gays, and ordinary Germans who dared to speak the truth in the face of Naziism.

Recently someone suggested to me the view that Native Americans are genetically disposed to a warlike nature. This brings to mind the lie promoted ever since Europeans set foot in the Americas, that Native Americans are uncivilized savages. What? This was an invasion, folks! Can you blame people for trying (unsuccessfully) to protect their homes and families and land from wave after wave of well-armed invaders? And, you know, scalping - often cited as an example of Native American savagery - was introduced by the British and French during the French and Indian War as a means of establishing whether the bounty paid for killing an enemy soldier should be at the lower rate, for an Indian, or the higher rate, for a European.

History, you say? You didn't take part in these evil deeds? You're not responsible? Think again. You (and I) are living on the fruits of indentured servitude and slave labor. And today, where nearly all wealth is held by the top one percent of American citizens, you are being victimized by the economic slavery of today - and you have it far better than the sweatshops of Asia and the maquiladoras of Latin America. The criminals on Wall Street got bailed out while millions of Americans lose what little worth they had managed to accumulate over a lifetime of hard work.

The United States Constitution was directly based on the Kaianek'go:wa, the Great Law of Peace, the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy - the world's oldest constitution and probably its most poetic. But some of the advice that the Rotinoshon:ni Chiefs gave the Founders was ignored - that freedom of religion did not mean government should be without some sort of spiritual foundation, for a government without a spiritual foundation is like a body without a soul in it, and, like the body, it will become corrupt before too long. Stinking corrupt.

But we're talking a spiritual foundation here, not an organized religion. The Founders were right to reject a "state religion" and ensure religious freedom for all people. And the religious conservatives of today are wrong for demanding the establishment of the United States as a "Christian nation"; this would put the United States on a path toward behaving like certain countries in the Caribbean and Africa, where religion (not spirituality) is used as a club of fear and repression to weaken and destroy the opposition to those in power.

America supports democracy around the world? Think again. America supports dictators - ruthless, bloody dictators - Ngo Dinh Diem, Suharto, Mobutu, Pinochet, Qaddafi, Saddam and Noriega, and many more - or at least until they offended the powerful. Name one real democracy that the United States has founded anywhere in the world. Just one. ... Yes, I'm still trying to think of one, too.