K-Zoo Islamic Center

Just a random thought. Everyday on my way to work I drive past the Kalamazoo Islamic Center and I am always curious about it. The other day I went inside the market/store they have there just to look around and ended up spending almost 40 bucks on snacks/food. I hope that now that I will have more time, at least over break until I start my internship, I will be able to sit in on a service. The visit to the Mosque really got my thinking and sparked my curiosity. In the next week or two I hope to set up either a meeting with a member of the center or maybe just a visit so that I maybe try to better understand the traditions and practices involved with Islam and the culture that surrounds it.

Paradise now

This one was interesting to me. I felt that there was no real plot or meaning to the movie. Throughout the movie we see the same trend over and over. Our main characters "numbers come up" and they are thrown into the world of suicide bombing. They prepare, suit up, and make an attempt and are later forced to flake out. They try a second time after a long man hunt for our main character and a similar thing happens. However, in the end we see a change. The character who was originally gung ho about the idea of the bombing has second thoughts. The character who wanted to flake out or was nervous about the bombing decides he has to do it (to regain his honor or something else, the real reason wasnt very clear to me). In the end, the character that turned into a flake chickens out and is locked into a car while the character who as suddenly discovered a sense of purpose and courage goes off to complete his mission or we are lead to believe as we never see a real explosion.

What was the point? I am not really sure which is frustrating to me since I am generally pretty good at picking out the "true" meaning of a movie or story, or at least making up something that sounds good and/or right. This movie was not one of my favorites and I would much rather forget I saw it than have to think about it again.

Beheading the Cat

This story was highly confusing to me and yet rather interesting. For me, Nadine represented the freedom that woman should have no matter what culture they are in (no matter how extreme hr character was). On the other hand we have our main character, someone who feels he is a man and should get what he wants and so on. She is sort of his cryptonite in a way, something he wants so badly and yet he wants her to be his submissive wife. He is intimidated and afraid of her and yet wants her so badly. Why? This doesn't seem to make sense. Why would anyone want to be with someone like this. For me, it seemed like he needed balance. I feel that everyone needs balance in their life and to me, this story was a representation of that belief.

Female guest speakers

Something I noticed when we had two guest speakers in the room at the same time (Gulnar and sadly I cannot remember the guest Professor's name) was that each of them had a completely different opinion on the Hijab as well as how the Quaran should be interpreted. I felt a little sorry for each of them as the seemed to become very flustered and/or uncomfortable with the situation that they had been tossed into. While it was interesting to see the contrasting views not to mention eye opening (one woman thought you should wear the Hijab to appear modest while the other thought it was more of a fashion statement! - or at least that's how she made it seem) I feel that it may not have been the best thing to push either one of them to talk more. Luckily, we seemed to run out of time before anything got too heated. I remember just at the end, the guest professor said "Oh, well I don't know about all of that..." in reference to something about why woman 'should' wear a Hibaj. I liked being able to see the different views and interpretations but I feel it would be a little bit better next time to have each speaker come in separately.

Talk to an Iraqi

This video was one of my favorites from the class and remained that way until I saw Victor's film "Waltz with Bashir". It really made me think of all the stereotypes and generalization that I have (and most likely share with many Americans). How can we judge someone or an entire people without ever talking to one of them or going straight to the source. This video really showed me that some people, myself included, can be very ignorant as well as opinionated. The film was very eye opening to me and I really wished I could have jumped into the screen and talked to him myself. As the film played, my head filled with questions and many of them went unanswered.

What is it like to live there or how is it different from the us?
Do most people own a car? How do you get around?

My list could go on forever. Recently I got curious again and tried to find answers for some of my questions however I had a hard time finding anything that seemed reliable. Most of the answers were written by people that do not live in/have never been to Iraq and simply add to the stereotypes. Some answers seemed "wishy washy" while others seem uninformed (even if they were written by an Iraqi, most of the time it seems that the person answering the question was Iraqi but never lived in Iraq or left at a young age). I wish that I could talk to the guy from the movie since he came to the US so recently and has personally experienced what it is like in Iraq in its current state. I feel that this video does a lot to work towards correcting or eliminating stereotypes but I feel that it is still lacking. We all have questions and no matter how in depth a film is, it will still leave some of them unanswered. What i gathered from the film was that we must think of where we learn what we learn. Essentially I mean that if we do not get our information fro ma credible source (someone who has studied the subject for an extensive amount of time or someone who has been there) or our information may not be true.

Guantanamo

The US Naval base located at Guantanamo Bay is something that has always bothered me for a few reasons. First of all, we are LEASING land from a communist country from a dictator that we were once at "war" with. US citizens are even banned from traveling to Cuba not to mention the trade embargo we have on them and yet we continue to occupy their land and pay them for it! In my opinion, we use the base simply because it is not us territory and thus not subject to US laws and/or regulations. This brings us to my next point about "Gitmo", the horrible acts that have been carried out on people each and everyday. I do not care whether or not the people being tortured are guilty or innocent or whether or not they are citizens of the US, because we all know that because they are "terrorists" (or suspected to be) and/or not citizens of the US they don't have any rights correct? The answer to this is WRONG, a big and bold wrong at that. They are human beings and should be treated as such. How can we claim to be against terror and fight for freedom when we willing take freedom from others, who in many cases seem to be innocent or have no useful information? I feel that we are just as guilty and should consider ourselves terrorist and thus hypocritical in the worst way.

Now, when I say we I do not mean myself or the rest of the US, I mean that the actions of few (the "interrogators" at Gitmo as well as anyone else who has taken place in these acts of torture) reflecting on our country as a whole. When people look at the US what will they see? The millions of people we have "liberated"? The fact that we fight for freedom and fight against terror? The answer is simple. When others look at the US they may see the good however the bad ALWAYS out weighs the good. People will see the thousands upon thousands of innocents that we have killed during our bombing runs and "liberation". They will see the pictures of our soldiers that have been in the news holding dead bodies or videos of soldiers cheering when a bomb destroys a building. They will also see the acts of terror that have been committed at Gitmo, innocent people being held for longer than they should have been not to mention the torture they have endured throughout their imprisonment.

In the end, I feel that Gitmo has worked very hard to "protect" our country and help us in our fight against terror although the work was done as far from correct as humanly possible. The "work" done at Gitmo as done, in my opinion, nothing but work to undo every good thing the United States has done to fight against terrorism.

Something I forgot...

This post goes along with my other post, just something I forgot to mention. Victor made a comment about/posed a question about the music in the movie and the actual meaning of the movie. I understand what he was saying and can easily see that the movie is showing how stupid, for lack of a better word, war is. What is the point of lining up, although modern wars do not have real front lines or battlegrounds necessarily, and killing each other. Most soldiers do not know what they are shooting at, why they are shooting, or who they are killing. War does not prove anything other than the stronger power will generally dominate and win. What does this accomplish? Why don't the policy makers simply fight it out using words? Or maybe policy makers and world leaders should fight in an arena like roman gladiators. At least this way the people fighting the war would know what they are fighting for. I hate that policy makers sit safely behind desks and send thousands of soldiers to "fight for our country" although in most cases, the country that is invaded has posed no actual threat. It is all about "Preemptive" strikes, which just doesn't make sense. To me it is like going to the doctor to get antibiotics before you have an infection and saying "oh well I'm taking these just in case I might have an infection". Why take the antibiotics before you get a blood test? War is the same way. Why attack a country that you THINK is a threat before fully understanding what is going on? In the end, I feel this is a question that will never be answered. While world peace is a wonderful idea and I wish more than anything that it could exist but it is simply impossible. People will always fell threatened and thus nations will always be at war. A sad and very stupid fact, but it is true.

Victor's Film.

I was so pleasantly surprised just how good the movie we watched. At first, when Victor aid it was an animated film I thought "oh great this is going to be useful" and when it started, my fears were confirmed as the video looked very "comic booky". However, as the movie went on, I realized just how powerful the movie really was. In addition. I don't feel like the movie would have had the same powerful meaning or given us the same image if it was created using traditional methods (live action). Personally, I don't think I would have been able to watch over an hour of live action footage of innocent peole being slaughtered, its kind of like watching films about the holocaust. In a way, the animation kind of dehumanizes what is really going on but not in a bad way. He nature of the film allows us to see what is going on without tugging at our heart strings by showing us actual footage of people dying or being murdered, that is, until the end. I think the short clip of live footage at the very end of the movie was just enough to make what we saw real. Without this segment of film, the animated portion would seem like just a cartoon made for adults. The live film really drives home the images and meanings portrayed in the film itself.

Just a few misconceptions

Something that I noticed about the film was they way each of the two families was portrayed (Muslim family vs. Jewish family). One thing that really bothered me about this was the way each of the families were two extremes. On one hand we have a very understanding and even accepting family of Muslims, on the other we have an overly strict and prejudice Jewish family. I guess I just feel that there are some families of Jews (orthodox or not) that CAN be accepting and understanding of others and at the same time, there are probably plenty of Muslims out there that are not as lenient with there families and might shun them for hanging out with people that are not Muslims. In the end, I feel that these issues or extremes kind of distracted a little bit from what really happens in each of these cultures, I think it would have been nice to maybe see more than one family from each background or something a little less extreme from each.

A little side note

Not that it is any excuse but unfortunately right after class on Tuesday (Nov 24th) I went home where my parents do not have internet (how they live without it I will never know). Therefore, the next few blogs will be to catch me up for the blogs I wanted to post about last weeks topic/discussion.