There seems to be a difference between reading something and knowing it. Or knowing it and feeling it.
Anyway I always find myself hideously at odds in these political discussions. And my vantage point I realise is not universal, but I do think it's useful: I feel anti-Americanism in small practical ways, the remarks are made to me, assumptions are made about me, cabbied say things, blokes at work say things, middle-class English women say things. So it feels very real to me.
Half my colleagues or more are Bengali Muslims, and while I don't agree with many people's views here either, I feel their "solidity" every day. I also have lots of respect for people's principles. My Muslim colleagues give ten per cent of their earnings to charity; they don't have mortgages, they have funding setups with "ethical" financial organisations that also give to charity; they increasingly buy a brand of cola called Qibla (half-owned by the family of someone I know) which gives a tithe of its profits to charites, including non-Muslim charities.
My colleague sitting three feet away as I type edits an Islamic magazine that has, on its masthead, a plea to dispose of it respectfully - not in the rubbish bin - because it contains holy material. It's a MAGAZINE. Do you think his, or his family's, attitude towards Americans might change subtly every time someone defaces the Koran? And he's a serious, thoughtful, respectable person. Not that he'd EVER become a bomber. So why all the polarisation?
I spend my entire life as the PR manager of a regeneration programme here trying to unravel the strands of belief: personal, political, cultural - just to make something simple happen, like some teenage girls to be allowed to go to an after-school club.
We are in the constituency that recently voted in George Galloway MP (of fame); they voted him in as a protest against the incumbent, Oona King, solely because she had voted in favour of invading Iraq. I can't tell you how angry local people were and are about that. It made a difference to my everyday life because we were short a dignitary... people marched in the street when the US invaded Iraq, the streets were TEEMING. Schools were empty; my kid called me from Parliament and was on TV getting roughed up by the police; highly respectable Muslim people - academics too - were also marching, not just hippies & kids.
A lot of the men in Guantanamo are UK citizens, and it staggers me that the land of the free and home of the brave is locking up UK citizens without even the hope of a trial. You read the articles about them and their families, they look like people I know.
Meanwhile, with every incident, the Muslim community draws further back into itself for protection, the girls are under more and more pressure to wear hijab, young men already caught between the culture they were born into and that of their (panicking) parents get angrier and angrier, and more and more lost, and start seeking a cultural identity that differentiates them from the "anti-Muslim" world. When I went home for a visit in Aug 2002, one colleague - with whom I get on well - asked where I was going - I said NY - he said, all covered in confusion, "Oh - well - never mind - "
I have to go support my team member Akbal in court soon, because he was hauled in for having dropped his ticket on London Transport on a day when the ticket inspectors were out. They're throwing the book at him. He's a young, trendy-looking Bengali guy who does volunteer work as a community mediator. If I'd dropped my ticket, I am SURE I'd have had a ten-pound fine. Recent police figures show that stop-&-search is WAY up for Asian-looking men; young Asian law-abiding men aren't feeling very safe.
How can you tell who's a terrorist? In MY world you are never more than two or three degrees separated from an Al-Qaeda sympathiser. And every time Bush makes a speech the degree goes down by .1%. It totally doesn't follow that you lock up everyone who looks like one or even knows one. It would be every Asian man over the age of sixteen.
Better to solve the actual PROBLEM I'd have thought, which means sitting down and thinking about what it actually IS.
KEB
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