Campbell Corner Language Exchange

The 1996 Helen Lynd Colloquium:
"MUSLIMS, JEWS, AND CHRISTIANS:
THEIR LEGACIES; THE ROOTS OF (IN)TOLERANCE"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Melvin Jules Bukiet, Sarah Lawrence Writing Faculty
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The title of this year's topic, in full, is as follows: "Muslims, comma, Jews, comma, and Christians, colon, Their Legacies, semi-colon, The Roots of, parenthesis, In, end-parenthesis, Tolerance." It's a subject which requires the use of nearly every typographic symbol known to the lexicon, but the purpose of these symbols is relational. Those single or dual dots and squiggles or combinations thereof are tools by which a grammarian might imply a vernacular. On the other hand - and there are a lot of other hands in our case - and they're often holding a gun. Or a knife. Or a torch. Or a club. Or a trigger on a catapult. Or the button for a bomb. Because there's something so deeply shocking in the way in which humankind's highest aspirations have led repeatedly, perhaps inevitably, to tragedy, let's start with the most inappropriate metaphor we can find: Like an ocean, the brittle mideast ground consists of vast breaches or, in historical terms, eras of calm that are regularly shattered by brutal gales or squalls of heavy weather. The pebble dropped into this human sea from which the ripples that have turned into catastrophic tidal waves has usually been a tiny chip from Jerusalem's stone. Pain and travail, surging as a consequence of true belief, have spread as far south as Sudan, where Dr. Hassan Abdullah el-Turabi virtually reigns over a nation that the New York Times has said is "...a shambles... in crisis." As far east as as India and Pakistan, as far North in Europe as Bosnia and as far west as, well, the World Trade Center.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bernard Lewis, historian, author of The Middle East and the West
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Some groups in the Middle East] have taken upon themselves the role of fighting "The Great Satan." Using that phrase, we have to first understand what it means. Satan, as portrayed by the Koran, is not an imperialist. He's not a conquerer. He's not an exploiter. He is a tempter. He is a seducer. What worried the late Ayatollah Khomeini and the other ayatollahs is not the danger of American invasion or domination which they knew perfectly well is not in the cards. It is the penetration and, as they see it, domination of American popular culture [which appears threatening to them.] American popular culture has a universality of appeal which affects all classes of all groups, and this is what profoundly alarms radical Islamists and others like them. They see this as a disruptive and destructive force striking at the very roots of their religion, their culture, their civilization, their way of life. This is what has to be understood if we are to comprehend the nature of their hostility toward the West and the United States in particular.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, author of Mission to America
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

One of the things that most of us living in the United States are not aware of is how closely we are watched... People from the Muslim world are very attuned to what we say about them, and they think that we are maligning them. I immigrated to the United States in 1963. Since then we have gone through several stereotypes of what a Muslim is in this country. In the '60s, it was the 'Camel Jockey' - someone who is insignificant and marginal to our existence; someone whose place is in Lawrence of Arabia daydreams. In the '70s, the stereotype shifted to the 'Oil Sheik,' especially after the oil boycott... The Muslim had begun to become a threat to our way of life. In the '80s, the stereotype shifted against and the Muslim became 'The Terrorist'. What has happened in the '90s is that we have reified the Muslim into the enemy... or the demon. Now how do Muslims view themselves? Do they see themselves in this same picture that we have depicted them in over the last 35 years? The answer is no. They see themselves as the consummate victim. And I know that we in America are not ready for another victim. We already have too many victims. Three years ago I was at the University of Michigan on a research grant and I asked the research assistant to look up all the material he could find - in newspapers, in journal articles, and in books - on political correctness... We had list after list after list of 'protected communities' - people you should not malign [according to academics and public officers.] It is agreed that no one should write anything inflammatory about these groups of people. Not one of these lists had either Arab or Muslim on it.