Iran Election Stories From Friends and Family

Yesterday a Muslim psychiatrist in the United States Army shot thirteen soldiers at the Army Base in Fort Hood.  I  would like to express my deep sadness for the life lost and for the families who lost a loved one.

A few red flags are raised for me.  Muslim American groups have condemned his action and have emphasized that Islam does not condone violence.  I am concerned, however, that the Muslim community is not being honest with itself about the different groups that exist, and the fact that some may be quite radical and quite pro-violence.  The shooter may have been a lone and crazed person, that is true.  But we need to examine whether or not his religious beliefs encouraged this behavior.

Part of the reason why there is not a more honest debate, I am guessing, is because people are afraid.  For example, I am much more afraid of blogging critically about Islam in general, than I am blogging about the Iranian government.  And that is because fundamentalists around the world have very clear and (to me) arbitrary definitions of what is and what is not permissible to say, and are very bold in their belief that they can limit other’s freedom of speech.  So who knows who you may anger and what they will do to you.  The fact that they have the power to make me self-censor myself already speaks to the negative power of fundamentalism.

I am not saying it is necessarily Muslim Fundamentalism, but fundamentalism that is the problem.

This is happening in the context of popular uprisings in Iran, where the civil population is trying to diffuse fundamentalists who are in charge of government and military.  [Note, the religious beliefs of the Iranian government and Sunni groups such as Taliban and AlQuieda are very different; they are in fact hostile enemies, but they are fundamentalist none-the-less].  In Iran intolerance spread because non-radicals were too afraid to nip it in the bud.  Now, Iranians are using their physical bodies to shield the world from this horrible thing — religious extremism, fundamentalism.

This is a global battle for all of us, between being reasonable and fundamentalist, being humane and rigid.

The other red flag this raised is the fact that mentally unstable people seem to be slipping between the cracks.  I am concerned that there are no more communities of people who can be alarmed that one person is out of the ordinary and needing intervention.  So then it all explodes.