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Tenth grade English class. Teacher had a crying fit and abandoned the classroom for a few minutes. People chatted in low tones. Not a whole lot changed in the coming days on the local level. I lived in South Carolina so the religious and ethnic groups were pretty much white and Christian of black and Christian. No Muslims at all so there wasn't really any Islamaphibia that I noticed because no one was there. There was no one to hate so very little happened during or after except for a few of my teachers who were ex-military getting reactivated. A few got redeployed when Iraq kicked off, but that was years later. I lived with exchange students for a while from the middle east. One was a piece of poo poo, the other cool, both Muslims from Saudi. They were absolutely floored by America when they came here. One place was an oppressive monarchy with very few rights to...Well...The US. From what I understand is that you have to leave nations with robust personal freedoms to actually appreciate them. The corruption isn't that bad, the weather is great and we have/had a solid infrastructure (like roads) that we take for granted that are definitely not standard in many countries. We may rage and scream at each other in politics, but we don't imprison or behead people when they dissent. You worship how you want in the way you want without being jailed or levied an extra tax for being different. There was also a woman with me named Evi who was a Muslim from Jakarta, Indonesia that came to learn English and get a business degree. She was why I didn't take any of the later Islamaphobia seriously. Fantastic person all around: Intelligent, friendly, devout, humble, curious, pretty. She answered a ton of my ten year old questions about Islam and served as a sort of anchor when 9/11 went down that no, most people aren't like that for my sixteen year old self. She'd moved with her husband to NYC years later. She left the US for Jakarta because she didn't feel safe in the US anymore and sadly I couldn't blame her. What bothered me right after 9/11 was that my parents constantly watched the news and for a solid year 9/11 was the headline. Then after the anniversary that wall to wall coverage stopped. A year after that we're at war with Iraq for no real reason. 9/11 inflicted a small blow on the US in the grand scheme of things and I knew even when I was younger that people were going to lose their poo poo and thirst for blood. It happened, people overreacted and we're paying for it today.
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Oct 5, 2015 12:19
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 02:42 |
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