What does it mean to love someone? It’s not as complicated as you might think, but it would still take quite a lengthy amount of space to discuss. Rather than that, I will tell you what is fundamental, what is necessary, before you can truly love someone. Respect. You have to respect someone to love them. The desire for the companionship of a specific person, the want to be loved by that person, that requires respect. For if you don’t respect that person, how can their love that you seek in return for your own affections mean anything?
Well, in the case of Ziad Jarrah, the man who purportedly loved Aysel Sengün, how could he have truly loved her and at the same time did what he did? Here was a girl, a woman, that enjoyed the entertainments that western society had to offer. She was still respectful as far as I know, both of herself and for her family, friends, and those she dealt with, so it’s not like she was a mean spirited whore or anything; she was indeed the opposite of that. However, she was not the dumb and dutiful wife as proscribed by the friends that Jarrah made that couldn’t wait to enter paradise.
Now I’m going to take an aside, and you have to let me cause I’m the writer, and let’s talk about this paradisimo that the Muslims aspire for. I am not going to generalize and say all Muslims, and I will go against my better judgment and not call them Islamic Fundamentalists. I feel that the Islamists are Islamic Fundamentalists, however, the rest of the Islamic Community asks us not to call them that, and I will respect the people’s desire to be called what they want to be called. We shouldn’t call people what we want to call them, since we wished to be called in a particular way we should apply the Golden Rule and use the nomenclature others desire when it does not cause any great difficulty for us. You see, some people are quite astute as to the power of words. When someone says Islamic Fundamentalist, two predominant images arise in the western mind, either the Christian Fundamentalist that kills doctors as a form of protest against abortions, or the Arab Terrorist, who will kill you for something someone else did to his people eighty years ago as a form of protest. They wish to be called Islamists because it’s a real weird word to pronounce, and it doesn’t have any preconceived biases working against it, since it was just made up now despite the ideology being there for a long, long time. As I said though, as much as I may not want to call them Islamists, I will call them that, but I digress from my aside.
Let’s look at the Jewish perspective on the afterlife first, since they are the forerunners and all that of this particular God worship. The Jews routinely say don’t worry about the after life, it will take care of itself, be a good person and you have nothing to worry about. When talk of hell comes up, once again, vaguely they say that god shows you your mistakes over and over, but eventually everyone arrives in heaven. The movie, Believer, did this incredibly well, and it is recommended to see it for no other reason than to understand the ending, though the beginning and middle do stand on their own as an excellent film. The Christians originally viewed Heaven as being God’s domain. Basically, this world is of man, the next world is of God. For eternity, you spend your time in the presence of God, and that’s it (you also worship him I guess). Now to me, that sounds rather boring for an afternoon, let alone for all time. When compared with Hell, however, boredom does sound more appealing. One must remember though, the only people who will get to heaven will be those that will enjoy it, so maybe I’ll just chill out on the sixth layer or something, it seems more fun, or purgatory, I hear it’s nice this time of year. Now, the Muslims, generally speaking, deal with heaven in the same way as the Jews, were discussion of heaven is metaphorical, though they get into it more than the Jews. There are two heavens, and two hells. With the two heavens, there’s heaven proper and heaven light. The requirements for heaven light are basically be a good person, believe in god, etc. Not too difficult. For heaven proper, or Heaven, one must have reached a certain age (like, forty or something), lived the five pillars of Islam (believe in Muhammad as the prophet of God, done or aspired to do the pilgrimage to Mecca, prayed five times a day, etc.), have been a good person in general, etc. However, the Islamists have taken Heaven to a new level, making it the place of oasis plenty and sexual paradise. Did I get that right? That some odd-numbered virgins are waiting for the martyrs? And these men that demand women cover every inch of their body are looking forward to that for all eternity? You’d think they’d be cursing God for not at least giving them some camels. However, the very men that wish to destroy our civilization for creating the bikini aspire to spend eternity with bikini clad women. What the hell is wrong with these people that they hate us for creating heaven on earth? I mean, let’s recap, Christians (Catholic anyway) Earth belongs to Man, Heaven belongs to God; Muslims (Islamists) Earth belongs to God, Heaven belongs to Man. I mean, it sounds great that for eternity you get everything you want (it’s the selling point for believing in Protestantism), and all you have to do is suffer for a few decades on a watery rock while praising god, or take a short cut by killing yourself. However, if God was really God, why would “he” make the system as crazy as saying, “you gotta respect me on earth, and then you can ride the waterslides in heaven.” As opposed to, “you gotta resist the temptation of the waterslide on earth, and then in heaven there are no waterslides to tempt you. Anyone who enjoys waterslides wouldn’t like it there, so they go to hell and get punished for sliding around in the water.” To clarify, waterslide means sex. I’m sure God has no problem with people going to literal water parks, though some religious people would equate boys and girls having fun in a pool even worse than public dancing.
Which brings me to another aside, where the hell to people get off in saying we have to respect every other culture around, even one’s that want to kill me? I mean, let’s face it, for an American woman just like the one sung about by Lenny Kravitz and written about by The Guess Who to say that we should respect the right of other cultures because no culture is better than another is not just ignorant, it’s down right selfish. If you ever meet someone who says that we have to respect Saudi Arabian culture, despite not liking it, see if you can tear off a phony mask. Ten to one, they are a conservative white male from the 1950’s or earlier. The women of Saudi Arabia are happy with things, and if they really wanted things to change then it would happen, is simply false. Imagine how far the Woman’s Liberation movement would have gone if the police were allowed to kill the people leading the protests and there was no public outcry about it. Imagine if instead of barring the black students from attending Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, the police killed the students and the crowd cheered, and no one asked why murder charges weren’t brought up. It is mean spirited to assume that just cause we have things, let’s face it, the best in the world here in America, that it’s not so bad elsewhere. It’s really bad, and while we can’t force other people to conform to us, nor should we, since it will just make people more defensive about protecting their traditions, we should support those that are willing to fight the establishment instead of saying that their society is entitled to be bigoted. In America, yeah, someone should be able to say that they hate all minorities. However, we should not support them in that speech. We should not say, “If you want to be a racist, that’s fine, I disagree with you, but hey, whatever.” Instead, we should say “STOP BEING A RACIST!!!” We should do all we can to convince them otherwise, and the government should just act as a referee, making sure no one gets hurt. They should not suppress anyone from saying anything, but that does not mean businesses should allow people to print whatever they want. The businesses should only allow people to print what those businesses wish to see printed. Can’t get your message out, start up your own business, don’t bomb the business that didn’t like your book.
That’s really the main thing. If in America, no, let’s say if in Rome, Italy, someone printed a theological critique of Christianity (though I’m sure someone already has), and the Pope read it to see how bad it was, and didn’t like it. He would probably say, “little Catholic boys and girls, this is il papa speaking (if it were JP, boy do I miss him), you shouldn’t read this book, it’s inflammatory and derogatory to our beliefs, and is offensive to anyone that believes in God.” While some would call for the book to be banned, or even burned, you’d never here JP saying that. He would say don’t harm a hair on his little head, that’s not the Christian thing to do. If you did string him up, you’d be no better than the Romans that crucified Jesus. However, in Iran, not only did they put out a hit on a certain writer, but Muslims around the world killed TRANSLATORS of said book, which really wasn’t even a critique of Islam, but I used the critique of Christianity as an example. Imagine that, a culture, a government, that not only encouraged people to kill the writer of a book but actually got them to kill translators of that book! That is insane! If you don't think so, just take a moment, and let it sink in. Killed... translators... over a book that they didn't like. These are the people calling Israel the contemporary Nazi Germany, but for anyone today to compare Israel or any other country/government to Nazi Germany really does say Nazi Germany wasn’t so bad. Nazi Germany burned books, discouraged intellectualism, encouraged barbarianism, and sought to rule the world for a thousand years, give or take. I mean, they actively told children to pick on those weaker or different from you. They felt that dissenters were best when dead, and that the other races were naturally subservient to the Aryan. I don’t care if you don’t like Israel, I’m certainly not their number one fan, but to compare them, or America, to Nazi Germany, is basically saying that Nazi Germany wasn’t really bad, just kinda a little bad.
Do I think that the Arabs got a raw deal from Sykes-Picot, hell yeah. The Treaty of Versailles was a real rip, just like the Amerindians and their treaties with the Britons. However, complaining about it and killing people isn’t the answer. Without a Way-Back machine, the only way to help those in bad situations is to actively work towards improvement. Who helps out a community more? The person who complains all day that there are no doctors to help out the community, and the reason why is the white man is trying to keep them down. Or the person that, seeing there are no doctors taking care of the neighborhood, goes off to medical school and becomes a doctor. Why don't we throw in a third person, the man who bombs a medical school in another country. So out of these three, who helps out the most? The man who complains, the man who tries to solve the problem, or the man who tries to keep others from doing what he wants from himself? Keep in mind, the "man" to which I refer to could easily be a woman.
Anyway, back to Sengün, the poor girl who thought after several years of losing her boyfriend/newlywed husband to Islamic radicals he had turned around and come to accept that Western Culture was not antithetical to Islam (in fact, the foundations for a republic are within Muslim culture, with the belief that a city should be run by the most trusted elders. Arabs have always been a mercantile people, respecting successful businessmen, and politics is rife with private monies, so how best do you decide who the most respected and trusted elders out of millions of people? Hold an election!), and then bam! It was all a ruse, one in which she was part of the duped. I think that Dante would agree with me that betrayal is the pits. But it’s not even that he came to accept that Western..., it was actually that he had started to loosen up, take life less seriously, and just enjoy what was going on. It’s hard to imagine that after seeing the woman he loved was so happy at this, he still went off to kill himself. What was he thinking? That in the afterlife they would meet up and she would thank him for killing so many innocent people? If he thought that, than he never really knew her at all, and if he never knew her, how could he love her? I can’t really say for certain what was thought and felt by people I never met, but I can say this, for anyone who says that the people in the world trade center deserved to die cause they were a part of the oppression of the Arab nations, I don’t think that Jose Fernandez, a janitor, was living high on the hog by keeping Arabs down when he got killed September Eleventh, Two-Thousand and One.