What to do?
What am I going to do with myself?
Just a few moments ago I Googled and wikipedia-ed an old professor of mine, Hatem Bazian. I found a transcript of an interview he gave on the O'Reilly Factor, and excerpts of a controversial speech he made at an anti-war protest in San Francisco, April of 2004. In that speech he called for a domestic "intifada" in the United States, a statement which was misconstrued by many people on the other end of the political spectrum, and probably a fair number on the same end. They thought he was calling for a violent uprising; he intended it to be a grassroots movement with non-violent methods. He grew up in Nablus, Palestine, where I will be going in a few short weeks.
I then wikipedia-ed Professor Algar Hamid, who is much less of a controversial figure, but a preeminnent scholar whom I also respect and admire, though I only met him a few times.
I could never be a Martin Luther King Jr. or a Ghandi or even someone of middling stature compared to them. But I could see myself being someone on par with those professors. Someone whose intellect makes deep incisions into the issues of the day and then speaks out openly, fiercely, unapologetically for what he believes in.
Then I take a step back from what future portraits the imagination might paint, and I look at it from afar, and I know...
it still wouldn't be enough.
I only hope that foreknowledge of insufficiency is not a deterrent to action; better to act without recompense or effect than to surrender one's existence to inaction.
Just a few moments ago I Googled and wikipedia-ed an old professor of mine, Hatem Bazian. I found a transcript of an interview he gave on the O'Reilly Factor, and excerpts of a controversial speech he made at an anti-war protest in San Francisco, April of 2004. In that speech he called for a domestic "intifada" in the United States, a statement which was misconstrued by many people on the other end of the political spectrum, and probably a fair number on the same end. They thought he was calling for a violent uprising; he intended it to be a grassroots movement with non-violent methods. He grew up in Nablus, Palestine, where I will be going in a few short weeks.
I then wikipedia-ed Professor Algar Hamid, who is much less of a controversial figure, but a preeminnent scholar whom I also respect and admire, though I only met him a few times.
I could never be a Martin Luther King Jr. or a Ghandi or even someone of middling stature compared to them. But I could see myself being someone on par with those professors. Someone whose intellect makes deep incisions into the issues of the day and then speaks out openly, fiercely, unapologetically for what he believes in.
Then I take a step back from what future portraits the imagination might paint, and I look at it from afar, and I know...
it still wouldn't be enough.
I only hope that foreknowledge of insufficiency is not a deterrent to action; better to act without recompense or effect than to surrender one's existence to inaction.
posted by Bloo at 11:25 PM
2 Comments:
Words carry meaning - intifada is equated with violence. MLK would have never used the term - ever.
Well, I agree with your implicit point, mojoey. Words often connote beyond their literal dictionary denotation. Intifada is indeed equated with violence, due to the particular violence of the Second Intifada (the current one) in Palestine--this is the lens through which the American public currently knows the word. But the word itself simply means uprising, in fact the First Intifada in the 90s gained international attention for the Palestinian people because of it's low lethality rate: they threw stones at tanks. So obviously truth's are not self-evident, they're a matter of perception.
You could then say that it's irresponsible, or at the least poor communication, to use the term intifada to denote a non-violent movement for change when addressing an American audience. I think I'm fine with that statement.
What disturbs me is the larger trend of divorcing words from their original cultural, religious, and historical contexts, let alone the dictionary, and then usurping their meanings to be something more insidious or villanous; in doing so we irresponsibly misrepresent the signs of those same cultures, religions, histories... dictionaries.
But therein lies the foundation of many problems: if only we had a common lexicon in which to understand each other by our intentions and not the perversions of ontological misappropriation.
And yeah, MLK would never have used the term--clearly. And if he'd been born Palestinian, he wouldn't have been the same Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so there's really no point in making the comparison.
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