Why America Can Never Be the Middle East’s BFF

Please remember that these are my perspectives, my opinions, my feelings; so there is no need for a disclaimer, no need to state the obvious.  Okay?  Okay.

The secondary reason why America is the Middle East’s biggest infidel is because of its hypocrisy.

America complains about the way women are treated in the Middle East and about China’s human rights practices, then does nothing to control how inner city youths are being treated by the police.  In most major cities, the police have the right to stop men, young and old, question them, and frisk them, just because they are black or brown.  They stop them while driving and search their cars, just because of the color of their skin.  Somehow black and brown men equal suspicious men.  America still has not gotten past its history of slavery.  It still has remnants of Jim Crow laws, and many Americans still think that this is the best place on Earth.  America pretends not to notice, and no other Western country is speaking out strongly against its ills.  But for some reason, America always finds time to stick its nose in the Middle East’s business.

It claims to be the Land of the Free, and sure, people are free to say anything most of the time.  But even in this Land of the Free, even if you are not brown or black, some of the little freedoms that other countries take for granted are foreign to America.  Try urinating next to the tree you plan to cut down and burn in your own backyard without getting three different permits!  You are just not always free to do as you please in these great United Sates of America. 

Look, people are free to believe what they want to believe, what they were taught to believe and what they see fit to believe.  However, as an Antiguan American I do not subscribe to the fact that America is the bestest, mostest, perfectest place in the Universe.  I do think it’s a cool country, just not the it place…no place is.  And since no American has lived everywhere on the entire Earth, how the heck they can judge theirs to be the best is beyond me.

However, the primary reason why BFF America will never be to the Middle East is religion, or rather religious freedom.  No surprise here, right.

Many Americans want everyone to conform to their ideologies while negating everyone else’s.  They don’t get that religious freedom means that we are all free to practice our own forms of religion.  In this country, the founding fathers believed in freedom of religion, but nowadays people think it’s just freedom to follow a specific kind of Christian religion.  They see it as being free to impose their religious views on others, but others are not free to impress their “cultish” religion on them because after all, there is only ONE true God.

I really don’t get it because religion is supposed to make people more loving and compassionate; instead too many religious people are narrow-minded, spiteful and filled with hatred.  Don’t believe me?  When was the last time you or someone said or thought about another member of your church, “I can’t believe she calls herself a Christian.”  But what people don’t realize is that churches, religion, Christianity don’t necessarily change people.  Our DNA was formed way before we ever step foot in a church.  Sure some people can adjust certain characteristics, but typically, the nice people in church were always nice; and the not so nice people in church were always mean spirited.

But speaking to the core of religion, here is another thing that baffles me: the idea of anyone being blasphemous.  That concept is totally absurd because there are too many religions, and people worship too many different deities.  However, disrespecting someone’s religion or religious leader or God just for the sake of disrespect, is equally ridiculous.  And why anyone would think that their religion is better than someone else’s is even sillier.  Of course as civilized people, we find it outrageous for some Muslims to resort to murder just because some idiot made some low budget movie disparaging the Prophet Muhammad.  If someone made a joke about God being way too old to have a child with Mary, I don’t think any Christian would propagate violence.  He might be offended; he might think the person is a jackass; but he will not see it as grounds to take up arms. 

As a little girl, I loved the beach so much that my grandmother told me that if I bring a crocus bag to the beach, I could sweep it up and take it home; then I’ll have my own beach in our backyard.  I had no reason to disbelieve her.  And for the longest, I reminded my mother to bring a bag whenever we visited my grandmother.  I eventually forgot about it until years later when it dawned on me that for all those years, nobody, not my parents, not even my siblings, ever pulled me aside and said, “Kid, you know that’s bullshit, right!”

For those of you who think I was gullible, you probably also think that those martyred suicide Muslim bombers who believe they’ll get 70 virgins when they get to heaven, are just as nuts.  And you most likely think that those Hindus who believe that when they die, they will reincarnate again and again for eternity are just as ludicrous.  Yet for some reason, you don’t think that going to heaven and consuming milk and honey forever is preposterous.  First of all, not all, but many Christians are a tad bit overweight.  Don’t know if honey and milk will do it for them.  Second of all, that diet doesn’t seem too balanced to me.

I hope this post doesn’t sound like a ranting tirade because perspectively speaking, everyone’s religion is just one spaceship away from a cult; so everyone, just calm down and stop thinking that your religious shit doesn’t stink.