Although I was unable to attend Deepa Kumar's speech in response to the book, Islamaphobia. I did get the chance to read a few of out classmates responses to her speech, and this has given me an understanding of what she was trying to discuss.
I was not shocked with what my classmates had shared about Kumar's speech about the Muslim enemy/threat. In this country our media has portrayed Muslim's as the enemy to our so called "Christian beliefs". But, our country is not the only culprit in this idea of using fear to create an enemy that may or may not be their. My father is from Iran, and he has told me that like America, Iran has made christian idea's and beliefs the enemy/threat to the Islamic beliefs of the middle east. By 'creating' these fears about one another, we have made the earth a very cynical and dark place.
While this is such a simple concept, it is too very complex. A truly viscous cycle is occurring between these religions…almost a form of groupthink, or extremism. As Christians or Muslims sit in a room with others like them -- it is easy to see how they can get more and more polarized, which fills the space between with hatred. This lack of an opposing viewpoint is not challenging either side. One very recent personal example I have is a conversation with a student I work with from Egypt. He is a devout Muslim and the topic of homosexuals was brought up. He was very adamant to say that in Egypt even talking about this topic is unheard of -- the repercussions are so harsh that he would not even tell us. With that, he did not even want to have the conversation because he had such an extremist view. He was not even willing to be challenged, so he removed himself from the conversation. Hatred can come from a group sharing their views and becoming more and more attached to an unshakeable ideology.
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