The failure in Afghanistan is how the next generation can become peacemakers
jonnyrashid.substack.com
Remembering 9/11 and the first sounds of war drums I remember being in tenth grade between second and third period (Mrs. Nunemacher’s Algebra 2 class and Miss Leach’s geometry class) when the towers were hit. As a son of Arab Americans, I knew it was extremist Muslims that hit the towers. My parents fled Egypt to escape persecution as Christians, and so they found solidarity and identity in a Christian-majority country. I didn’t have the same experience, because I grew up as an ethnic minority, in contrast to their religious minoritarian status in Egypt. For my parents, 9/11 felt like what they were escaping came to the U.S. to attack them. For me, it felt like who I was, and what I looked like, was under attack in the U.S. It wasn’t so long after 9/11 that someone said I looked like Osama bin Laden. The racism I experienced was hard to note because it was just the water I swam in. I have to admit my perspective then on the War in Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terror in general, was colored by my experience as a brown teenager in Central Pennsylvania. It was also motivated by the politically-charged punk rock music I listened to, which, much to my actual surprise, was not that far off from Jesus’ peacemaking way in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus blessed the peacemakers, told us to love our enemies, and I tried to take him seriously, even as the war drums continued to be beaten, and even as the Bush Administration created an enemy to start a two-decades long war. I didn’t have a cohesive political theology in high school, though, and I oscillated as a result of public pressure to support the war. Even as late as 2003, as my heartstrings were tugged for the oppressed Kurdish people in Iraq, I wondered if invading Iraq was a good idea.
The failure in Afghanistan is how the next generation can become peacemakers
The failure in Afghanistan is how the next…
The failure in Afghanistan is how the next generation can become peacemakers
Remembering 9/11 and the first sounds of war drums I remember being in tenth grade between second and third period (Mrs. Nunemacher’s Algebra 2 class and Miss Leach’s geometry class) when the towers were hit. As a son of Arab Americans, I knew it was extremist Muslims that hit the towers. My parents fled Egypt to escape persecution as Christians, and so they found solidarity and identity in a Christian-majority country. I didn’t have the same experience, because I grew up as an ethnic minority, in contrast to their religious minoritarian status in Egypt. For my parents, 9/11 felt like what they were escaping came to the U.S. to attack them. For me, it felt like who I was, and what I looked like, was under attack in the U.S. It wasn’t so long after 9/11 that someone said I looked like Osama bin Laden. The racism I experienced was hard to note because it was just the water I swam in. I have to admit my perspective then on the War in Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terror in general, was colored by my experience as a brown teenager in Central Pennsylvania. It was also motivated by the politically-charged punk rock music I listened to, which, much to my actual surprise, was not that far off from Jesus’ peacemaking way in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus blessed the peacemakers, told us to love our enemies, and I tried to take him seriously, even as the war drums continued to be beaten, and even as the Bush Administration created an enemy to start a two-decades long war. I didn’t have a cohesive political theology in high school, though, and I oscillated as a result of public pressure to support the war. Even as late as 2003, as my heartstrings were tugged for the oppressed Kurdish people in Iraq, I wondered if invading Iraq was a good idea.