a few factors have influenced me greatly this summer: issues im dealing with at home, growing old, the holy month of Ramadan, and the recent issues of islamaphobia plaguing the country. Ive had to grow up a lot in these past few months and with that ive realized that i need to have an impact on the world around me. In high school i was a very active kid trying to change the world and make a difference. never did i spend on weekend not at a interfaith conference, fundraiser for a famine in africa, seminar about the plight of refugees, or a rally against war. but when i got to college i got caught up on my own life and forgot that as a person we have a duty to our fellow human beings. As i stood there outside the Story tellers cafe at the Disney Grand Hotel and looked into the eyes of a kind young lady fighting to hold tears back as she told us the details of how the disney people just treated her, i remembered that duty. See, all this young lady wanted to do was go to work and because of her religion, they refused to let her. “we can put her in the back where customers wont see her” one disney representative told us. another older lady said, “i remember when they grouped everyone by height and color, the back isnt too bad,” and then she quickly went silent when our faces went white with shock. we have a dilemma here in this country and that dilemma is that barack obama getting elected has made relations between the majority and minority groups much worse. To be honest, i think it messed up the “status quo” and now people are openingly showing their prejudice. I cant fathom how churches across the nation can have Quran burnings. but whats worse is the fact that no-one has tried to stop them, in fact many around the country support these practices. Is this what the Freedom Riders rode through the south for? Is this what Dr. King and Brother Malcolm died for? To me, holding Quran burnings is a precursor to holding mosque burnings and i honestly dont want to wait until 7 little girls die of a bomb blast while attending sunday school to start speaking out. this country is coming to a cross-roads, we can stand together and defend the constitution and all the progress we have made or we can succumb to ignorance and fear…
