I've been toying with this idea for a while, but reading this article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-10728912) about two Muslim Girls being denied access on a London (UK) bus because of their head coverings has helped my idea to boil over.
I have posted before about the use of language and how it can negatively affect others. But for now, let me define "Inclusive Language": inclusive language means using language that doesn't single out any person by their age, gender, orientation, ability, religion or anything else. Using inclusive language ensures that all humans are spoken about as equals, and are not excluded in any way based on language. For Instance I refer to Felix as my "partner" rather than my boyfriend or husband or any other gendered term. I do this mainly so that I am using a gender neutral and orientation neutral term that allows all members of any group to talk about their partner without having to identify the gender of their partner, and in tern their sexual orientation. Inclusive language includes terms like firefighter rather than fireman (or firewoman), and identifying that a person HAS a disability rather than IS disabled. Language is powerful - we must be so careful because of the power we wield with our words. Here I propose something completely opposite... Exclusive language.
Please think back to swine flu. Swine flu was renamed in the media because it was causing problems in Jewish communities - first because observant Jews thought they were immune to the swine flu because they had no contact with the animal in question, and then secondly because of the shame and stigmatism connected with the virus if it was contracted by observant members of a community. There was a campaign to rename Swine flu to Mexican Flu in order to circumnavigate these problems.
Now to my point: I think a very strong case can be made for the renaming of one of two groups of people - Either we should start calling the Muslim Extremists by a different name, or we must find a new (positive association) moniker for the rest of the Muslims out there. The differentiation I speak of is in hopes of excluding members of one group of Muslims from inclusion in the other group.
I could go into a diatribe about the Muslim faith and how the image of the Muslim extremists is so totally opposite to the fundamentals of Muslim faith, but I’ll let you do that research on your own. I do want to bring another incident of this term mix up to your attention though: in New York City there is a plan to build a Mosque and Muslim Community Center two blocks away from the World Trade Center site. This plan has sparked outrage from some American, and they have chosen Sarah Palin as their champion to ‘tweet’ requests that “the peaceful Muslims” “refudiate” (a wonderful Palin-ism) their plans to build there because the pain of 9/11 is still too raw. She went through a series of tweets on the subject, and eventually got to “Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing.” I have two questions to ask here: 1) how large should the ‘no Muslim’ zone be in NYC? Because 2 blocks away ISN’T ground zero I am wondering if all of Manhattan should rid themselves of “peace seeking Muslims” so that hearts are not stabbed? My second question is why are we painting the whole Muslim faith demographic with the same brush as the Osama Extremists? Ms Palin shows here that she has very little knowledge of the group of people (1,100,000,000 – 1,271,000,000 people strong) that is the second largest faith demographic in the World. If all 1.3 billion Muslims had the same mentality as the very few Extremists… well, I won’t get into potential situations… but really think about what the planet would look like if all 1.3 billion Muslims were cut from the same cloth as the extremists… Case in point here (that not all peaceful muslims are the same as the extremists), the plan is not for an artillery factory, the plan is for a community center with a swimming pool, an auditorium and art gallery space to enrich the lives of the community; I cant find anything at all provocative about that…. (Here’s one of the ground zero mosque articles: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-rolling-twit-gathers-no-mosque/article1650127/)
I think it should be up to the (peaceful) Muslims of the world to either chose a new name, or rename the extremists something that is befitting (the right thing bay be to think up a vile name for the extremists, but if I were a non extremist Muslim I would choose a new name, because “Muslim” has been so sullied by fundamentalist groups but that just my personal opinion). This linguistic exclusion of regular Muslims from the extremists is an exercise in training the brain to see humans as humans, and not stereotyping 1.3 billion people based on the action of a handful (America has the highest rate of adults who have sex with children in the world, but we do not think of all Americans as pedophiles – we call pedophiles ‘pedophiles’ and non pedophilic Americans ‘Americans’). As I have said, words are powerful and “Muslim” has taken on a life of its own and invokes images that lead to prejudice. Something HAS to be done about the racism and prejudice that so many Muslims are faced with as every person can conjur up and image (usually unfavourable) when they hear the word “Muslim”.
If you are Muslim, and reading, drop a line: lets begin a dialogue….
*love*
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