Magda Borgarelli

Reflection #1

As I look back at this week, I can barely believe all that has happened in the Middle East in a matter of days.  An ignorant video was posted about Islam’s prophet, which was enough to fuel extremists in countries such as Lybia to attack US embassies in order to show their contempt.  Innocent lives were lost, and the situations in those areas, already fragile to begin with, became even harder to manage. What left me pondering was how quick both sides (Americans and Middle Easterners) began attacking the other either physically or trough hateful words.  Though I do concede that the reaction to the video was rather extreme and out of place, I do believe that we, as a nation, need also to recognize our own extreme views, which after all, are not any different from those held by the ones who attacked the embassies.  How many times do we read on the paper about Americans who denounce the Islamic religion as evil, or even as a tumor, and who do not bare any respect to its sacred objects such as the Koran?  We can’t close our eyes to the fact that we too have many people who believe that all Muslims should be converted at all costs because it is the righteous thing to do.  As a society, we have reached a point in which we are again distinguishing between the “us” and the “them”, when in reality, we act just in the same irrational way.