As an American living abroad, I have found myself in many situations in which views that I have held since birth are very much in the minority. Not only that, but the country I currently live in is known for having an absolutely heinous record on a variety of human rights issues, including free speech, so there are actually times when censoring myself has been necessary to keep my job or my friendships, if not actually my life. I’m used to all this, but there are still times when the drastic differences between my worldview and those of my students, friends, or acquaintances just drive me up the wall.
There is nothing that riles me up more than reading the local newspaper (online) and then reading the comments section. This past week, of course, the terrorist attacks in Paris were getting front-page coverage, and though the articles were fairly neutral (though still not up to what Western journalism standards would dictate) the comments section was going bananas! There were many people who were condemning the attacks for what they were: terrorism. But not everyone was. Perhaps not even a majority. The rest of the people were up in arms about how vile it was for Charlie Hebdo to dishonor the Prophet.
Now. I understand holding to your religious beliefs fervently. I do, because I’m a Christian and hold certain views that run quite counter to the rest of the world. I get that certain things are holy. Certain things are sensitive. Certain things are very, very easy to get offended about. But I cannot fathom the mindset that makes the leap from, “I don’t approve of what those people are doing and it offends me,” to “I’m going to go kill them all.”
Not many people in the comments I was reading were actually like, “Woohoo, more dead infidels!” but a common thread was the idea of, “Charlie Hebdo should have been more careful. Don’t they know what happens when you say offensive things?” And that is just scary to me, the idea that this could, in any way, be justified. It. Is. A. Satirical. Newspaper. They make fun of things. That’s just how it is. So there I am, fuming at my computer.
This all coincided with a unit I’m currently teaching about public speaking and persuasion. My 10th graders are writing speeches on issues of their choice, and one kid decided to take a stance on the Charlie Hebdo attack. His position is similar to what I described above, essentially that the concept of free speech does not protect hate speech, or things that offend people’s religious views specifically. I was fine with this topic, but what bothered me about his speech was that he refused to take a stance on the killings themselves. All he said about it was a one-line afterthought at the end: “But I am not a scholar (Islamic scholar) so I can’t say whether the attack was right or wrong.” I wanted so much for him to say that the attack was wrong, because certainly it is wrong to gun down people at their desks over a cartoon you didn’t like. He could have condemned the attack and still held his position about the limits of free speech. If he had I would have been more convinced of his argument. But even when I broached this idea with him, he was resistant. It was obvious he thought there was an element of justice in what the gunmen did. His worldview did not allow him to rule out the idea of doing something like this in defense of one’s religion.
Worldviews are so powerful. I mean, have you ever tried to reinvent your own? I realize that the very reason some of these things offend me so much is that my own culture’s values (democracy, free speech, gender equality) are so deeply ingrained, just as ingrained as the opposing worldview is in many people here.
And it is so hard to tell about people. Even when you think you know someone well, and they appear to be a nice, moderate, modern person, every once in a while something will come out of their mouths that just shocks you. This happened to me a few months ago with a student I was tutoring. He was a nice, well-mannered 10th grader who looked like he was about 11 years old. The absolute picture of benign innocence. Then one day we were discussing a book he was reading in school, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. In the novel, which takes place in Taliban-occupied Afghanistan, the two main female characters are consistently physically and mentally abused by their husband, not to mention the more systematic abuses of the Taliban’s rule of law. There is one point where a character is savagely beaten after trying to escape from said abusive husband. I was pointing out to the student that this episode would be a perfect example he could use in his essay about the dangers of violence. “There are great quotes here to show how terrible and abusive Rasheed (the husband) was,” said. My student responded, “Well, yeah, but she did try to run away…”
In the moment I was too shocked to reply with anything more than briefly questioning his reasoning and then moving on, but later his words rang in my ears, leaving me saddened and, honestly, afraid. I’m afraid of the fact that domestic violence isn’t abhorrent to everyone. I’m terrified that young people come of age every day in this country thinking it’s acceptable to restrict women’s movements, deny them access to basic human rights, and beat them if they disobey.
I don’t know how to counteract worldviews and ideas that are so deeply instilled, so central to this culture yet so foreign to mine. Is it even my role? I hope that by at least bothering to question these ideas, I can plant a seed in some of my students’ minds. But I know blowing up and ranting at them isn’t the way to change anything, even if I feel like it sometimes. I guess that’s what blogs are for, right?
If only more people would take out their anger with the pen than with the sword, this world would be a better place.
I am sorry I took so long to reply to this, Cindy- but I loved your post.
I totally agree with you, things like worldview are deeply set and so difficult to change. The intense part is that we have one too. I think it is really good living around people who have different world views than us (this is a big part of the reason I love studying the past). Seeing different perspectives can help us see what we have taken for granted in our own- what we have just assumed was ‘the way it is’ not a particular way of seeing it. But yeah- it is also scary when you don’t know how to change it. I guess one of the only ways really is exposure to different ways of thought– something I am sure you give them through your teaching!