Malaysia is full of people. it is a huge melting pot of people from Bangladesh. Burma. China. India. all over. There are Christians here, but the most common religion is Islamic. The majority of the people i see everyday are Muslim. The two men I work with everyday are Muslim. people just like you and i. only they grew up going to a mosque praying to Allah and we grew up going to church learning about Jesus.
living in our little remote jungle village we didn’t hear about Osama Bin Laden’s death till a couple of days after you guys all knew about it. Honestly, my first reaction was “no way, it is all fake.” and while I have not been able to read any newspapers or look at any photos of the incident I have heard about them. I began to hear about people back in the US and their reactions, like the one at the baseball game. I began to see peoples reactions on Facebook too and my next thought was “how can people be happy over a death of someone?” I don’t care who it is, how can we rejoice in the fact that we know Osama is in hell right now? this may be blunt and it may be hard for some of you to read, seeing as yes he was an awful man who killed many on September 11th… I’m not trying to downgrade the tragedy. my point being is really hard for me to put into words and so I wanted to share my squadmate’s blog. the non-extremest Muslims are no different than you and I. how do i know this? because I am living with them. I see them everyday. I want to share what you guys in America don’t see. what our government doesn’t show us on TV. the side of Muslims that we have not grown up knowing. they need Jesus just like we do. and Sami couldn’t have said it better… (I couldn’t get the pictures to copy over though)
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Brushing my teeth with Osama Bin Laden
devout Muslim men. Well to be fair I brush my teeth as they go about
their daily chores washing dishes, checking laundry, watching t.v., and
even praying. To be even more fair they don’t know I am watching. Creepy
I know, but their apartment is across a ten foot alley from mine and
neither of us has glass windows, just bars.
This month I live above a restaurant in the heart of Kuala Lumpur or KL
as the natives call it. We sleep on mattresses on the floor of a large
room they have re purposed for a church. It isn’t like any American
church I’ve ever been to in fact it is far more akin to some of the
Haitian churches I have visited. Its 8 foot windows have only wire and
old poster board to cover them. The rain blows in and cools us off at
night. The bathrooms are luxurious for World Race standards, aka there
is a sink and a shower head in make shift room with bowls to flush the
toilet. Our kitchen is two tables in a room with a sink, and I have more
than once woken up to the scurry of a roach on my pillow. Yet, there is
electricity, clean water, a lock on the doors, and our 5 Malay roommate
to make us feel more at ease.
And each
night I stand at the bathroom sink staring out of the large window
watching these men go about their day just like me. They wear
traditional Muslim garb and sit around the table reading newspapers and
eating toast. They laugh with each other and playfully slap one another
on the back. I can’t help but see how similar we are. They brush their teeth just like their parents taught them, and every now and then we make a polite wave towards one another, and go about our lives. We coexist.
Listerine my eyes burning with tears, it wasn’t from the alcohol burning
the germs in my mouth. (the commercials are a total lie by the way, and
the only refreshing part about mouth wash is spitting it out!) But my
eyes welled with humility. Because despite my years studying
international relations and politics at Wheaton, or my time living in
Chicago, or growing up in D.C., or my parents, or my travels across the
globe and back, I had become racist! Here I was puzzling at how these Muslim men and I could be living within literally feet of each other, as if we weren’t both human.
As if they didn’t cry when the used mouth wash, or clean their dishes,
or read the newspaper. I didn’t have to wonder for long how I had become
like this, because I knew. I knew that thence 2001 when I was only 12
years old the media had painted these men as my enemy. I watched movie
after movie where their only depiction was as terrorists. I saw faces
that looked like theirs on the news. I saw names like theirs scroll
across the bottom of the t.v. attached to bombs that killed people in
markets and buses. I was racist because I was trained to see all Muslims as the enemy.
That sounds extreme doesn’t it? It sounds like I am claiming to be
brainwashed, like I am not responsible for my own opinions. But that is
the truth, I have been culturally conditioned to believe that all men
like this would hurt me if given the opportunity. Jack Bower taught me
that. I have been taught that all Muslim mosques are covers for terror
cells, Lie to me taught me that. I have been taught that the war on
terror looks like Muslim men who wear facial hair and robes in public,
the nightly news taught me that.
But today in the market I learned that me and a woman in a full burka
use the same shampoo, and me and little 6 year old Muslim boy both like
fruit mentos, and me and my Muslim neighbors prefer milk in our tea and
to use Listerine after we brush our teeth. I know back home today there is a lot of fear. Fear that people will
retaliate for what happened to Osama Bin Laden. But I can tell you that
same fear ran through the veins of Muslim men and women all across the
globe the day after September 11th. Fear that because of what one group
of Muslims did there would be retaliation. It’s been almost a decade
since Osama’s name became a household insignia for terror, and in those
ten years, almost half of my life, I had been taught to associate him
with all Muslim men. But so had my neighbors. In their newspaper I am
the enemy, on their nightly news it is my father, brother, or son that
is killing their people. To them I am the enemy. Which
is exactly what Satan wants. He wants these men to see people who look
like me, who talk like me, who dress like me and to judge us, the same
way I judged them. To not see my humanity. After all that is what racism
is, it is to dehumanize someone.
These picture are what I see daily here in KL, these are the
faces of the Muslim world we rarely see in the west. If we want to end
the violence, or avoid retaliation we need to stop letting the enemy
make us each others enemy. We first must see each others humanity.
strong against the media barrage or the societal disapproval of Muslims.
But if by the off chance in light of recent events you are like me and
need to be reminded. Then allow me the humbling privilege to
remind you that women in burkas need shampoo too and that they too have
kids that beg for candy at the check out line. Because “All men are
created equal” is more than an upstanding sentiment; it is a fundamental
truth! Elaborated on by one of our founding fathers but testified to
originally in scripture when Jesus came for all men, Jew, and gentile
alike! And the blood that He shed wasn’t just for sinners like you and
me, but for the Muslim men who I brush my teeth with every night.
