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Feel embarrassed
by Thanos Kalamidas
2007-03-22 10:16:04 |
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Two incidents on the very same day have left me speechless and embarrassed for my fellow humans. The first happened in Belgium a couple of months ago but only came out over the last few days due to the decision of 700 Belgian couples to symbolically wed in a Flemish town where three couples had refused to let a black official marry them and the next happened in Nigeria, where high school pupils killed a teacher after accusing her of desecrating the Koran, apparently the teacher was Christian.
And now what? I mean this is the part you start getting angry. How dare they? How dare they refuse to be married by a person whose only difference is color and who told them that they have the right to do so? Furthermore, I don’t understand why the Belgian government doesn’t take any legal action against these three couples. Marriage is symbolic and, most of all, symbolizes commitment and love, respect and appreciation. Obviously these three couples lack all these values so why are they getting married?
And then it comes the other side of the hill, the high school pupils that killed their teacher because words of the Koran came from her ‘blasphemous’ mouth! High school kids! I was going to say ‘for god’s sake’ but I’d better avoid it. Who is responsible and who armed the hands of these kids to act like that. In Malaysia a year ago three Muslim men killed and decapitated three teenage girls because they …were Christians. That was their excuse. And now young kids followed their example.
I don’t really understand it. Do Muslims have a different color of blood and I didn’t know it? Do they really have a different color of blood and I never noticed? Is it necessary to live again with the demons we fought for centuries and overcame?
France and Belgium were, for the last century, a shelter for black people escaping from racist states. A huge number of known artists moved to these countries looking for a better life where they could enter the place they performed from the same door with the customers. Nina Simone is one example, Marsalis another. How dare these three couple embarrass me so much? Are they aware of what they did?
Belgium back in 1950s was the place that gathered immigrants from around the world to work in the mines. These people are part of the society; they helped Belgium even financially to become what it is. Brussels is the capital, not only for Belgium, but also the center of the EU. I’m sure they didn’t think of all that while living in their tiny small world, ignoring the institutions that helped them to live in a society that prides itself upon equality. They have shown their disrespect in the worst way. So I ask again, what are the Belgian authorities going to do about it?
What the high school kids did was a murder but who is to blame except their religious leaders that armed these hands. I cannot believe that these kids went that morning to school thinking 'Ok, what are we going to do between mathematics and history? I know, let's kill our teachers.' These sixteen and seventeen-year old kids are just like any other kids in any other place in the world, the difference stands in the people who made them fanatics and thought that the world is divided into two parts. The one that is with us and the other that is not with us, so the answer is …kill! And this is where we should start: Stop these fanatics that kill our future because what these kids did was not kill a Christian woman they killed the future. Just like the Belgian couples.
It is our obligation and, most of all, it is the states’ obligation to stop them. They have no right to kill my future. Stop the people who taught these young couples that they can ignore the major democratic institution that guarantees equality and stop these fanatics that arm teenagers and lead them to commit murder. By saying no to the black councillor in northern Belgium these three couples said no to me, said no to any citizen of this planet. By killing the teacher these kids in Nigeria, killed part of me and neither of them has this right. None of the people who drove them to their actions has the right to be a member of this society.
I feel that I could continue for pages but I would say just repeat myself because I feel so embarrassed to be a human today.
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