Extra Credit: From Alexander the Great to the so-called Islamic State

My memories of September 11th, 2011 are short, being that I was only the age of seven. The second grade memories I do have started with a class interruption then we turned on the TV to the news and watched as the events unfolded. Beyond that I remember Mrs. Greenland trying to have a class discussion with us explaining what was happening. There of course was a lot of confusion and questions, and it was hard for us to grasp what the bad guys were doing. The only other thing I remember after school is the news was on a lot at my house, more than usual, which I despised because I hated the news as a kid. But then that was it, in my mind 9/11 only lasted a few days.

Only years later was I able to grasp the magnitude of what had actually happened, but honestly since then things haven't gotten much clearer. I am still confused on what the "bad guys" are doing and why.

Shadman Bashir is a very knowledgeable man and an inside view to what is actually going on and was a unique experience to listen to him. Chronologically I am still very lost and I think that I definitely would have a more comprehensible understanding if I could listen to the lectures two or three times over. Then maybe I could have a basic sense of what happened, why and be able to answer those questions contemporarily as well. But the theme that I took away was the fearful question of "Who is our enemies?"

His lecture reminded me of a picture I had posted earlier to my blog.

For one reason or another this picture or more like the statement within the picture resonated sincere to me. "The group most affected by Islams terrorism is Muslims." This was also further supported by by Bashir's lecture. But yet we are ignorant by our own western fear that we are more at risk and the media feeds our fear by reiterating the Paris attacks over again and again, but ignoring stories of Beruit and minimize the attacks because they weren't western?

Terrorism is a tactic of fear but when the trending act of a shooting occurs by one of our own they are labeled as a gunman, but when it is someone foreign to us we label them as terrorism. Yet the the minimal occurrences of terrorism we have had in the US is trending in the middle-eastern daily, but we are the victims? They are truly the ones faced with the question "who are our enemies?" when they are misunderstood by most and therefore feared by all because our ignorance won't let us see past the our fear of differences.

I think the most surprising thing was that is wasn't always religious, but I do think that plays a huge role in masking who the enemies are for us and even more so for them, because they can't tell the difference between a Muslim who has been promised 72 virgins and one who has not. But our western downfall is that we aren't even aware of the different Muslim interpretations and the exploitation thereof for the younger generations born into these desperate times, but instead have we have labeled them by their looks under our western universal belief of their religion.

This inside from Bashir has helped me find some of the pieces unseen in our media. I definitely will use my notes to help put the pieces together on trying to continue to understand what is really going on, but I am fearful that that what I find will only be a filtered westernized answer.