"Who Let You In Here?"

If there is one way in which that trite "punk rock saved my life" adage could prove itself any real worth, it is for the ones who understood punk rock (and I use this term punk because of my familiarity with it - I do understand that the movement (who did not name itself as a movement) has been done many times over different eras, in different cultures - but, overall, for the same reasons) and applied their ideals to mainstream institutions to suss out what people seem to just accept and question something's existence and create something better with a stronger foundation or a better approach. This is from a counter-culture/cynical viewpoint where one does not accept things just as they’re given; but questions things – especially ones that do not make sense or ones that have obvious truths avoided. I see this in mainstays of cultural/societal institutions with regards to religion, drugs (psychedelics and cannibis, more specifically), and the genesis of our civilization where there are things which at earlier points of our history may have made sense; however, as time and technology and knowledge progressed, some things such as historical flood stories or (as presented in Magicians of the Gods) cataclysmic ones, folk or mythological stories and such start aligning themselves with evidence. But just as with uniformitarianism how it prevents mainstream scientists to resist or turn against new evidence which highly contradicts their orthodoxies, religion and other ideologies prevent people from seeing otherwise. I have been highly anticipating Magicians of the Gods for some time and am excited that it came in and Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson were on Rogan's podcast this week.

Sort of in this vein, Duffy wrote a good post. I especially like how he mentioned the Christianity aspect of it and how being around different types of people with different personalities (defects to go along with some) without anything being pointed out or an agenda being pushed aside from doing what they felt was right - which was treating people well. This is nothing new, especially to Christianity as Jesus did the same thing and hung out with the people who needed love and support. This is the reason that I distanced myself from organized religion and conservative-ideologies, because most (definitely not all) of these types of people are full of hatred, bigotry, hypocrasy, and mostly just angry people. Superficially, I would not want to be around these types. This is why even though we try our best with family and friends to be aware of the different faiths such as Episcopalian, Catholicism, Mormonism, Buddhist, etc. in order for them to see that what they hear and what gets portrayed in the media is not what is right. It is also the reason we are raising our children Muslim.

During September 11th, I lived in Los Angeles working for an Iranian with whom I got to know his family and friends quite well. Needless to say, between work and school and other friends and associates, I got to know Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, Israelis (of many walks), and many others. So immersed was I in these associations that I was unaware of the bias and hate infiltrating our society via the right-wing hate machines and the so-called Christians and when I did catch up to that, I did not agree with it. Since then, our cultural landscape has changed tremendously especially with events in the Middle East and our side has done very little (if you go only by mainstream media) to help filter the ignorance. As I got to reading and understanding Islam more and meeting more Muslims, it appealed to me quite a lot and to my wife as well. So with children now, we do take them to other services when the occasion arises, but mostly we are raising them Muslim.

That being said, there is a huge misunderstanding and misconceptions about the religion and the people that is too deep and diverse to go into here. But anyway one looks at it, one must realize the cultural and societal differences in American and Europe and the Middle East. Without even getting into the cultural or political aspects that have diffused itself into the religion and the ignorances attached to it, one must even understand how countries treat their immigrants and minorities which is how Americans treat theirs; which is to isolate them and ignore them and allow them to exist on their own. There is a reason why American Muslims do not follow with those ideologies which in those other countries they get radicalized in prisons or elsewhere, same as how minorities do here. Added to that, Muslims in America have better social, economic and educational opportunities.

At the mosques and other gatherings, there is so much positive influences with the Islamic community where ever we have gone. Our kids have so much fun with the children there and we do not have to worry about relationship issues (boyfriend/girlfriend ones) and such with the kids there. Not saying it doesn't exist, but it less of an influence that one rarely sees and it is not a part of the religion and culture in a way where it gets talked about openly and in the way most Westerners talk about it, and we never have had a problem nor have we observed any of this. Our relationships there are great and if somebody has not seen you before, they go out of their way to say hello and make you feel invited and give you a plate of food. Others we see are just so positive and interested in what you are doing or how your family is doing. They may have just come back from a trip to their home country and they are so excited to tell you how fun the trip was and how great it was to see their family and wonder how is my family doing. I have conversations about politics and foreign policy for which they are well-versed about (way more than Americans with theirs) because they (or their families) are directly affected by things that happen everyday - not done with hate or vengeance, but with intelligence and sympathy for wrongdoings and affection for those people. They are not spouting hatred, bigotry, hypocrasy, gossiping, or any other negative influences which are all we ever see around most Christians and/or Conservatives. Why would we want to have our children associated with that type of environment? Angry, uneducated conversations about people they don't know and ones they don't like; cultures built around bad television and pop culture; set ideologies based on nothing but what sounds good with nothing to back it up. We have an idiotic governor who makes "increasingly poor decisions" based on fucking fifth grade-playground reasoning. Recently it is on turning away Syrian refugees. This is problematic in many ways, one of which is we are already a city with huge amounts of refugees from other countries, a lot of which are Muslims; so whether or not his plan goes through, it casts a negative view and, quite possibly, ramifications towards the refugees already existing in our city. Fortunately, unlike this idiot governor, many people in our city have several Muslim friends and do not seem to fall for his type of stupidity. I mean, this coming from a guy who doesn't want to legalize marijuana because it not only does he think it is "dangerous", the "use of K2...has spread and...the consequences of its use has been increasingly dire...[resulting] in over 100 overdoses." He uses this information to remind us how "dangerous marijuana use can be," not understanding that (aside from the knowledge that marijuana is not dangerous, especially with the exponential negative effects of alcohol) the reason K2 exists is because marijuana is illegal.

I personally associate more with Sufism, Gnosticism, and Shamanism which all base its tenets on what all religions started from which was being a better person, treating others well, and taking responsibility for your actions and how they affect other people. It puts a personal responsibility on you as a person to be a good person - all things missing from most (not all) organized religions and their (not all) followers.

The people who talk about what is making the world bad and all that nonsense always are the ones creating the division, hatred, bigotry out there. Being uncompassionate towards others without even understanding those they do not understand. All this fear and anger against the Muslims, how many of these people have taken the time to read the Koran and understand Islam's genesis and history? Or taken the time to get to know Muslims - and I'm talking about more than one and better to have ones from different countries to understand that a person's culture and the politics there have a huge impact on how one practices a religion. Even after all this, understanding the religion from its core meaning in the Koran itself and the original hadiths and the life of the Prophet Mohammed and how the religion was (like the others and taking into consideration the cultural landscape of the time and the historical and political contexts) which was tolerance and acceptance and making oneself a better person; but the big things then was giving women and poor people rights and protection. It is not surprising being that the religion was an extension of the other Abrahamic faiths and the Prophet received the Koran during meditation caused by isolation and sensory-deprivation and fasting - taking him to that higher-level of consciousness attributed to the Eastern religions and Shamanism with the use of psychedelics and/or meditation. These all lead people to become better people, treat others well, become humble and accepting, while being genuine; and this is the world I want my children to be a part of and the examples I want them to be raised with.