As I type this blog I am listening via my iPad A Prayer For Peace from Munich by John Williams. It seems almost prophetic as I spoke of Sophie Schott yesterday – her brave acts at the University of Munch that resulted in herded being separated from her body by the Germans. I did say Germans not just Nazis as read an amazing book, the groundbreaking international bestseller which laid to rest the myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. “Hitler’s Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans.” Google Hitler’s Willing Executioner’s, it is possible to read the book for no money on the Internet. Yes, that book and this blog. What a bargain!
But leave us not forget this. Not only Jews were massively destroyed – = so were homosexuals, Gypsies, developed disabled individuals, handicapped individuals as well as any and all political dissidents. and goodness knows who else that could be seen as an OTHER. Israel is a result of the guilt of the Western world over their abandonment of Jews during the Holocaust. However I do not see on the face of the earth a Gypsy Land, a Developmentally Disabled Land a Gay Land, nor a Political Dissidents Land.
Instagram contains reels of the atrocities that continue in Palestine with Israel forces routinely and regularly attacking Palestinians while the world looks on. The woman who bravely provides us with these images and I texted one another. There was a reel of people, men women and children, bravely marching forward. Armed men in uniform with automatic weapons on the alert walked backwards but the people kept surging forward.
Me: Where is this taking place.
She Palestine.
Me: That is so amazing. Palestinians are such a resilient people. They have to be unfortunately!
She: Yes, they are so strong people. May Allah ease their pain.
Me: I am sure Allah does and one thing we know for sure is this – there will be no Israelis occupying Jannah!
She: Behsaq indeed!! Insha Allah Ameen
Me: That is the only encouraging aspect to the horrors that are allowed to continue there.
Now if some of you are too lazy to Google the entire book, you can be lazy and just go to the search engine of this blog and tape Hitler’s Willing Executioners Into the search engine. Two prior blogs will appear. The May 26,2021 is particularly poignant, particularly considering the fact that it was written almost a year ago and absolutely nothing has changed – only gotten worse, if anything. I did recall that I had taken a stand in a prior blog – but I was amazed at the power of it all. My forcefulness, honesty and forthrightness. I am not just a pretty face.
What is forthrightness? A noun, (of a person or their manner or speech) direct and outspoken; straightforward and honest. Goodness knows, that is me. Speaking the Truth to Power is powerful. This from Wikipedia. .
Speaking truth to power is a non-violent political tactic, employed by dissidents against the received wisdom or propaganda of governments they regard as oppressive, authoritarian or an ideocracy. The phrase originated with a pamphlet, Speak Truth to Power: a Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence, published by the American Friends Service Committee in 1955. Speak Truth To Power is also the title of a global Human Rights initiative under the auspices of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. Practitioners who have campaigned for a more just and truthful world have included Apollonius of Tyana, Vaclav Havel,[1] Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lami..
But this is an interesting perspective:” Noam Chomsky is dismissive of “speaking truth to power”. He asserts: “power knows the truth already, and is busy concealing it”. It is the oppressed who need to hear the truth, not the oppressor.”
Then there is a long list of people who spoke the truth to power and look what happened to them. This also from Wikipedia. “Alexander Solzhenitsyn] and Andrei Sakharov] are among those who suffered for speaking out against the USSR. In 1936, Japanese finance minister Takahashi Korekiyo was assassinated after suggesting that Japan could not afford its planned military buildup.[ Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany, and Martin Luther King Jr. in the US, were people who lost their lives for speaking truth to power.[Ex-GCHQ employee Katharine Gun was charged under the UK Official Secrets Act 1989 with leaking a request by the United States for compromising intelligence on United Nations delegates prior to the Iraq invasion of 2003. Together with Daniel Ellsburg, Coleen Rowley and Sibel Edmonds, she set up the Truth-telling Coalition to encourage more of their former colleagues to ‘tell truth to power.” Another person who told the truth to power and paid for it was our Sophie Schott of yesterday’s blog.
It is fascinating to read the May 26, 2021 blog hindsight. Hindsight is an understanding of a situation or event only after it has happened or developed:. On May 21, 2021 I was happily living in Marin but forces were already forming against me because I had become an Other. I was a Muslim, a woman alone, happy with her independence, with no children and no financial worries. Discrimination against me began shortly after and resulted in my move to the UAE in October where I hoped to find acceptance as a Muslim. Well, that did not work out as planned but fear not, I am not going to be running around the UAE handing out pamphlets. I am neither stupid, nor self destructive. I shall simply hide out in the Premier Inn and wait until it is time to go to safety. A place where I am not an OTHER, one of them. A slightly new and revised me but still me. The good news? There is a mosque where I shall reside and the mosque is located in a very safe neighborhood. So amazed to find a mosque there, it existed since the 1930s, its construction due to the efforts of a woman. So I guess that might be the place for me.
But do let us interject a little humor into this blog. There is a recent Instagram reel, an Islamic scholar whom I admire greatly. Nouman Ali Khan instructed that if a person had a problem they should just go to the Qur’an – open a page randomly and a solution would be found. Decided that I would give it a try. I have the Qur’an on one of my iPhones, (it was in a different forum than suggested book) format )but this is what I got.
- When you divorce women, and they have reached their term, do not prevent them from marrying their husbands, providing they agree on fair terms. Thereby is advised whoever among you believes in God and the Last Day. That is better and more decent for you. God knows and you do not know.
All I can say is this. It did not answer my problem at all. I am not a man, a previously divorced woman before I became a Muslim. So totally inapplicable. I might try it again but I doubt it. I usually follow Nouman Ali Khan’s every word – but I guess that no one is perfect. It did not result in a loss of faith in Allah at all and that is the most important thing. And it did make me laugh. Such a bargain.
I made the following observation on my own (without the help of Nouman Ali Khan). The trouble with most people is that they are one-dimensional. Some are super serious, some are super funny. But the serious ones get boring and the funny ones get superficial. Whereas, I am not one dimensional and so therefore interesting and so it my blog. You never know what you are getting next, to be honest, even I do not know from one day to the next. Stay tuned.
I think I shall ask Chris if the May 26, 2021 blog can be republished. I know how lazy some of you guys are. You shall have no excuse. Hahahaha.
The May 26,2021 blog pictures an Alexis flower arrangement, so; Hitler’ viewers could see that there was some beauty in this world – however ephemeral. Two photographs accompany this blog. One of the Flower Mart here in Abu Dhabi – went there on one of my Fish Market days. The other is of flower arrangements composed in May of 2021 but placed indoors for my own appreciation of the ephemeral. I look back at those days in Marin and simply say:
Me: Those people did not deserve me.
Alter Ego: No they did not. But the good news for them is that they probably do not miss you.
Me: You made me laugh! You are right – we are both on the same page.
Alter Ego: It is a win/win.
Me: Indeed.
