Ugh, DU. The anti-Muslim sentiment here is getting to me.

[nolabear]

5. It seems to me to be a virtual parallel to what's going on in the Middle East.

All people are capable of this, of getting terribly upset when the things that we believe in are threatened. It's not just "belief", it's a sense of our very selves being threatened, the things we organize our understanding of reality around. The people who are rioting are not rioting because they are Muslims; that's only the precipitant. These are people in an exceedingly unstable world trying desperately to find something to stabilize themselves and so they hold tight to it and project an enemy they can rally in opposition to. It's exactly the same thing that made Obama make the "god and guns" comment that freaked out our own destabilized factions. He was right aout that need to cling, but no one wants to recognize that. Far too scary.

DU is in a period of instability. We feel threatened by the upcoming election. We're shown these constant images of small groups of people with rocks and fire and being told it's just a step further to nukes and germ warfare. It's not. We're freaked out about the religious fundamentalists in our own country who really are trying to limit our freedom and for various reasons don't take the interesting, remarkable and good things about religion into account (I say this as an athiest). Even if our cognitive brains know better, our limbic brains are being told we need to blame someone and assure one another that they are lesser.

It's a problem, for sure. It can divide and destroy us. It can cause all kinds of peripheral damage that, because we're not in visual contact, we aren't aware of or have the luxury of ignoring. Honestly, in my opinion, when we freak out and start slamming others' belief systems (not what they DO to us; that's another thing entirely), the terrorists win.