An explosion rocks the cosmic balance -- the ripples sending aftershocks of tears, pain and loss of hope around the world. A man, strapped with TNT under his overcoat, waits at the Pearly Gates for his grand entrance, his access to his dozens of virgins and his eternal afterlife next to God.
I can't think of two more revolting scenes.
On Sunday, there stood a gruesome scene in Haifa, Israel, on that short Giborim Bridge with the buildings and trees sprouting from underneath. I can imagine it, the arms and legs of everyday people -- teens with mohawks, a grandmother on her way to lunch or perhaps a tourist on his way downtown -- now hanging like foul ornaments from that foliage below.
I can imagine it, although imperfectly so, because I was there. Just ten months ago, Halisa, the quaint section of Hadar in Haifa, was my home. For three weeks, I rode that bus every day and walked freely on that bridge, always admiring the view as I made my way into the town center -- My apartment was dozens of feet away from that site.
The saliency of it all has ripped my heart from its position. The sanctity of peace and personal memory all but stripped from my conscious. I am lost, all cried out, losing my grip on reminiscences that have not been stained blood red.
"What the hell do you mean when you call a human strapped to a bomb a freedom fighter?" I want to cry out, but the vocalizations evade me. I am exhausted from months of no sleep, sick of being taken over by anxiety all of the time. And I am nearly driven to insanity realizing how powerful one man -- sick, brainwashed and armed -- can truly be. And what about millions of them? It is too much. I look for comfort in a cigarette.
Today's world is an increasingly vulnerable one. Missile technology is being developed in the Middle East that could reach America with a nuclear warhead. A frighteningly large portion of the "street" of our allies, our "friends in the Middle East" -- including Saudi Arabia and Egypt -- hate us. And we furnish both countries with weapons and billions of dollars annually.
In my time there, the government's censorship of the media in Egypt never did expunge the hate-filled political cartoons, those of Jews portrayed as bloody devils with fangs, or Americans as capitalist monsters. Important voices still muse about the Christian imperialists in Mecca, the Jews who control the media and the world with their money and the Christian-Zionist agenda to rid the world of all Muslims. In this light, peace with Israel and the supposed ties with the West all seem a sham when you open up any Arabic language newspaper. If in Egypt, a "moderate" Arab country, that kind of animosity is still government-sponsored, I shudder to think of how bad it gets in the media of those countries that have spurned ties with the West.
I close my eyes and imagine the charred remains of what used to be human beings like you and me. I shut them harder thinking of how even some moderate Arab regimes funnel hate-filled thoughts and ideas through their media, until all that is left is the bare backbone of total blame of all of life's problems -- and thus targeted rage -- toward the West. Even moderate citizens fall to the ease of scapegoating and arbitrary conspiracy theories. Slowly, hungry and illiterate citizens of the Middle East, looking for a better way of life, are channeling their energy and rage towards a common goal: a vision of a violent version of Jihad.
That rage only leads to destruction, to suicide bombs and nuclear weapons, and it is gaining followers daily. Sadly, the anger that fuels such a bright hope of martyrdom in the Middle East is determined to take away the hopes of individuals, peoples and nations everywhere else.
I have no intention of defaming Islam. Besides, terrorists do a far better job of that than anyone else could. My primary concern is that public policy and media in the Arab world often reaffirm many extremists' skewed beliefs and seemingly encourage the flowering of fundamentalism -- at least at some level -- among the young.
Part of me does not want to believe that hatred can run like blood through the veins of so many. Part of me wants to believe that the clash of religions and ideologies will not lead to inevitable massacres, big and small. And part of me wants to curl up, shut my eyes and wait for the healing ripples of time to smooth it all out.
Today, no one is safe from religiously-motivated acts of rage, carefully planned or not. It is a deep, blind animosity, a fire that grows with every new believer, with each burning sermon at the Masjid. It is a reality to which we are slowly and painfully adjusting. Most unfortunately, whether in Haifa, New York or Kalamazoo, there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it, apart from praying that the next attack -- wherever it may be -- not hit too close to home.
Alan Lowinger is a 2000 College graduate from New York, NY.
