My Name is Khan

This is a Bollywood film made in 2010 about an autistic Indian Muslim who moved to America and sets off on a mission to speak to a US President and say “Mr. President, my name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist!”

There a number of themes in this movie, one of which being racism, but another of the fact that well, he’s autistic. He falls for a women, a “normal” women, who soon begins to accept him and a romance occurs. The movie challenges our assumptions of what is “normal” and who is “normal”: the relationship works out, and they get married. Khan does not talk “normally”, and neither does he think “normally”, but his faculties are just as good as anyone and he understands the very basic human emotions we all face: love, anger, joy, regret, etc. He also understands the racism and xenophobia Muslims often face in the West, and sets out on a mission to fix it.

As any Bollywood drama (actually, all Bollywood is drama), there is a dramatic catastrophe that happens in Wilhemina, Georgia. Somehow, this hurricane destroyed almost all of the infrastructure in the little town and lightning strikes the church that everyone is taking shelter in. The church is also flooding several feet high, somehow. Hurricanes can be bad, but let me tell you, the movie exaggerates them quite a bit, especially considering the location. Nevertheless, Khan rushes to the town (he met random people from there once) to help out, and is thanked extensively for his help. The entire event was an emotional story of autistic man that was really more of a man than anyone else.

Now, a SPOILER ALERT. Khan married the girl he fell in love with, and she had a ten year old son already. The son and new father get along beautifully, with both of them learning from each other. The son has a friend whose father is in the military. His father is killed, and the friend blames it on Khan’s son because they are all “terrorists”. Months later, the son meets up with his friend who happens to be hanging out with some older teenagers. The teenagers decide to have some fun, and they team up to bully the son. The friend sits there and watches. The teenagers manage to kill the kid in a heart-wrenching scene, and then Khan’s wife blames it on him because he “is a terrorist” (the wife was Hindu). Khan finds himself in emotional turmoil, but finds solace in helping other people (“normal” people, might I add), instead of resorting to bad deeds. And the saga goes on.

Earlier in the movie, Khan goes to a Presidential rally for U.S. President George W Bush, where exclaims, “My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist!”. He exclaims this a number of times before anyone hears it; the crowd is wild and the protagonist cannot talk “normally”. Eventually, people hear him, the first people being the Secret Service. He is arrested on terrorist suspicion, causing the media to go haywire for the Justice Department’s stupidity. After intense pressure from American citizens, the government lets him go, as he proceeds to live his life as I explained above.

Later, he gets to another rally, this time, years later, with President Obama. Earlier in the movie, he tipped the FBI for a suspected terrorist at some random mosque he attended in California, but the FBI didn’t respond to it. An informer that caught Khan give the tip later stabbed him, and he was rushed to the hospital, where his wife (who abandoned him) returns. Khan comes back to health, and with the media’s attention still on the autistic “terrorist”, President Obama invites him to a rally. Khan comes to the stage to speak the words he has so long wanted to say, but he cannot get himself to say it. Barrack Obama helps him: “I know. Your name is Khan and you are not a terrorist.”

Khan gets back with his wife, and they live happily ever after.

 

“What goes around comes around”, says Mickey Mouse and his Buddies

The Walt Disney Corporation has some sort of fetish over Karma and Yin Yang. Off the top of my head I can name you half a dozen TV shows that have Karma references (Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Suite Life on Deck,  Hannah Montana, Jessie, or the horrible Wizard one…). There are plenty that involve switching souls or reincarnation, with many in the same shows just mentioned. The same goes for Yin Yang, the Daoist concept frequently abused by corporate television warlords. Hell, Disney once had a Canadian show called Yin Yang Yo!, and in Lilo & Stitch they downgraded the concept of Yin Yang to alien pets(there is also Yang). Nickelodeon abused the same concept and diminished core Daoist beliefs to to spiritual fish (scroll to bottom) in Avatar: The Last Airbender.

So what’s the problem with this? Aside from the fact that Disney degrades some of the most widely held religious concepts in the world as ancient mythic folklore (the belief in divine justice, or “karma”, is in many faiths worldwide, including Christianity, in different ways), when’s the last time Jesus was mentioned in a Disney show? Another example of Disney’s orientalist religious fetish: the horrible indoctrinating trash-of-a-movie we call Aladdin that I wrote a disparaging review on has a scene where Jasmine’s dad shouts “Praise Allah!” after the Princess chose a suitor, and there’s a few other times when we hear the phrase “Allah forbid!” Now, the latter phrase isn’t even used by anyone (they took the phrase God forbid and translated it to what, make it funny?), but the first one is only used by people who want to “make fun of Muslims” or accuse “Muslims of being terrorists.” That is according to urban dictionary. There is no equivalent of that phrase in Arabic or in Islam, and I myself have only heard the phrase used by people ridiculing the Muslim faith. Now you can say what you want about your views on religion, but what the hell is it doing in a children’s movie? Do we really need to just pick out religions from a box and ridicule them since they’re from some “inferior” place of the world? We have a real problem of generalizing other cultures as the “other”. And to think they didn’t bother trying to pronounce Allah right – they might as well have used the English equivalent God – but then again that’s not as funny, is it?

I suppose it’s also not politically correct. You can mention and misinterpret Karma or Ying Yang or some indigenous folklore or the other all you want, but when it comes to Christianity it’s a big no-no. Why not bother anyone? They do enough damage when they call karma “mumbo jumbo” in front of hundreds of thousands of  children…including Hindu ones. Because somehow making fun of any culture or faith other than the majority Western ones is OK. Remember the time Disney told kids that white skin color is the original skin color? See #3 in the link.

I’d like to see Disney grow up. Now the big movement  of removing religious references from all children’s television is a load of hypocritical arrogant trash I’ll bash on any day, but going out of the way to insult and misinterpret religions and cultures is far worse. I’m tired of Disney and their television warlord equivalents (like Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network) poking fun at inferior cultures with sharp stereotypes and shoddy research. The public has literally no idea that this happens (I’ve done plenty of research looking for people with my view – and I found nothing), and that’s because Disney stops short of poking fun at Western culture and religions for that very reason. This sort of inferio-fying Hinduism, Islam, and Chinese traditions is absolutely disgusting, and I am astonished that people tolerate it. I grew up on Disney and know people that do, and I fear for their future.

SEE TELEVISION’S MADNESS AND THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE.

I Know why the Terrorists Terrorize (Part 1)

This was originally going to be a poem modeled after I Know why the Caged Bird Sings. But I couldn’t get passed the first line, and I wouldn’t want to kill a good idea to a time when few will see it. So instead I will talk about what I know.

Yesterday I talked about what the “mainstream” really is. On one side we have the extreme right: Westboro. Al Qaeda. Bodu Bala Sena. But we have another, less violent, forgotten, extreme: Jesus Seminar Philosophers, the NOI, the secularists. In the spectrum of religion, the outward and inward ones, we have a massive middle ground that is lost. Some of them take on secular liberal worldviews. Some of them take on nationalist terrorist worldviews. Most of them a mix of the two. A stupid, incoherent mix that doesn’t make sense. This is the view of everyone I know. Honestly, everyone I know has a stupid, incoherent world view so mashed between a dividing line they think exists between reason and faith: “I don’t take it too far!” “I am modern!” To them, I say: on the contrary.

We are told today in the Modern West, reason and faith collide! Religion shall not publicized! Just be good, be moral, be happy! We are bombarded with secularist dogma: religion should be practiced lightly. Stop believing in hell. Ancient texts are no longer relevant. To them, I say: on the contrary.

The other day I was discussing religion to a far-right friend, and I asked him: should America be a Christian Nation? He said no. That would mean other religions would be oppressed. I talked to another liberal friend. He said no. Church and state should not mix. He probably doesn’t even know what that means. I asked another, about the applicability of the Old Testament. Old Jewish guys from back then were crazy, apparently. This is coming from Jesus loving Americans. As if Jesus would respond that way.  To them, all of them, I say: on the contrary.

I am not saying the church and state should be one. I am not saying we should revive Biblical criminal justice. But we must ask ourselves why we refuse to even consider things because we are told not to. We must ask ourselves the relevancy of religion in the public sphere, earnestly, honestly. We must ask ourselves what church and state really are and what they mean, and how they build on each other, and how they compete against one another. We must ask ourselves how ancient texts play a role in the modern world, or how they should play a role, or if they should play a role. To claim the instantaneous answers most of  is to say the very things we all spout from what we are indoctrinated to believe. We are told from day 1 in the west that they have no relevance, that religion should be private, that secularism is the way to go.

I ask you to question this, to go beyond our childish preconceptions and really question what should and should not be done about these issues. You may arrive at the same conclusions – but the journey of thinking must be taken.My questions must be toiled, by all of us, lest we fall into the trap of backwardness in following secularist dogma and refusing progress because we are told that is what is best. Should we not question, or should we take answers prematurely, we hit an extreme view on the spectrum without realizing even why. This is what the terrorists do, and that is why the terrorists terrorize.

TO BE CONTINUED.

What the Mainstream is – and isn’t

The Google Dictionary defines mainstream as “the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are regarded as normal or conventional; the dominant trend in opinion, fashion, or the arts.” In conventional use, this definition of mainstream works, but we can get confused and use the term improperly.

The use of the word “mainstream” implies it to be in the middle. That’s the mental picture we get, anyway, and this middle requires two extreme ends. But that delivers the wrong impression: go out on the street and ask people if they like “extreme views”. Be they Tea Party or hard line Socialist, they’ll likely say no. This connotation of “extreme” is not helping anyone. What is extreme in America is commonplace in Europe. What is commonplace in Europe is liberal trash in Singapore. Extreme is bad, follow the majority! Follow the masses. So the saying goes.

Now let’s pretend we’re all in school…in the hood. Most of your classmates have smoked pot or sniffed crack, at least once or twice before. That’s mainstream for you. Extreme isn’t being a nerd or a suck up…it’s not smoking pot. Not doing something that the mainstream does suddenly makes you extreme – and that’s ok.

Back to reality. When we hear the media’s rambling of the mainstream, we must caution ourselves, especially when its from a region of the world other than our own. When we hear of the notorious “radical” Hugo Chavez, remember that Venezuela elected him. Many times. Peacefully. Fairly. The socialists of Venezuela are mainstream. Radicals are us, intruders who want to provide them with some sort of weird foreign capitalist concept.  When we scream and cry about the world being radical because they are different, we think we are mainstream. And we aren’t, not always. When the UN voted for Palestine to become a nonvoting member of the chamber- effectively a semi-nation (whatever the hell that means) – we were the radicals. Only 8 radical extremist countries voted no to the proposition, and we were one of those countries. And to say we are wrong because we are extreme is, well, wrong.

To call the mainstream as who agrees with us is flawed logic. To say that following the middle is the best idea is ludicrous. Our progression as a species could not have happened without radicals: from the left and the right. To turn people down because they have widely varying opinions from ours is stupid, a word I will use more and more as I write. Our media pampers our flawed logic in this regard. CNN wouldn’t dare interview a communist on live prime time television – only on mini editorials that you’ll never find on the front page. Let alone Fox. This is despite the hundreds of millions of communists out there, who have opinions we must think about. The danger of not doing so is losing sight of values another part of the world may have that we don’t. That leads to bigotry, hatred, and ignorance. We must learn to embrace differences and learn them where they are, lest we confuse our values for the world’s. “Learn, even unto China”, the Islamic Prophet Muhammad once said. There is no reason to not do so.