September 11th - An Event

 

 

Today, the Muslim Student Association will host an event in an attempt to begin an ongoing dialogue on Islam and other inter-faith issues here at Moraine Valley Community College. I am proud to participate and to open the event as their advisor - here are my brief opening remarks:

 

Good afternoon, I would like to welcome you to this event, Islam: A moment of realignment – putting our perspectives into perspective sponsored by the Moraine Valley Community College Muslim Student Association. My name is Michael Morsches, and I am here with you as the sponsor of the MSA, the college’s liaison to the Arab-American community, a Muslim, and most importantly, as a member of this community who is dedicated to the success and welfare of all its students, regardless of ethnicity, race, or faith.

Eleven years ago, a group of terrible men perpetrated an unconscionable act on the USA and humanity. In an instant they changed the world for the worse, in ways far beyond the horrible destruction and loss of life of the day. These criminals corrupted many things eleven years ago, including the Western view of our faith, Islam. This wedge they have driven between us as Americans just might have been their ultimate goal. As a result, we as Muslims have listened as others have defined us and our faith daily for the past 4015 days. In some instances, this has led to positive debate and education, but most of us would agree that when we watch and listen to the media discuss Islam, we see and recognize very little of ourselves. My concern as an educator reaches well past the personal needs of my faith to my responsibility to help create a learning environment free from hate and bias, and most importantly, from the tyranny of bullies that would silence anyone’s voice. When people stop me and ask why we are doing this event on this day with a disapproving tone, it saddens me – this division is the fruit of that terrorism eleven years ago, and I don’t believe those terrorists should own the day a second longer. We seek to assert our positive voice in this community, and to take back that which was stolen from us – the right to define our own faith.

Today we don’t want to engage in a national debate, or to create any kind of debate for that matter. Today we simply want to introduce ourselves to you, and for you to meet us as students, faculty, peers, community members, and as friends. The first step towards this goal is to let you know who we think we are, then to let you judge us for yourselves. Over the next two hours you will meet several young people from our community who will share their diverse experiences and perspectives as Muslims here at MVCC. You will also hear from a prominent member of the local Islamic community who will share what we all believe to be the core tenets of our faith. Finally, you will have a chance to ask us questions and have time to visit with us personally if you wish at the end of the program.

Once again, welcome and thank you for coming and allowing us the opportunity to speak for ourselves about ourselves on this important day. September 11th has been a day that has exploited many of us in very negative ways – perhaps it is now time for all of us to exploit this day, and to begin a dialogue that a group of terrorists hoped we never had…..

Thank you.

9/11

As I am preparing for the impending "event"  this weekend, I am struggling to conceive a name for the coming commotion - remembrance, observation, dedication, anniversary, celebration, admonition, protest, demonstration, denigration, degradation, vilification, attack........
Ten years ago, thousands of people died during a small window of time for absolutely no credible reason at all.  Ten years later, thousands of new people use the senselessness of those deaths to reify their own biases, ill-constructed truths, and ugliness - a horrible epitaph betraying the grossest of all manipulations. They take the twisted malice of a few individuals, soak it in the thoughtless sentiment of an undifferentiated tragedy, patch it together with their emptiness and angst, then spit it back at us as some sort of cockeyed cogent appeal to our empathy and patriotism. And despite our unease at the malignant ripple drifting through the rhetoric betrayed by the slight sneer, the spectre of 3,000 murdered souls raised so maliciously mutes our decency and the authors of this profanity walk away thinking they have created consensus.
It occurs to me that I am perhaps going about this business backwards - maybe I should invite these people over for a fight now. Might as well ostensibly spill blood over surrealistically silent television images a decade old than anything else I guess. So they can come over, and I will fight for my failures as a father, and they can fight for the women they have beaten, the people they cheated, the raise they didn't get, whatever - we can mix blood as Muslims and Christians, playing at a holy war that will relieve none of us from our true pain.  Now is as a good time as ever, for I do not want to wait until I pull in front of them in traffic, upset them on a golf course, bump into them coming out of a restaurant, etc. 
Who "owns" 9/11?  Do I as an American?  Do I not as a Muslim-American?  Do you need to hate to own it?  Is there a mortgage other than being born on this soil?  Can I own 9/11 and not Oklahoma City?  If I own either or both, what do I do with them? Who owns the 9/11 site?  Who owns the right to determine the zoning rights around it?  As a Muslim recently asked, "How many strip clubs, adult book shops, and liquor stores have to be between the site and the first mosque erected?"  When we invoke the tragedy of this terrible event, we do so for what purpose?  Perhaps the next time we hear something started with "9/11", we should look at the instigator and wonder if we would care to listen to him/her about any other subject at all.
I am not advocating that we ignore or forget that terrible day.  I am simply asking what we should do with it now, and if we should consider taking it out of the hands of the villains who grabbed it up seconds after nineteen evil men put those buildings down.  No one died that day in order that the rest us could hate a billion of our brothers and sisters around the word, a few hundred even laying broken and destroyed in the same rubble. Their souls should not be preserved in hatred.  My Muslim heart hurts as much for those victims and their families as any other - more so than the cowardly heart hiding behind a microphone and a war cry. If your heart revisits that day, and pulses for vengeance and retribution against a sea of faceless humans, I will pray for you, I will pray for the of us.
I can remember a time in this country when we held our hearts while we sang our National Anthem then recited our Pledge of Allegiance proudly.  Then, in times of darkness with heavy hearts, we would observe a moment of silence with solemnity and grace.  Sometimes thousands of us standing together, not one wanting to distinguish himself in his vanity of grief.  Silence. Maybe the only thing I can conclude about 9/11 these days is that 9 out of 11 of us probably shouldn't talk at all.  Silence. Silence