2 posts tagged “middle east”
What I wanted to contribute to the recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Over at It's Oz.
(Click it, you might learn something)
Oy, I hate getting backed up in my blogging. Heh, sounds kinda hot. Anywho.
Most recently I finished "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini. It was pretty good and as I suspected, not as good as "The Kite Runner". But with this being my second book that has to do with the Middle East (specifically Afghanistan), I'm all tuned and ears to the ground with all events about the area. I'm honestly concerned and want to do something.
With my fat 40% discount over at Barnes and Noble, I picked a few more books about the Middle East. "The Middle East for Dummies" and "Three Cups of Tea", along with "Lucky from Alice Sebold.
I never ever thought I'd be this interested in events over there. All of my life in fact was spent avoiding the subject because I just couldn't understand, there was so much I had no idea where to begin. Reading novels and essays along with the Dummies book is already helping. While enjoying a great book I get to learn so much as well.
We all keep hearing the words 'jihad' and 'mujahideen', and I didn't know what they meant, I associated them with "oh those must be bad people, bad words" when I couldn't be any more wrong. A jihad is pretty much a holy warrior, someone in a fight, conflict, struggle for the cause of God, or Allah. And mujahideen is a plural form of the word. I feel so horrible for associating these incorrectly, hell I thought they were two completely different words.
I know I'm not the only one to think this. These words are so easily tossed around in stories that also tangle in words like 'terrorists' and 'suicide bombers' and 'bin Laden'. These jihadists and such are not all bad people. Don't confuse jihad with Taliban. I'm sure I'll make a future blog post helping to explain it to you too.
Even with as little as I have read, I already feel better informed; I know the geography a little better, which country is which, and even a few of their capitals. Even if I can't directly help out with the conflicts in the Middle East, at least my self education can help influence the minds of thinkers out here. You guys, other readers. And that can be at least one mind that use to think negatively, or wrongly that I can help fix, and perhaps eventually it will ripple out.
I mean come on, me of all people, getting involved and informed with the situation in the Middle East. If I can get interested then I know I can catch the attention of at least a few other people.
