In my last blog post, I discussed ISIS, the Islamic Extremist group, as an example of a culture that has a negative impact on large groups of people, but a positive one on those who are seeking a group to be a part of.  This week in class, we have been talking about Persepolis and the struggle between Fundamentalists and the “modern” citizens of Iran in the 1980’s. Marjane Satrapi personalizes the violent struggle in Iran by telling the story of the revolution followed by the oppression of the Irani people by Islamic fundamentalists that took over after the government through the eyes of a little girl, Marji. The oppression of women is particularly focused on, as Marji is having to follow the rules set by the fundamentalists for women. The current struggle between ISIS and Syria and the conflict in Persepolis are quite similar in nature. Both are instances of relatively small but powerful groups trying to impose their beliefs on the general public and control the public and private lives of thousands of people.

Just today, an article was published in The New York Times announcing the execution of a woman’s rights activist, Sameera Salih Ali al-Nuaimy, by ISIS. She was tortured and put to death as have been countless other outspoken women as well as women and girls of religious minorities. (Cumming-Bruce, 2014) Though I am obviously biased as a western female, it seems rather strange to me that a group of people would turn against literally half of their own kind and decide that they are sinful and should hide themselves from the other half. It seems they have forgotten that the person who gave birth to every single member of the ISIS was a woman. The whole idea of sexism frankly doesn’t make much sense to me. As it appears it is human nature to discriminate against a minority, I suppose I understand the discrimination part, but women are not the minority. If you are oppressing half of your own kind, you are doing nothing but oppressing humanity as a whole.

When issues such as feminism are made personal through stories and narratives, insight is given toward what its like to be in a position where you are being discriminated against. Satrapi does an incredibly good job of this with Persepolis. The article discussed above achieves this too, as it explains the fate of an individual instead of focusing on middle eastern women as a whole. It is far more effective to tell personal stories to make a point or to promote a cause than to give generalizations or statistics. When people are forced to realize that those who these things happen to are actually individuals and not numbers, it creates a much bigger impact and generates responses that might otherwise not have happened.

Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/26/world/middleeast/womens-rights-activist-executed-by-islamic-state-in-iraq.html?action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article

Thursday, September 18th, 2014

Sophie Campbell

I grew up in a community of middle to upper class liberal white people, like myself. There was some diversity of religion and some of race, but for the most part, everyone was from the same cultural background as me. Part of this culture is striving to be understanding and worldly. I grew up in a metropolis in the southern United States where racism, sexism and homophobia are alive and well. The community of people around me did not believe these things, and I was always taught that these discriminatory, “ignorant” people were bad, and basically not to be associated with. But is this not in itself, discrimination?

We are conditioned by our families, our communities, our societies and our countries to think certain ways. We are pushed to think as a unit. We are handed information by these people who “know” and are expected to swallow it as fact. But what happens when you question these people who “know”?  Is it even possible to know what is right and what is wrong if no one told you as a small child to share your Legos and not to pull the cat’s tail? These values are part of your culture, and your culture is part of your identity.

In the essay “The Role of Interpretive Communities in Remembering and Learning”, Farhat Shahzad writes extensively about how parents, teachers, peers and other influences in an individual’s life formulate their memories and opinions about social issues. What happens, however, when one does not have a network of people to associate with home? Where do these people who don’t have a cultural identity fall? What happens when your “interpretive community”, the “active agents, technologies of memory, and collectivity of significant others” (Shahzad, 302), is ever changing, as you are ever shifting cultures?

Culture can be a beautiful, constructive and supportive thing, but it can also be biased, and instill a set of values in a large group of people that have negative impacts on other large groups of people. A rather extreme example of this is Islamic Extremist groups. I found an interview from NPR, discussing ISIS, an Islamic Extremist group in Syria that many foreigners are joining, including Americans. When asked why people would want to leave their countries and join this violent group, Jessica Stern, one of the interviewees replies, “They may have had an identity crisis. They feel more connected with a group abroad than with their neighbors.” Also discussed in this article is the fact that many people from different countries who join these extremist groups don’t necessarily have any interest in the religion that drives them. Many of the group members who do associate with the Islamic religion “haven’t had much exposure to the traditional or classical teachings.” According to the article, the members of these groups are generally people who have done something bad, and want to prove somehow that they can do something good. In this case, though killing people for religion is not seen as morally correct by most of the world, and certainly not from the western viewpoint, it is by the ISIS community. It seems as though the people who join these communities, though they are based around a core set of values on how to better one’s self and the world, join them to be a part of something. They give up their own personal ideals and beliefs in exchange for membership and inclusion in something greater than themselves.

It is human nature to desire inclusion and importance among other humans. Those who don’t have a network of support are often left feeling anomic. But it is also human nature to rebel from your community and push against the information that has been fed to you. There is a balance to be achieved between being so much involved in a group that you hardly have your own identity, and being a free floater. The participants in the NPR article referred to above might argue that growing without roots can lead an individual to cling to a group and allow their identity to be taken over. As young humans, our moral compasses need direction form outside sources and authorities, and if these needs aren’t fulfilled we are left vulnerable, easily swayed, and craving answers.

I am lucky in that I was raised in a culture that, for the most part, allows me to have my own views. However, if I decided that, for example, I thought homosexuals shouldn’t have the right to vote, my “interpretive community” might begin to reject me little by little. Every society has moral rules and ideals, some of which are more relaxed than others. I personally try and see things from the perspectives of others and understand where their views come from, but at some point, we all draw a line and won’t accept what other believe if they are too unrelated to our own beliefs, as in the example of ISIS. To some degree, we are all discriminatory.

NPR Interview: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/foreign-fighters-join-islamic-state/

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