TL;DR

The first amendment to the constitution has taken a beating of late. Of course, it’s quite used to a good thumping.

Laura Schlessinger (who is not a medical doctor, and does not have a doctorate in psychology) claimed her “First Amendment rights were violated” after she was widely criticized for a racist tirade that included her chanting a racial slur 11 times. Sarah Palin hopped to her defense, which should make everyone giggle.

The bigots opposed to the Cordoba House Community Center (and mosques all over the country it seems) have been screaming and carrying on for a while, couching their hate in “freedom of expression”.

Glenn Beck and his tea-bagging pals are going to have a little Bund rally on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech this weekend. They’ve deflected criticism of the choice of location and timing with…yes, the first amendment.

Of course, none of these people’s actual first amendment rights have been threatened. Beck and Schlessinger are multi-millionaires with extensive media empires. The protesters have been allowed to gather and chant their vile nonsense, with police protection in many cases so that counter demonstrations don’t clash.

The first amendment is not a magic cloak that protects you from criticism. If you spout racist garbage, as Schlessinger did, people can call you out on it. If you spew nonsensical fear-mongering while selling worthless gold dubloons as a “safe investment investment against the coming apocalypse” like Beck does, you’re going to be widely mocked. If you carry bigoted, hateful signs and accost people for “looking muslim” you’re going to be held to account.

Should you be jailed or harassed by the government? Of course not. Should you be safe from critique? Of course not.

If someone in the government really was trying to silence any of these people I’d be the first to defend their right to speak. Of course, no one is doing that, and claiming that your rights are being violated because people think your opinions are laughable, or organize to protest against you, only makes your opinions ring that much more hollow.

My favorite free speech story concerns a politician who hated the ACLU. He wanted to get a license plate that read “ACLUSUX” and was denied.

The ACLU took up his case.

The first amendment is a beautiful punching bag, isn’t it?

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I like wikipedia.

It’s made doing casual research much, much quicker. I’d never trust it completely of course, but if I’m looking for, say, the name of the Leper King of Jerusalem or the latin name of the toxic “Destroying Angel” mushroom it’s a nice place to start. The librarian in me demands more sources, but for ready reference, quick answers, it’s not a bad start.

Of course, it’s also made a number of people believe that they are experts on very complex subjects with just a few keystrokes.

Subjects like Islam.

The Al-Hakim Mosque, pre-restoration, 1860

I have an MA in history. I don’t mean to drop that on you with all the ivy tower snottiness it might imply (ok, just a little) but damn it, I worked very hard for my education, both in and out of the classroom. I had amazing teachers, studied Medieval Islam, specifically the Fatimids of Egypt both with scholars and through guided readings. My Arabic is abysmal, but that’s one thing I’m hoping to remedy in the coming year. I have a library of books on the evolution of Islam, as a religion, as a political force and as a social mechanism over the past 1400 odd years. I’ve been to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait and was once in the same room with Edward Said and Bernard Lewis (not at the same time, that would likely have caused the earth to crack open and swallow us all). I’ve visited mosques in the Arab world and the UK and here in the states. I’ve eaten at Iftars and sneaked some wine during Ramadan with a fasting friend. I’ve talked with Muslims who came to the US seeking asylum from the Taliban and men who trained with the Taliban to repel the Soviets in the 80′s. A very hard-core Imam in Kuwait once got in my face and started yelling about the United States vile foreign policy and was stunned when I told him that not all Americans agreed with our policies and were working for peace.

All that said, I’m not an expert on Islam. Not by a long-shot. My mentor, Dr. Gregory Kozlowski, once said that “No one is a scholar until they’re at least 40.” I thought he was joking, but the older I get, the more I agree with him.

But now, everyone is a scholar on Islam.

The bigots-

(Pardon me, I have a digression: Bigot is a word I like. Calling someone a racist is almost a cliche now. Racism is about power, and many of he people I’m talking about have very little power. What they do have is intolerance, animosity, and hatred. They aren’t simply scared or stupid, they’re hateful. Bigots, lets use that word more often. It’s a good Germanic word. Like all the really fun cusses.)

The bigots have decided that their narrow reading of articles on “Newsbusters” or the panicky hate-orb that is “World Net Daily” has made them true scholars of the history of Islam, it’s adherents, and current practices.

This is akin to saying you are a lumberjack expert because you have wooden furniture.

Since 9/11 the “experts” on Islam have come crawling out of the woodwork. I remember, just weeks after the attacks, watching a show about “Why they hate us” with my mother. The scholarship was about on par with an eighth grade book report on “1001 Arabian Nights”. By a kid who did not read the book. And had never learned to read. And was blind. And mute. And dead.

What is she hiding in those skates!

My mother peppered me with questions (as did most of my family who knew of my focus) and I did my best to explain. From the very start it was a losing battle. For example the cousin who said we should “Bomb their countries back into the stone age.” Never explaining who “they” were, just “them”. Or my aunt who thought we should round up and deport all the Muslims. Or the other cousin (I’m Irish, we’re made of cousins) who said she was “scared” of a woman she worked with who wore a hijab. “What is she hiding?” she asked, in a panic. “Her hair?” I replied

There’s a lot of reasons I stopped associating with my extended family, that kind of idiocy is just one example

Now there are people using half-facts, assumptions, and general garbage to justify opposing mosques around the country.

Hearing someone who can’t even count to five in Arabic rattle off fringe talking points about the dangers of “Sharia Law” and “The Global Muslim Brotherhood” gives me a migraine. As astronomer Phil Plait puts it “The Stupid, it burns!”

Do I have a polly-anna view of Islam? Of course not. No religion with a billion followers can be seen as a monolith of good or evil. There are perversion and atrocities committed by adherents to every faith. There are terrible Christians, wonderful Zoroastrians, Buddhists I would not trust alone with my cat and Atheists who make wonderful cookies. Judging someone by dint of their faith, or lack thereof, is a mug’s game.

Me? I love the writings of Ibn Khaldun. I never saw stars like I did in the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia. I never felt as welcomed as I did in the UAE by the scholarly conference that hosted me. I was moved by visiting a mosque where over 3000 people prayed in shifts. The Fatimids love of learning and creation of much of the Cairo that exists to this day amazed me. Reading the Muqaddimah made me want to study history. Writing in Arabic was the first time in my life I wrote long-hand without getting a cramp. Huzzah for “backwards” writing. I don’t view Islam as an exotic entity, it’s too big, too global. My focus was just on one nation, in one part of the world. The largest Muslim population isn’t even an Arab nation. It’s Indonesia, about which I know far too little.

And that’s just it. I confess my ignorance, my lack of knowledge, I don’t try to make up for it with shoddy scholarship gleaned from disreputable sources. That’s the difference between a scholar and someone playing dress-up.

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When I was in junior high I spent nearly an entire summer in the hospital. I had an upper respiratory infection that I could not shake. At one point I was even in something like a medicated coma. Such fun, childhood asthma! Anyway, my mom, who was going slowly mad watching her 11 year old son slowly die just a few years after burying her husband, was trying her damnedest to keep my spirits up.

Up to that point, the only comics I’d read were Cerebus and a handful of Classic X-Men my older cousin had left at our house. But my mom made the connection between me and comics. She went to the dingy place near our house, a shop called “Crossroads” which was run by a gent who freely admitted the show was something to do between roofing gigs.

This was not your lovingly stocked, carefully curated comic book shop of the modern era. This was a place where comic junkie got their fix, a shooting gallery for the 4-color set. Into this place strode Maureen Farrelly.

Over the course of the summer my mom went, every week, and dropped around 20 bucks on comics. Today that buys you maybe four or five main titles. Back then, comics were usually about $1.25-$1.50. So by early August, when I got sprung from the sick ward, I had a hell of a lot of reading material.

On the car ride home from the hospital my Mom had me search through the books for one in particular. Amidst a huge pile of X-Men, Avengers and Batman books there was one specific book she said “was really neat.” Yes, my mom said “neat” and so do I , with gusto.

I pulled out “The Infinity Gauntlet” #4

See the cover? My mom loved that cover.

For years afterward, my mom would joke about “The guy, the crazy one, on that cover. Scary guy.”

That guy? Thanos, the Mad Titan. I had no idea who he was, or what the Infinity Gauntlet was either. I had to read the whole series, plus a bunch of other books, to crack the nerd code on that one. My mother wanted to know “who the scary guy was”.

She used to do a funny voice too. Kind of a hoarse whisper “Come and Get Me.” She would croak over the phone. “Come and Get Me” followed by gales laughter. She loved Scary Guy.

My dear friend Jenn told me something very wise when my Mom passed away. She said how her husband, who had lost both his parents, would see something or experience something and remark how he missed them.

Not some grand statement or show of grief, just acknowledging the loss, wishing they were here to share a moment.

Apparently the fine people at Marvel have somehow worked The Infinity Gauntlet into the “Thor” movie. Which, quite probably, means it will be part of “The Avengers” movie and the whole Marvel movie universe thingee.

At the San Diego Comic Con they wheeled out, for just five minutes of nerd-love, the prop itself.

My mom’s been gone nearly five years now. I miss her when I think about marriage or having kids. I miss her when the holidays come around. I miss her when times are rough and I know she would have given me a swift boot in the ass for being a “mope”.

Today, today I missed hearing “Come and Get Me” in a hoarse voice followed by long and nerdy laughter.

But I smiled remembering her all the same.

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