Ok So Here's the Earth

So here I am just chilling out in Santa Barbara with no idea of what is going on in the world around me.  Because I'm going to Indo I've started reading up on Islam because I'm a curious person, and I don't want to offend anybody while I'm over there.  Learning about Islam coinciding with my reading of Three Cups of Tea has turned me a little crazy with wanting to know as much as I can about Islam (especially the Middle East).

My newest attempt at education has been watching a film called Sadaa E Zan (voices of women)  It was made in 2002 and is made up of interviews with women from Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan about their lives during the rule of the Taliban as well as post-Taliban experiences.  

I had no idea that women, no, not even women, that human beings could be subjected to what these women went through.  Here I am getting pissy when one of my co-workers assumes I can't carry something when there are women who have been confided to their houses and then severely punished when they left their homes.  I'm not really sure what was more painful, the fact that I was ignorant about all of this, that these women have lived through this, or the fact that many others are equally unaware.  

No education, no freedom, no access to good medical facilities, lost family members, psychological obstacles.  Grant it, the movie was produced right after 2001 and I'm sure (actually I'm not sure, I HOPE) that things have changed since then, but I AM sure that there is much more that needs to be done.  

These women do not need to be Americanized, as far as I know Islam calls for women to be below men (not to the extent the Taliban took it) and if they want to be true to their religion we should help facilitate that, but to do this they need security and safety before we can just rip off their veils.  

On top of that I read today in the news that Marines who opened fire after a car bomb went off in Jalalabad, killed 19 unarmed civilians, are NOT going to be punished in any way shape or form.  I know that it is Memorial Day and that I should be grateful for those who have gone before us to protect us, but to what extent has our quest for our own security injured the security of innocents that aren't "us" ? No one, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, what have you, should live in fear- and since we do live in fear we should learn  how to help each other escape those fears by respecting each other and working together.

Our number one rule for our Indo trip is DO NOT PANIC.  I hope we (and hopefully others) can stick to that.