Morocco, Islam and Acceptance
I’ve lived for the past eleven months in Morocco, a 99% Muslim country. Upon my return to Holland, I visited lots of family, making up for all the time I had been gone. Once, while talking about my experiences, my uncle said something that shocked me.
“Moroccans, they’re Muslim, aren’t they?” He asked. To my affirmative answer, he replied, “They’re scary.”
My uncle has neither been to a Muslin country nor does he know any Muslims. He is ignorant about the culture, the people and the religion. Yet he KNEW that they were scary.
It made me think of the time I told my mom I hated broccoli soup, without ever having tasted it. It looked green and opaque, hardly appealing, but once tasted, was delicious.
The next day I read an article in the New York Times that stated 13% of Americans believed that Barack Obama was Muslim. That this blatant untruth was so widely believed, concerned me, but I was more upset that these Americans were like my uncle, scared of something they absolutely knew nothing about.
In a land where free information is at our finger tips, could we not be bothered to do a bit of research ourselves? Islam is a peaceful religion that preaches acceptance and tolerance, not so different from the dominant religion preached here in western Michigan. Is Barack Obama Muslim? No, but even if he was, where is the problem?
Here I was coming home from a country where internet is hard to find and information is hardly free, only to learn that a complacent portion of the population didn’t care about tasting something different-- they already KNEW that they didn’t like it. Ignorance breeds fear, and I had come home to a country where many people were fearful.
One of my favorite quotes states, “Travel teaches tolerance.” Not everyone will have the opportunity to travel, but everyone has the chance to learn. Ignorance is what we should fear. Not a religion and people that welcomed me whole heartedly in Morocco and helped teach me the meaning of acceptance.
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