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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Sami Hussain
Published Letters: 13 Editor's Choice: 4
Dear Ms. Lamott,
Reading your article, I shared your walnut-cracking anger and indignation at the carpet guy�s perfunctory deceitfulness. While I admire your magnanimity in being able to take the high road of love and forgiveness, it seems he gained no personal enlightenment from this experience. In fact, he grew even more contemptible when he accused you of wronging him! It�s all well and good to forgive someone on a personal level, but one�s responsibility to the community demands justice. His wily business practices should be publicized so that others like you are not unjustly subject to the same deceit. The best way to treat hard-hearted people is with tough love. Instead of giving him flowers, you should have dropped off a lawsuit.
Sami Hussain
As a Muslim, I share much of Fisk's anger at the way the Western powers (most recently the U.S.) have wronged the Islamic world, first through the Crusades, then through imperialism/colonialism, the carving up of the lands after WWI and WWII, and the continual military and economic support for corrupt puppet governments. The blatant injustice against the Palestinians is an especially sharp slap that stings everywhere and poisons good will.
The hypocrisy of Western powers is astonishing. They believe in all the wonderful ideals of democracy, liberal humanism, and material progess for themselves, but not for others. The "third world" (not just Muslim lands, but Africa, Latin America, much of Asia) is a commodity for them, to be used for oil or cheap labor or geopolitical strategy. They don't really give a damn about the welfare of non-Western people, no matter how much they invoke their moral superiority or their God. (By "they" I mean mean those in power. The average Western citizen, especially American, is too self-involved or ignorant to care about what his/her government is doing abroad and whether the noble ideals of "liberty and justice for all" are actually practiced beyond the national borders.)
One of the other letter writers mentioned that Fisk is too one-sided in blaming the West for all the woes of the Middle East, that he ignores internal pathologies of Middle Eastern societies. That is very true. However, I would add that Middle Eastern societies were barely given a chance for their own Enlightenment like Europe had after its period of intellectual and civic stagnation. The possibility of a Middle Eastern Enlightenment was thwarted when Europe and then America began their inhumane and cruel meddling. Muslims reacted to the invasions by withdrawing into an inflexible and deeply conservative attitude towards their traditions and sense of identity.
Now, for many Middle Easterners, any Western idea or practice is seen as anathema, even if it is a good idea on its own (democracy, human rights, women's empowerment, secular education, meritocracy rather than nepotism, etc.). The challenge for Middle Easterners and Muslims is to be able to separate the message from the messenger if they want to advance as a society and free themselves from the shackles of Western power.
I'm deeply disturbed by the notion of food as fashion. Millions of people around the world go without basic nutrition while we have "foodies" in this country who treat a fundamental human survival need as entertainment, as a fad? What happened to the belief of food as being something sacred, as being a sacrifice that the earth makes for our sustenance? Are we Salon readers so decadent in our upper middle class hyper-intellectual mindset that we forget the humbling truth of this?
Salon, please have some integrity with regard to your progressive philosophy. Give us articles than challenge us, question our assumptions, and enrich our understanding. We don't need more inane solipsistic confessionals.
For an integrated and holistic approach to food and eating, check out Deborah Kesten's excellent article "The Enlightened Diet" from Spirituality & Health magazine:
http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/NMagazine/articles.php?id=531
(free registration required)
an excerpt:
"Not only do virtually all religions and cultural traditions encourage cooking with love, they also seem to integrate intuitively and instinctively what modern researchers are beginning to conjecture: that food empowers us to heal multidimensionally. In other words, we may use our incredible human consciousness and food in four ways: to prevent or reverse physical ailments (biological nutrition); experience the food-mood connection (psychological nutrition); reunite with the spiritual meaning of food (spiritual nutrition); and return to our "social nutrition" heritage (social nutrition). Recognizing all four facets of food allows us to pay attention to the connections between food and body, food and mind, food and soul, and food and social well-being. When we do, we gain a new focus for optimal dietary self-care, which I describe as integrative nutrition."
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