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| Shmeng of the Week: Noah and 9/11 |
Posted by
angelofdarkness on Thursday, September 19, 2002 - 10:51 PM PST
I recently read the following article in The New York Times:
Over the past year several friends have remarked to me how much they still feel a pit in their stomachs from 9/11. One even said she felt as if this was the beginning of the end of the world.
And no wonder. Those suicide hijackings were such an evil act that they shattered your faith in human beings and in the wall of civilization that was supposed to constrain the worst in human behavior. There is now a big jagged hole in that wall.
What to do? For guidance, I turned to one of my mentors, Rabbi Tzvi Marx, who teaches in the Netherlands. He offered me a biblical analogy. "To some extent," said Tzvi, "we feel after 9/11 like we have experienced the flood of Noah — as if a flood has inundated our civilization and we are the survivors. What do we do the morning after?"
The story of Noah has a lot to offer. "What was the first thing Noah did when the flood waters receded and he got off the ark?" asked Tzvi. "He planted a vine, made wine and got drunk." Noah's first response to the flood's devastation of humanity, and the challenge he now faced, was to numb himself to the world.
"But what was God's reaction to the flood?" asked Tzvi. "Just the opposite. God's reaction was to offer Noah a more detailed set of rules for mankind to live by — rules which we now call the Noahite laws. His first rule was that life is precious, so man should not murder man." (These Noahite laws were later expanded to include prohibitions against idolatry, adultery, blasphemy and theft.)
It's interesting — you would have thought that after wiping out humanity with a devastating flood, God's first post-flood act wouldn't have been to teach that all life is precious. But it was. Said Tzvi: "It is as though God said, `Now I understand what I'm up against with these humans. I need to set for them some very clear boundaries of behavior, with some very clear values and norms, that they can internalize.' "
And that is where the analogy with today begins. After the deluge of 9/11 we have two choices: We can numb ourselves to the world, and plug our ears, or we can try to repair that jagged hole in the wall of civilization by insisting, more firmly and loudly than ever, on rules and norms — both for ourselves and for others.
"God, after the flood, refused to let Noah and his offspring indulge themselves in escapism," said Tzvi, "but he also refused to give them license to live without moral boundaries, just because humankind up to that point had failed."
The same applies to us. Yes, we must kill the murderers of 9/11, but without becoming murderers and without simply indulging ourselves. We must defend ourselves — without throwing out civil liberties at home, without barring every Muslim student from this country, without forgetting what a huge shadow a powerful America casts over the world and how it can leave people feeling powerless, and without telling the world we're going to do whatever we want because there has been a flood and now all bets are off.
Because imposing norms and rules on ourselves gives us the credibility to demand them from others. It gives us the credibility to demand the rule of law, religious tolerance, consensual government, self-criticism, pluralism, women's rights and respect for the notion that my grievance, however deep, does not entitle me to do anything to anyone anywhere.
It gives us the credibility to say to the Muslim world: Where have you been since 9/11? Where are your voices of reason? You humbly open all your prayers in the name of a God of mercy and compassion. But when members of your faith, acting in the name of Islam, murdered Americans or committed suicide against "infidels," your press extolled them as martyrs and your spiritual leaders were largely silent. Other than a few ritual condemnations, they offered no outcry in their mosques; they drew no new moral red lines in their schools. That's a problem, because if there isn't a struggle within Islam — over norms and values — there is going to be a struggle between Islam and us.
In short, numbing ourselves to the post-9/11 realities will not work. Military operations, while necessary, are not sufficient. Building higher walls may feel comforting, but in today's interconnected world, they're an illusion. Our only hope is that people will be restrained by internal walls — norms and values. Visibly imposing them on ourselves, and loudly demanding them from others, is the only viable survival strategy for our shrinking planet.
Otherwise, start building an ark.
Have we done enough Muslim bashing to satisfy the masses yet? I guess not...
As it is, they have to face the ignorance of the masses on a daily basis, people of almost every religious background looking down on them and their beliefs because of a few very imbalanced people that were incapable of understanding the religion. Muslim leaders may not have said much against this, but the Taliban still has some amount of control in the middle east, and religious leaders don’t necessarily represent the people that follow the religion. I sent the writer this response:
Your article, “Noah and 9/11” really bothered me. I have not met a single Muslim that was happy when those planes hit the world trade center.
I am aware of the fact that there are some Muslim extremists that think that the religion supports violence and attacking people because they have different beliefs, but they do not in any way represent the religion or the people who follow it.
Since 9/11, there is a lot of hate directed at the Muslim community, and many of these people endure ostracism, discrimination, and sometimes vigilante assaults as a result. Some of my best friends were afraid to go out in public because of the horrible things that were being done to anyone that followed their faith.
Maybe you should ask them if they see the hijackers as martyrs. Maybe you should ask them if they enjoy the way people treat them now. Haven’t they been through enough already?
I am interested in everyone’s reactions to “Noah and 9/11” and I would also like to see more people responding to the article.
Here is the url for the response page.
http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/contact.htm
If I find any better ways to contact him, I'll let everyone know.
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| Note: It's always nice to see someone fight back when they see madness running wild in our little world. |
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| Noah and 9/11 | Login/Create an account | 27 Comments |
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Re: Noah and 9/11
by AloneSoul (AloneSoul@hurting.com)
on Sep 19, 2002 - 11:18 PM
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What I am about to say may be alittle off topic from the point of the article, I don't know, it's 2:14 as I type.
To keep this short, blood for blood. Wipe out the terrorist.
I hold no grudge against Muslims or anyone for that matter who holds a different choice in religion. They have been wrongly persecuted by the public because of the actions of a few. I do (carry hatred for those brainwashed terrorists idiots which greatly wronged islam) hold a grudge toward those idiots who cheered and clapped in my home town while listening to the radio during 9/11, while on the job, pumping gas and ringing up items at their mart. They were beaten by a small group of people. I hold no sympathy for them. People like that should be booted out of the country.
For now I choose to cover my ears. I’m saturated with 9/11 and only want to see justice served rather than put deep thought into the article.
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Re: Noah and 9/11
by bettie_x (strangersangel@hotmail.com)
on Sep 23, 2002 - 01:33 AM
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xaos and morte, I find myself a bit more on your sides than not.
I deeply sympathise with the islamic community...I feel horridly for them, for what those people did that put them in the worst light imaginable. Those men that committed the attacks are not only murderers but a SHAME to everything islamic.
I dont' know the answers. If I did, I'd be running the country and deftly getting us out of this mess.
But for everything else:
For all the bad we do, we've done just as much good.
For as much as they (enter any country with a problem with the U.S.)want to be left alone, we're the FIRST people they come running to when disaster strikes.
Some countries hate us cause we meddle, some countries hate us because we fucked up. If they wanted to let us know that they wanted to be left alone, flying fucking jet liners into civilian buildings was a pretty thick headed way to get people to look the other direction.
The thing that bothers me the most was the INTENSITY and the planning involved in this. Bothers me almost as bad as how intently it was focused on "demoralisation" and kill factor. How many CIVILIANS can we take out all at once?
Three planes, over 5K people. Fuck me, I'll NEVER get over that.
I dont' like war, I don't like the idea of it, I dont' like what it implies about humans as a species, and I don't like where it has lead with this new business with Iraq....reeks of being the springboard to WWIII, but anyway...
All I can think of is that if we dont' do SOMETHING (and I'm always open to something other than bullets) it'll continue to happen. It's no coincidence that it happened in the first year of a new president that the nation had no faith in and that "won" the presidency by being elected not by the people but by a fucking JUDGE.
It was a calculated kick in the balls.
I wanna see it over, but I see no end in sight.
I've said what I have to say over and over already and I don't have the guts to do it again.
All I see is an uncertain future, a lot of angry people, and a big fat boiling pot with "end of the world" writting on it sitting smack dab in a desolate desert full of unhappy people.
It's sounds simple, I could be wrong, and I am STILL drunk so most of this won't make sense, but that's okay, because the rest of the world doesn't either.
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- Iraq by Xaoswolf on Sep 23, 2002 - 10:35 AM
Re: Noah and 9/11
by ThatOneWastedChick on Sep 25, 2002 - 01:56 PM
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I could not have said it better myself. ::claps::
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Pearl Harbor
by Comedian (eccentrically_long@yahoo.com)
on Sep 26, 2002 - 09:45 AM
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What shocked me was the striking similarity of these attacks to Pearl Harbor. Not in any kind of "Americans suffered a pinprick attack" sense. But because of the fucking politics.
I'm angry. I'm angry every day. I fucking hate the world. I hate oil. I hate politics. I hate family issues. I hate all the things that made this event happen. And I'm going to tell you why.
Bush Senior lost desert storm. Honestly people. Saddam is still in power. He's still a dictator. He still likes to rape young men. A successful incursion campaigns dethrones the person in power. So we failed. The turth of the matter is that Saddam was on the U.S. paybill for quite a while keeping oil prices high and beating the crap out of all his neighbours and generally being an asshole so we didn't have to. Joy for him. So, now, in a new Century, we find ourselves fighting the war of the last because of Bush Senior pushing his son into a conflict with a man who did not only outlive Bush, but the entire Clinton(pfaw!) administration and will no doubt at the end of this war Bush Junior. And probably Bush 2, if there ever is one.
The important part is the Dutch have turned their eyes to Uzbekistan(spelling? Gah) and that's where the eyes of the world's market geniuses and billionaires have turned, as well. And we all should know by this point in history that the Dutch are anything but stupid.
On the day itself, I was getting ready to go to English class. I heard in a simulated terrorist fighter game that there was a war going down. I turned on the TV and watched the towers collapse. I heard first hand the officials saying that there had been a BOMBING on the Pentagon. I watched the towers collapsed and listened to a reporter ask about the fireproofing safety measures that the contruction workers had taken when building the place and him speculating that if they were in place that the building probably would not collapse. The clarity of thought then was shocking.
The shots shown of the Pentagon during the crash and during what supposedly happened show no boeing 747 sticking out of the side of the building; the crash landing of the plane was estimated to have bounced along the ground at one point before colliding with the building. While a 747 penetrating a single wing of the pentagon would have been a massive crash site and there would have been survivors. It was a bombing. In a wing that had been emptied earlier that month for renovation. Ho ho. The black box would have been recovered. There was no plane that crashed into the pentagon. Ask for passenger manifestos, flight numbers and to see the wreckage. Because there would have been a lot.
The true people to blame for the incidents at the twin towers would have to been the architects. Most people forget the incident in the late 1920's where a bomber collided with the empire state building. How could you, in decent reason, build a deliberately tall building without making adequate fireproofing, structural supports and proper weight distribution to survivor an airplane collision when you had just seen a plane collide with another? Easily, if you were skimming the production costs. Because of the embezzelment inherent to that project, we now have a billion dollar incident and these men are being paid again to rebuild more shoddy buildings.
Possibly the most amusing part is the defensive stance of the government over the issue. THey have admitted they knew of the attacks before they came. So well, in fact, that on a Weekday during work hours there were no VIPS in the building at the time. The death list is mostly service workers, menial employees and a few lawyers. If I remember correctly the CIA offices within the building had been closed at those hours. All federal employees had been removed. They knew it was coming. Just as they knew Pearl harbor was coming and had evacuated the aircraft carriers to more convienient locations just the day before.
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Re: Noah and 9/11
by bettie_x (strangersangel@hotmail.com)
on Sep 28, 2002 - 10:13 AM
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Here's what I'd do if I was elected by default into a presidential position.
I"d have a biiiig party. Our worst enemies, our best "friends" and everyone would get a paper and a pencil. There would be margaritas and shirley temples and juice. There would be food that met every ethnic, social, and religious standards. Comfortable chairs. They would eat and drink and then take their pencils and papers and write a 500 word essay (not that long...they'd have to narrow it down big time) on WHY they're pissed/angry/upset/feel mistreated at who/what/why/where.
They'd have to take turns reading them at the podium like they're in school Everyone would have to keep their mouths shut and applaud at the end of every essay.
There'd be more food and drinkables and I'd tell everyone to tear up their papers.
Then with a second piece of paper they'd wright down their likes and dislikes that concern THEM...not their likes and dislikes of other people/countries. Then read them. I'm sure they'd be suprised to show how much others share same interests. Then they'd turn to the person on the right and left and HUUUUUGGGGG no matter how much they hated it.
I'd tell them that I would like for everyone to go home, put away their boomsticks and just get along. No interferrance from anyone. No more bickering.
Then we'd dance to bad 80's synthpop and german electronic and russian rock and middleastern crooning and african tribal and south american jive, get to know each other.
I'd give them all my cell phone number so we can "kick it".
We'd do it every year.
I know this won't work, but it's a better shot than anything i"ve seen anyone else try. I
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