That is sick. Do you think the Jew/Christian remark at the end of the vid is fair comment?
I always find it so strange that people think in that dimension - I've never considered myself as having any religion and I don't really recognise or acknowledge it in other people. Actually, it weirds me out when people put describe themselves in that way (even hearing it in the vid was strange to me).
But on my travels people I have met have insisted I must have a religion label. Literally "you can't not have a religion". It's even put in your passport in some countries. If you're gonna do that why not include your favourite flavour of ice cream and favourite broadway musical? In the end it's a choice, and if you've never tasted ice cream or been to see a show how can you choose a favourite, and why should you have to?
hey, i say fair game. maybe the next time they meet an arab guy who's just come through US customs, those two (despite their obviously fleeting lucidity) can be like: yeah dude, i know exactly what you mean, i've experienced the same kind of thing at an arab airport. reciprocal trauma may be mutually beneficial.
and wow- howard stern is still going- i'd forgotten about him- all these years and never anything to say...
dubai is fairly nondiscriminatory (or maybe its equally and midly discriminatory to all its minorities including the locals). but on a one-to-one scale i can see there being some misguided anti-jewish or anti-israeli sentiment and to a lesser extent some anti christian / buddhist / hindu / sunni / shiite etc views amongst the locals / arabs. my live-in ex-girlfriend was jewish israeli. she moved to dubai from tel aviv and lived here for a few months and although she didn't go around parading the fact, she got by fine. there are only 3 arab countries that acknowledge israel and the uae isn't one of them, so on a political scale there's certainly truth in the comment.
the religion dimension
i'll take your question a step farther. identity frameworks are personal and why stop at the religion question? the nationality label is as arbitrary and although questioned less, i would argue is even less meaningful than religion (religion has proved impressively and bafflingly enduring). but that's coming from someone who's never known genuine citizenship. so although i now relate to your religious bemusement, it comes down to where we're each individually coming from. in my airport immigration forms, the questions would be more like: which clubs did you come of age musically at? (blue note, THIS! at Bar Rhumba)? Those are far more meaningful identity criteria to me personally.
fair game
having spent prolonged spells in the back rooms of american and dubai airports on countless occasions, given a choice i would choose the us experience any day (and that's coming from a resident of dubai). and as my my wise mother always said two wrongs do not make a right.
i don't say that two wrongs make a right. but i do think that sometimes the only way people can feel empathy towards the "other", the other being someone or some place they are not familiar with or educated about, but about whom their local media is constantly spinning tales, is to experience something identical- whether its the same shame, pride, spirituality, grief, whatever- things that make us unmistakably the same, human, regardless of where we come from and what color passport we hold.
Comments
I always find it so strange that people think in that dimension - I've never considered myself as having any religion and I don't really recognise or acknowledge it in other people. Actually, it weirds me out when people put describe themselves in that way (even hearing it in the vid was strange to me).
But on my travels people I have met have insisted I must have a religion label. Literally "you can't not have a religion". It's even put in your passport in some countries. If you're gonna do that why not include your favourite flavour of ice cream and favourite broadway musical? In the end it's a choice, and if you've never tasted ice cream or been to see a show how can you choose a favourite, and why should you have to?
maybe the next time they meet an arab guy who's just come through US customs, those two (despite their obviously fleeting lucidity) can be like: yeah dude, i know exactly what you mean, i've experienced the same kind of thing at an arab airport. reciprocal trauma may be mutually beneficial.
and wow- howard stern is still going- i'd forgotten about him- all these years and never anything to say...