verte76
Blue Crack Addict
TERRORISTS COME IN ALL STRIPES
A guy wrote me Tuesday with this warning: "All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim".
Not a student of history.
Forget Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols and the 168 people they killed in Oklahoma City. Forget sarin gas was leaked into Tokyo trains that year by a Japanese religious cult. Forget decades of Christian-related violence in Northern Ireland. Think closer to home.
This is Birmingham, one of the most terrorized American cities of the past half-century. Too many people don't care to remember, but they called the city "Bombingham" for a reason. More than fifty bombs were planted between the '40's and 1965. (Yikes. I only listed twenty in my book).
They weren't harmless pranks.
You'll remember terrorists killed four little girls in a church in 1963, but that didn't make them stop. In the spring of 1965 nine bombs were set around Birmingham, including big ones at the homes of Councilwoman Nina Miglionico and Mayor Albert Boutwell.
If that's too long for you, think back less than a decade to Eric Robert Rudolph. That Bible-toting, verse-quoting Christian was a bomber. And a killer.
It's shocking that anyone could live in or around Birmingham and be so insular, fearful and ignorant as to believe all terrorists are Muslim.
But I heard alot of ridiculous, bigoted guff after writing Tuesday that people of good will should stand up for Ismaili religious freedom in Hoover.
One guy said Muslims were like a college football team that didn't follow the rules. "Still wanna play the Muslim team" he asked. "I don't think so"
I'd play 'em. But then I'd schedule Alabama too.
In truth, some of the responses were nasty and some were not. Some emanated from Hoover and some did not. Some arrived anonymously, and some did not. Some of the complainers could spell, and well, some could not.
It could have been discouraging. But I had planned to be at the Hoover Public Library Tuesday morning already. I couldn't think about Hoover hate mail and the Hoover dialogue, for I was right there in Hoover looking at people.
What struck me was not the elaborate library that some have dubbed a "Taj Mahal" or all the children who toddled and rolled in to watch a magician do his magical best.
I thought that this place--the Hoover Library, a couple of miles from the site of the proposed Muslim worship center at the heart of the controversy, was as diverse and cosmopolitan a place as I've seen in the Birmingham area lately.
Black people, white people, Asian, and Middle Eastern people. Old, young, big, small, just plain people, all over. Reading. Writing. Watching the magic.
I don't suppose I should have seen it it as odd, for Hoover's school system is as diverse as any in the region. Why shouldn't the library reflect it?
It happens on purpose, library director Linda Andrews said.
"Everybody here celebrates diversity', she said. "All of that energy creates a spirit that is like a force. And it's contagious".
And it is. With that attitude, Hoover can be great. Without it, Hoover wiill never escape the legacy of Bombingham.
A guy wrote me Tuesday with this warning: "All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim".
Not a student of history.
Forget Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols and the 168 people they killed in Oklahoma City. Forget sarin gas was leaked into Tokyo trains that year by a Japanese religious cult. Forget decades of Christian-related violence in Northern Ireland. Think closer to home.
This is Birmingham, one of the most terrorized American cities of the past half-century. Too many people don't care to remember, but they called the city "Bombingham" for a reason. More than fifty bombs were planted between the '40's and 1965. (Yikes. I only listed twenty in my book).
They weren't harmless pranks.
You'll remember terrorists killed four little girls in a church in 1963, but that didn't make them stop. In the spring of 1965 nine bombs were set around Birmingham, including big ones at the homes of Councilwoman Nina Miglionico and Mayor Albert Boutwell.
If that's too long for you, think back less than a decade to Eric Robert Rudolph. That Bible-toting, verse-quoting Christian was a bomber. And a killer.
It's shocking that anyone could live in or around Birmingham and be so insular, fearful and ignorant as to believe all terrorists are Muslim.
But I heard alot of ridiculous, bigoted guff after writing Tuesday that people of good will should stand up for Ismaili religious freedom in Hoover.
One guy said Muslims were like a college football team that didn't follow the rules. "Still wanna play the Muslim team" he asked. "I don't think so"
I'd play 'em. But then I'd schedule Alabama too.
In truth, some of the responses were nasty and some were not. Some emanated from Hoover and some did not. Some arrived anonymously, and some did not. Some of the complainers could spell, and well, some could not.
It could have been discouraging. But I had planned to be at the Hoover Public Library Tuesday morning already. I couldn't think about Hoover hate mail and the Hoover dialogue, for I was right there in Hoover looking at people.
What struck me was not the elaborate library that some have dubbed a "Taj Mahal" or all the children who toddled and rolled in to watch a magician do his magical best.
I thought that this place--the Hoover Library, a couple of miles from the site of the proposed Muslim worship center at the heart of the controversy, was as diverse and cosmopolitan a place as I've seen in the Birmingham area lately.
Black people, white people, Asian, and Middle Eastern people. Old, young, big, small, just plain people, all over. Reading. Writing. Watching the magic.
I don't suppose I should have seen it it as odd, for Hoover's school system is as diverse as any in the region. Why shouldn't the library reflect it?
It happens on purpose, library director Linda Andrews said.
"Everybody here celebrates diversity', she said. "All of that energy creates a spirit that is like a force. And it's contagious".
And it is. With that attitude, Hoover can be great. Without it, Hoover wiill never escape the legacy of Bombingham.
One of the daughters wears a hajib but the other is more modern. The old guy's wife wears a full-on bourka (as they call them over there). She helps with the register sometimes. I used to go in there a lot and get pizza, and chatted with her. Very nice old lady but very shy; but she had learned decent English. Felt funny talking to someone when you could only see their eyes, and I had to work myself up to it, I confess. On the wall in back of the register was a picture of the Kaaba in Mecca. The place was like a Moslem version of the pizza place in Do The Right Thing, with the Kaaba pic taking the place of the pics of Italian heroes in that movie. 
