Seek answers instead of wallowing in ignorance

A thought: Seek answers instead of wallowing in ignorance

How is it that I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time?

It happened last week. My wife and I went to lunch at a local café where you get your own drinks. My wife was filling her iced-tea glass, and I was sitting at a table waiting for her.

A man I took to be my age -- white hair can cover more than a single decade -- headed for the table across from us. As he approached, he was saying: "Hemmyjemmygimmyhemmyjemmygimmy."

It took a second to realize he was mimicking the lighthearted chatter among several women sitting at a nearby table. The women were, as best I could tell, Muslims. They were wearing headgear that I associate with Muslim women. And they were speaking what I would guess was Arabic, but maybe some other Middle Eastern language.

"What is this? Muslim central?" The man asked as his wife joined him with her glass of tea. She said nothing.

Then the man looked at me as if I might have a sympathetic ear. "Sure hope they don't have a bomb."

There you are. All Muslims -- or anyone who looks or talks like a Muslim -- is a terrorist.

That notion, sad to say, is all too prevalent in these parts. There are many reasons, but I think the main reason so many folks hereabout lump everyone who looks like a Muslim into the same ugly category is simple fear -- fear of the unknown.

I'll admit I am no expert on race relations. But I do know that people who are different are no threat simply because they are different.

I know so little about Islam or its followers. I have been to two events at the Islamic Center here in Cape Girardeau. They both involved Middle Eastern food -- delicious food -- prepared by the women of that faith community. The meals also were an opportunity to tour the Islamic Center and to ask questions about Islam. Everyone I met was friendly and more than willing to answer my questions. What am I eating? Why do you remove your shoes to pray?

One thing I realized when I started writing this column is that I don't even know what to call the headgear Muslim women wear. Thank goodness for the Internet. I quickly learned that there are seven basic types of headwear. I think, based on what I saw at the café last week, that the women were wearing either a hijab, an al-amira or a shayla. Other options, which I don't think I saw, are a niqab, burqa, khimar or chador.

Because there is so much misunderstanding of Muslims, I from time to time hear comments about men wearing turbans and referred to as Muslims. In fact, turbans are worn by Sihks, which is an entirely different belief system from Islam.

The man sitting across from me was invested in the belief that the women chatting and laughing at the nearby table might be terrorists. This notion reinforced the idea that all too many of us fear what we don't know or understand. And we let this fear take control of our judgment instead of seeking answers.

A couple of years ago there were a couple of popular books that made the rounds in Cape Girardeau. These books purported to prove to fearful and unknowing Christians that a peril existed in the form of Islam, a terrible future that included a worldwide effort by Muslims to eradicate Christianity. Some men I know and respect were caught up in the message that Muslims -- all Muslims -- have this goal. The fact that all religious groups can -- and do, in too many instances -- breed insidious forms of terror wasn't part of the context of these books. Lunchtime conversations included bold assertions that we must fear the spread of Islam.

For these readers, the notion of Christian charity extends only to other Christians. How sad.

I am getting to the age where I worry about the effects of growing old. I have been lucky health-wise, but I know the human body wears out eventually. There may come a day when, with no notice at all, I am stricken by a heart attack or worse. I hope an ambulance quickly ferries me to a hospital emergency room where a heart or brain specialist -- a surgeon of enormous medical ability -- will use his knowledge to my best advantage. And if I survive, I will give thanks to Almighty God for the scientific skills granted to this surgeon. I'll bet my family will do the same.

And I won't be surprised to get a visit from the surgeon as I recover, and I might very well see with my own eyes that he is not from around these parts. I might see that he very well could be the husband of one of the women at the café, the women who caused my fellow diner to make such ignorant noises.

I'll wonder, then, if the man who thinks any woman wearing a hijab is probably carrying a bomb would be as grateful while lying in a recovery-room bed.

There are no atheists in foxholes, it is said. I wonder if there are any Muslim-haters in a cardiac surgical suite.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.