Those damn Muslims!!

So, everywhere I look these days there's animosity towards Muslims. A thread is started about two Scottish people throwing bacon into a mosque, and within a few minutes we have posts criticising Muslims. Because who doesn't like blaming the victim, eh?

So as a person who has actually had experiences with Muslims, as opposed to the haters who condemn an entire religion and its billion adhernats based on what they read in the Daily Mail or whatever, I thought I should try and add some balance and set the record straight so to speak.

I did a tour of the Middle East about ten years ago. Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. I remember being lost in Damascus and having no idea how to get back to my camp. A car pulled up and two guys asked me was I lost. I told them that I was, and they told me to hop in the car and they'd sort me out. At the time, the prevailing mood amongst some was that Muslims were all of a certain sort, and I had actually been advised not to even do the tour because of all the Muslims. I'd be bombed, beheaded, whatever. The majority weren't advising this, but they were a small but significant and vocal minority. As is today. So I was somewhat wary about hopping in the car. I did anyway, and they drove me miles out of their way to my camp site, chatting away as we went along. I tried to shove some money their way after, and they not only refused but were genuinely surprised that I'd feel the need to do such a thing. They were Muslim. Nicest guys ever.

Later in the same trip we visited Petra. We were wandering around for hours and then it started lashing rain. We were far from the main tourist trail and made for the entrance but the rain was so bad it made things really difficult. Then this woman came out of nowhere and gesturd for us to come with her. We followed her anyway, and it turned out she was semi-nomadic and lived for part of the year in a cave in the Petra "complex". She brought us to this home, and together with her husband, made us tea and chatted with us for an hour until the rain stopped. We hadn't a clue what they were saying and vice versa, but we made sense of things with hand gestures and the like. When we left they gave us this bread stuff and were shaking hands and hugging all around. This family had next to nothing in terms of money and goods yet they took us in, fed and watered us, and hung out with us. She didn't try to sell us anything or look for anything; she did it because she felt it was the right thing to do. And again, she was a Muslim.

Don't get me wrong, we met some a**hole Muslims on the trip. But none of them were a**holes because they were Muslim; they were a**holes because they were a**holes. But for some strange reason, a**hole Christians are assholes and a**hole Muslims are Muslim. Go figure.

Anyways, I didn't have much interaction with Muslims after the trip until I moved to the UAE two years ago. I remember the night before I left I posted a picture of a pint I was having and mourned the fact that thi was the last alcoholic beverage I'd be having for a while. 48 hours later I was in the irish pub in Abu Dhabi knocking some back. And it's been thus ever since. Muslims shouldn't drink- it should be anathema to them. Yet over here drink is freely available, and many of Muslim friends indulge in it. Never ever have I felt judged for drinking. Ramadan starts this weekend. All Muslims should refrain from eating or drinking even water until sunrise- yet in this holiest of Muslim months, bars and off licences are still open. When it comes to non-Muslims and Ramadan, we've basically been told that we can do what we want, but it would be nice if we didn't eat and drink in their faces.

I know that there's a train of thought in the non-Muslim world that the Koran somehow inculcates extremism. The Koran says this, so all Muslims are that. Oft spouted by Koranic scholars who have never actually read the Koran. Hmmm. I'm a teacher here. I teach Muslim kids. Average age is 11. They're crazy and annoying and nd loony and drive me crazy with their shoite. Some of them pray at the appointed time; most don't. But the thing that has struck me about them is that they're exactly like every other bunch of kids I've ever taught. There's not a fundamentalist bone in their body. Sure, some might turn out to be fundamentalists maybe, but that's not because they're Muslim. Or else all Muslims would be fundamentalist. And they're not. Theyre just normal.

I know people are gonna be like, TL;DR man, and I don't blame them. It is long. And probably of no revelance to anything. But I see too much general Muslim bashing in the Western papers, and too much Muslim bashing from people who have never even met a Muslim. And I don't think it's too much that I write a long boring post about how Muslims are just like everyone else for the most part. That's the way it is.