Weary of Blogging

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Being weary of life and blogging, I wrote no essay this week.

I’m weary of how I had forgotten that a Muslim grown adult could be so captivated by a children’s television show where kids are allowed to be curious, and investigate things, such as why do British drive on the left and where does a firefly get it’s glow?

Captivated because in her submissive Muslim family, village and clan they weren’t allowed to ask questions. How in the world had I forgotten? And do western Muslims know about the emphasis, overseas, on submission?

This weekend, glancing through an old May issue of Maclean’s magazine (With the Toronto Mayor on the cover) just before I threw it away… I discovered that very name of the African group in the news for kidnapping hundreds of schoolgirls, Boko Haram, translates to mean, “Western education is a sin.” Wow. These evil men want more than just “no questioning:” they want no learning at all. Why do none of the daily newspapers report what their name means? Do my western Muslim neighbors know the translation? And if I reported such simple facts to them, of sin and submission, would my neighbors refuse to talk with me, claiming the facts are “insulting to Islam?”

So yes, I’m weary. If people easily forget, don't care to know, and refuse to talk, then what’s the point…?

…Now I am really looking forward to a convention in early August, for fans of prose, When Words Collide. It’s already sold out. After all the excitement I may turn away from writing essays to instead do fiction and poetry, like everybody else. So if you can suggest any essay topics for me to cover, or any past essays you liked, now is the time to let me know, as I may be dropping essays soon.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

July 2014

Footnotes:
~The TV show was in the book Nomad by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The book is not too intellectual, being told in autobiographical story form. Here is a link to a seven minute Youtube where she summarizes some of what she believes.

~Yes, you can be a Muslim and still believe in equal rights. Besides (former Muslim) Ali's book The Caged Virgin I easily found a link to a book by a Muslim who writes columns in the Calgary Sun.

You may be wondering: Are those two authors scientists who survey all the various subcategories of Islam? I doubt they are any more scientific than a veteran reporter writing a Sunday feature about global warming who does not conduct any interviews with skeptics—no balance. I have noted that the first union leaders, certain protestant church founders and the first women's liberationists end up being humourless and strident.

After they break trail, the rest of us have a path to examining the evidence, and therefore the luxury of being less strident. And the luxury of humour from believing two different things at the same time.
Of course, freedom means the freedom to not examine data; responsibility means something else.