I got an email from an old real-life friend about my Done Waffling post.  This friend pointed out that we had a diverse friend group in school, to include Hindus and Muslims, and that exposure to diversity is beneficial for a growing mind.  It's a fair point.

My response to that is that no one from our friend group supported honor killings or jihad or shariah.

Look, you all know me by now.  You know that I am not really a person who "celebrates diversity."  I married someone whose only difference from me is that he likes to sleep.  I want to live in a gulch surrounded by people who all think exactly like I do.  I don't know if that's an appropriate worldview, but that's who I am.  I celebrate homogeny.

But these friends of mine, these other kids who helped make me who I am, they were Americans.  Sure, they had a different religion than most of us and they did funny things like fast during Ramadan or not eat beef, but they weren't fundamentally different in value systems than the rest of us.  Their families were in the US because they wanted to live under the freedoms and opportunities that the US had to offer, not because they were trying to subvert the system from within.

In short, I don't lump old-school American Muslims in with the ominous groups portrayed in that video.

You don't have to be a WASP to be part of my tribe.  But we do have to have common ground: tolerance, respect for the Constitution and institutions of the United States, and an ability to live and let live.  Those are decidedly not mainstream beliefs in the communities from whence Muslim immigrants are flooding Europe.

My goal is not to outbreed American Muslims.  My husband and I are close friends with two Muslim families that are perfectly lovely, normal, non-terrorist people.  My kids could play with their kids any day.  And my hope is that their kids will also act as a counterbalance to the extreme Islamofascists' progeny.  I consider their kids as part of our American birthrate, not the scary Muslim one depicted in the video.

My goal is to fill our gulch with more like-minded people, to pass on a love for our unique country and all she stands for, and to raise children who can recognize the fundamental difference between the cool brown-skinned kids in their class and the scary enemy. 

Posted by: Sarah at 08:45 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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