Truth is slippery lately. Facts can be made up, ignored, or exaggerated to support any point of view one already has. We've all probably experienced the devastation of lies on a personal level, but now we have it on a grand scale like never before in my lifetime.
One particularly permicious form of lying is stereotyping, lumping all individuals in a box according to race, religion, sexual preference, gender, age, or nationality.
More than just sloppy language, stereotyping leads to disastrous actions against the people in the box. It makes them angry, understandably, and too often those people strike back in violence. It strips their rights and allows unthinkable laws to be passed that damage them.
In CNN's excellent program, "Why They Hate Us," I learned that many angry young men in Muslim countries who are perpetrating violence are not even particularly religious, but that they use isolated Koran verse to justify expressions of the violence and hatred they already feel. The president-elect has inflated the percentage of Muslims who are terrorists (it's actually less than 1%) to "about 28%." When made-up statistics and percentages are shouted loudly enough and long enough, they pass for truth.
Stereotyping any group of people--Mexicans to Muslims, women to whites, gay to straight--is the most dangerous thing we can do. Instead of calming the waters, it whips them into a furious storm.
Everybody knows that the Koran promises martyrs 72 virgins, right? I've heard it so often I thought it was a basic tenet of Islam.
A reform Muslim educator, one of the spokespeople on the CNN special, says, "No, no, that is not in the Koran! It's a mistranslation. What the Koran actually says is that in the afterlife the martyrs will have a lush life including 72 raisins!" Imagine the disappointment of those who go into the afterlife expecting a harem of virgins only to get ingredients for a fruit cake!
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