terrorism...who defines it?

Look Into My Eyes

Look into my eyes
Tell me what ya see
U don’t see a damn thing
Cuz u can’t relate to me

U blinded by our differences
My life makes no sense to u
I’m the persecuted one
U the red, white and blue

Each day u wake in tranquility
No fears to cross your eyes
Each day I wake in gratitude
Thankin’ God He let me rise

Ya worry ‘bout your education
And the bills u have to pay
I worry ‘bout my vulnerable life
And if I’ll survive another day

Ya biggest fear is getting a ticket
As ya cruise your Cadillac
My fear is that the tank that’s just left
Will turn around and come back

Yet do u know the truth of where ya money goes
Do u let the media deceive your mind
Is this a truth that nobody knows

Someone tell me

…See I’ve known terror for quite some time
57 years so cruel
Terror breathes the air I breathe
It’s the check point on my way to school

Terror is the robbery of my land
And the torture of my mother
The imprisonment of my innocent father
The bullet in my baby brother

The bulldozers and the tanks
The gasses and the guns
The bombs that fall outside my door
All due to your funds

You blame me for defending myself
Against the ways of my enemies
I’m terrorized in my own land
What, and I’m the terrorist

… So if I won’t be here tomorrow
It’s written in my fate
May the future bring a brighter day
The end of our wait- Outlandish

I came across the lyrics while searching for something on the net. It is so true and so sad. It is just how you look at it. Or how the media shapes your vision or distorts it that you don’t see the pain but only the threat. And then we discriminate.
Sometimes, I feel lost here. I feel sad when I keep saying the same thing in my classes and all I get is a blank look. It is like knocking on doors that perhaps will never open up. I feel frustrated at these times and I wonder how big is a task it is for the people form the Middle East to get themselves understood, to say their religion is not terrorism or they are normal people living in terror.
What is terrorism? The definition seems to be shifting depending on which side of the world you are. The media defines it for the west. It brands Muslims, makes it common knowledge that Muslims are arrogant people, who are violent and fanatics.
When I met the 18 journalists from the Middle East and Europe who came to Syracuse University as part of a program sponsored by the state department, I saw how eager they were to get themselves understood, to tell them about their lives, their views and explain they are not against Americans but the American government’s foreign policy.
Amer Jomah does not want to go back to his country. A journalist form Iraq, he told me how dangerous it is to live in Iraq, how difficult it is to go out and just have coffee at a café. You don’t do those things there, he told me. After sunset, there is nobody on the roads. Jomah does not see the situation improving there. When I offered to visit Iraq, he laughed. He thought I was mad. It is dangerous, he warned. And then a girl in my class said how Americans did not kill or kidnap journalists like the Iraqis and how her mom would kill her if she went to Iraq. I wondered if it is not us who had screwed up in Iraq and now are afraid of even going there. What about the people there? What is the media doing? Why is it silent? Is it not approving of the government’s policies or the people’s biases in its silence?
I wanted to change the world. Sometimes, I wonder if I can.
I belong to the ‘model minority’ and I have never dealt with a negative image myself. But I understand how it must feel when people call you names and link you to terrorists
I met the journalists at my religion class and then later at Sheraton hotel where they were staying. Marek Kubicki, a journalist from Poland, asked me to come. So, I went expecting others to be there too. But except for one girl from my class, there were no students there.
We started talking. Except for Kubicki and a journalist from Denmark, most felt United States was too good. I agreed but only partly. I told them about racism, Hill TV incident and they were shocked. I don’t know why I did it. May be to shatter the myth about United States. That reminded me of my own feeling when I came to United States. I had thought everything to be wonderful here. I could not believe that racism existed here. They could not either. I asked them, “What did you think…you will find rivers of milk and honey here? That everything is equal here.”
But that’s what the media has led them to believe. That America is great. That it is a land of opportunities, of freedom and of equality. The images show the good life in America, the great universities, the retail stores and the happy people. What they seldom show is the poverty here, the inequality here.