"Inshallah" is NOT an Option: My Response to Last Week's Shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
First, I want to say that my heart, thoughts, and prayers go out to all the victims, students and countless families affected by last week's shooting at the Florida High School. I know that countless numbers of people, including Chicago Cub Anthony Rizzo, have much more of a voice than I do when it comes to speaking out and making sure that an event like this never happens again. I pray that our leaders, anyone with the power to make a difference, take the needed time to mourn and then act to make a change for the better. Knowing this, I'll give the best I have to offer: prayer and use of my writing skills to spur on constructive conversation and action.
I openly admit that this week's reflection contains a lot of passion, but not necessarily works cited to back up my passion. My goal is to use passion to spur others on to love and good deeds. I strongly believe that the greatest sin we can commit in the midst of this disaster is to use a common phrase I learned as a English Second Language teacher in the Middle East:
I found it hard to believe and could not accept my students' response to setback. How could my students not attempt to do better? As an "enlightened", ethnocentric western teacher from America, I believed that regardless of God's Will, my students could strive to do better.
Little did I know, Americans are even more guilty of saying "Inshallah". All we need to do is look at the events that occurred this past week and the response from a certain right-wing party. To help me illustrate my point, here is a political cartoon published by Mike Luckovich, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
No mother should ever have to feel like sending a child to school is equivalent to sending them off to war. As a teacher, my strongest value is ensuring school is a safe place where students can learn and enrich their minds. There is no room for guns and violence in our schools.
Yet members of a certain party seem convinced that the reality we live in is a reality where school is a battlefield. For this certain party, the solution isn't to pass and enforce stricture gun laws... it's to arm teachers with lethal firearms, just in case a shooter breaks into school. The solution isn't early diagnosis and serious, affordable medical treatment for people with mental illness who might present a danger to themselves and others... it's to ostracize, institutionalize, or imprison people who are in the greatest need of mental health assistance. All so a very small of minority of people can have easy access to semi-automatic weapons that can easily butcher several people at a time...
To even think for a second my Middle Eastern students who said "Inshallah" were not enlightened...
In summary, America can no longer wait and say "Inshallah" when it comes to passing stronger gun laws. I'm a strong believer in our second amendment right to bear arms, but our founding fathers never imagined the power and quantity of guns American citizens have access to in the year 2018. Just as technology changes, law and policy must change in order to protect the truths made self-evident in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
I openly admit that this week's reflection contains a lot of passion, but not necessarily works cited to back up my passion. My goal is to use passion to spur others on to love and good deeds. I strongly believe that the greatest sin we can commit in the midst of this disaster is to use a common phrase I learned as a English Second Language teacher in the Middle East:
"Inshallah" in Arabic or "If God Wills It", roughly translated into EnglishAny of my struggling Middle Eastern students tended to believe that if it was God's Will for them to struggle in class, then they didn't have any authority to challenge the end result.
I found it hard to believe and could not accept my students' response to setback. How could my students not attempt to do better? As an "enlightened", ethnocentric western teacher from America, I believed that regardless of God's Will, my students could strive to do better.
Little did I know, Americans are even more guilty of saying "Inshallah". All we need to do is look at the events that occurred this past week and the response from a certain right-wing party. To help me illustrate my point, here is a political cartoon published by Mike Luckovich, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
No mother should ever have to feel like sending a child to school is equivalent to sending them off to war. As a teacher, my strongest value is ensuring school is a safe place where students can learn and enrich their minds. There is no room for guns and violence in our schools.
Yet members of a certain party seem convinced that the reality we live in is a reality where school is a battlefield. For this certain party, the solution isn't to pass and enforce stricture gun laws... it's to arm teachers with lethal firearms, just in case a shooter breaks into school. The solution isn't early diagnosis and serious, affordable medical treatment for people with mental illness who might present a danger to themselves and others... it's to ostracize, institutionalize, or imprison people who are in the greatest need of mental health assistance. All so a very small of minority of people can have easy access to semi-automatic weapons that can easily butcher several people at a time...
To even think for a second my Middle Eastern students who said "Inshallah" were not enlightened...
In summary, America can no longer wait and say "Inshallah" when it comes to passing stronger gun laws. I'm a strong believer in our second amendment right to bear arms, but our founding fathers never imagined the power and quantity of guns American citizens have access to in the year 2018. Just as technology changes, law and policy must change in order to protect the truths made self-evident in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
America's president, representatives, and senators are bound to these documents and to the citizens they serve. To stay idle and do nothing in the midst of this rise of school mass shootings would not merely be disappointing... It would be the abandonment of the very values they claim to stand for and permission for the horrors of this past week to not just be an event of the past we can learn from, but the abhorrent reality that we live in.Citizens of the United States who want stricter gun laws, make your voice known to your president, senators, and representatives, because the NRA and other lobbyists will make their agenda known. Mr. President, Senators, and Representatives please listen to the voice of the people.
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