Reading Response 8, Ziad 990 question 3

Ziad's reference to the historical material that is included in the essay was there to give some insight into the real history of social organization in the middle east. This information was relatively new to me and surprising to see. At the same time though, this lends quite a bit of good insight into the current struggle taking place in that area of the world. I feel like historical information like that that lends some insight into the long term movements and political struggles of the middle east has been obviously absent in journalism and politics here in the United States today as a result of a major political push to change policy and attitudes towards that part of the world.
The United States attitude to this part of the world has been very preemptive and reactionary in the last few presidencies. The absence of this background information in our daily lives and discussions has really opened up a school of thought in the United States that Islam is a terror based religion as a whole. That all terrorists are Muslim and all Muslims are terrorists. This idea that all Muslim nations must be fought by democratic nations because they cant be democratic themselves or are all terrorists has only been perpetuated by a neoconservative government that seems to be pushing its own conservative Christian agenda. If this background information were covered a little bit more in depth by some of our mainstream public media sources, there is a chance that some people might hold a slightly different opinion about how things should be handled in this region of the world. Maybe some insight into why people are angry and unsettled in their lives instead of a general blindness to others struggles and an open mindedness only with how many different ways to use the word "terrorist" in a sentence . I would like to think that things might be different, but given our nations unsettling ability to ignore pertinent news for something juicier, I fear that we would probably still be in the same spot we are.