Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Al Qaida in LODI!?!?!?
I heard on the local news, and on NPR that two men, father and son in Lodi were arrested on charges related to Al Qaida. Here is where the going gets wierd, as if being busted for anything like that in Lodi California weren't weird enough...
They drove an ICE CREAM truck!
You just don't think of such people in such organizations and ice cream trucks in the same part of your brain...
I've been to Lodi on road trips when I was a kid, it just didn't seem to be that kind of place, a place to buy giganto jugs of wine, but not a place for Al Qaida types...
Of course back in the 1970s a lot of Yemeni people did come to this country and work alongside the Mexicans as migrant labor in the grape fields, unattached men mostly. One of these men was shot dureing the grape strike along with two Mexican men. I remember reading the Arab name with the Mexican names and wondering what the Hell was up with that. I mean I knew the guy wasn't like Black from the name. There were then certain names among American converts that were simply just a tip off that this was an American Black convert. So I knew reading the article the guy was from some Arab country, and then there was a report that at least a couple thousand men from Yemen were doing this work. So it's not like there weren't Arabs in that part of California for a long time.
It's not generally realized how many people from India are there and have been there since at least the 1970s. Sikhs in particular, who have rice farms and who are truck drivers. There is a book by Ved Mehta that deals with the presence of the Sikh community in California since the 1920s, and how they lived.
So maybe my intitial reaction was not a correct one. Maybe it should be more like 'Well why NOT Lodi? it's as logical a place for that sort of thing as anyplace else.'
One thing I'd like to say here. I first went to college in the 1970s. I'm on my third trip through the system. My first time in University, there were a lot of Arabs, a lot of Indians, and a lot of people from West Africa. The West Africans were all learning to be civil engineers. The Indians and Arabs were either in chemistry or nuclear science. Imet only ONE Indian studying for a degree in the arts, a very nice young man, the first Dalit I met, back then they were called 'Untouchables'. He was a fascinateing young man. I remember him generously and unself consciously allowing me to ask him 'absolutely any question no matter how stupid or rude!' His words. He wanted Americans to know all about Untouchables, not just the hard side of their lives, but the good part.
One of my questions to him was was he religious, he sort of was.Obviously he didn't buy that any Supreme Being had mandated Untouchability, he didn't believe that it was right, or of the Spirit that anyone had to be an Untouchable. My next question was, 'Since life is so hard for an Untouchable, why didn't you become 1. Christian, 2. Muslim, 3. Buddhist, 4. Sikh?
He explained that leaving his religion, even though it was bad for him, would cut him off from his family, his extended family. 'In India family helps one another in ways you can't imagine here! You don't just throw that away and changeing religion would throw that away!'
He was maybe 21 or 22 and a very wise young man in my opinion. He studied pottery, and was on a scholarship named for the man who wrote India's Constitution, an Untouchable.
He did not associate with any of the other Indians, let alone Arabs or Africans. He kept to himself, and his friends were mostly Americans, and mostly Americans who had rejected religion.
He was the exception. Most of the Indians, Iranians, Arabs, suffered greatly from culture shock, and it made them more religious, and more strict in their interpretation of their religion. This is not a rare reaction to culture shock, to fall back on what you are and to become more attached. It's also a common reaction to oppressions that have nothing to do with culture shock. As a country we should have been more prepared for it, and the countries of origin should have done more about it, to be of help to these young people before they came here and after they went home again. To just throw someone at a vulnerable time of life, the transition into adulthood into such an experience with no counsel, and no preparation is just asking for trouble.
In short, it's at least partly our own damn fault, but not for the reasons usually assumed.
I don't think any foreigners from anywhere should have been allowed to study nuclear science here. I think that was a terrible mistake and I thought so at the time. I resented the fact that as a person with one politically suspect parent, had I the talents, (which I don't and didn't!) I could not have entered a program to do studies like that. Why wasn't a closer look taken at the thoughts of these people? Why was no one in the intelligence community reading Maudoodi? It was available in English. I realize reading Indian English is a trial for most Americans but it's not like it's impossible!The ideas in the Little Green Book were easily as dangerous to the United States as anything in the Little Red Book I read both, I know.
They drove an ICE CREAM truck!
You just don't think of such people in such organizations and ice cream trucks in the same part of your brain...
I've been to Lodi on road trips when I was a kid, it just didn't seem to be that kind of place, a place to buy giganto jugs of wine, but not a place for Al Qaida types...
Of course back in the 1970s a lot of Yemeni people did come to this country and work alongside the Mexicans as migrant labor in the grape fields, unattached men mostly. One of these men was shot dureing the grape strike along with two Mexican men. I remember reading the Arab name with the Mexican names and wondering what the Hell was up with that. I mean I knew the guy wasn't like Black from the name. There were then certain names among American converts that were simply just a tip off that this was an American Black convert. So I knew reading the article the guy was from some Arab country, and then there was a report that at least a couple thousand men from Yemen were doing this work. So it's not like there weren't Arabs in that part of California for a long time.
It's not generally realized how many people from India are there and have been there since at least the 1970s. Sikhs in particular, who have rice farms and who are truck drivers. There is a book by Ved Mehta that deals with the presence of the Sikh community in California since the 1920s, and how they lived.
So maybe my intitial reaction was not a correct one. Maybe it should be more like 'Well why NOT Lodi? it's as logical a place for that sort of thing as anyplace else.'
One thing I'd like to say here. I first went to college in the 1970s. I'm on my third trip through the system. My first time in University, there were a lot of Arabs, a lot of Indians, and a lot of people from West Africa. The West Africans were all learning to be civil engineers. The Indians and Arabs were either in chemistry or nuclear science. Imet only ONE Indian studying for a degree in the arts, a very nice young man, the first Dalit I met, back then they were called 'Untouchables'. He was a fascinateing young man. I remember him generously and unself consciously allowing me to ask him 'absolutely any question no matter how stupid or rude!' His words. He wanted Americans to know all about Untouchables, not just the hard side of their lives, but the good part.
One of my questions to him was was he religious, he sort of was.Obviously he didn't buy that any Supreme Being had mandated Untouchability, he didn't believe that it was right, or of the Spirit that anyone had to be an Untouchable. My next question was, 'Since life is so hard for an Untouchable, why didn't you become 1. Christian, 2. Muslim, 3. Buddhist, 4. Sikh?
He explained that leaving his religion, even though it was bad for him, would cut him off from his family, his extended family. 'In India family helps one another in ways you can't imagine here! You don't just throw that away and changeing religion would throw that away!'
He was maybe 21 or 22 and a very wise young man in my opinion. He studied pottery, and was on a scholarship named for the man who wrote India's Constitution, an Untouchable.
He did not associate with any of the other Indians, let alone Arabs or Africans. He kept to himself, and his friends were mostly Americans, and mostly Americans who had rejected religion.
He was the exception. Most of the Indians, Iranians, Arabs, suffered greatly from culture shock, and it made them more religious, and more strict in their interpretation of their religion. This is not a rare reaction to culture shock, to fall back on what you are and to become more attached. It's also a common reaction to oppressions that have nothing to do with culture shock. As a country we should have been more prepared for it, and the countries of origin should have done more about it, to be of help to these young people before they came here and after they went home again. To just throw someone at a vulnerable time of life, the transition into adulthood into such an experience with no counsel, and no preparation is just asking for trouble.
In short, it's at least partly our own damn fault, but not for the reasons usually assumed.
I don't think any foreigners from anywhere should have been allowed to study nuclear science here. I think that was a terrible mistake and I thought so at the time. I resented the fact that as a person with one politically suspect parent, had I the talents, (which I don't and didn't!) I could not have entered a program to do studies like that. Why wasn't a closer look taken at the thoughts of these people? Why was no one in the intelligence community reading Maudoodi? It was available in English. I realize reading Indian English is a trial for most Americans but it's not like it's impossible!The ideas in the Little Green Book were easily as dangerous to the United States as anything in the Little Red Book I read both, I know.
# posted by Katja R. @ 6:24 AM 
