islam (with many edits)

my religious studies course on islam & modernity triggered a fascination with islamic culture. so much so that today i briefly contemplated changing my major to middle eastern studies. (this was until i realized that i had to learn coptic, hebrew, arabic, AND persian for the major... uhh i don't mean to underestimate myself but let's not kid ourselves here.) it really is a shame that islamic culture is so grotesquely misrepresented by the media... a lot of the tension between the west and the the middle east could be alleviated, if everyone would just take the time to educate themselves a bit more, to learn how to look past superficial and biased portrayals.

we point fingers at the taliban for being destructive and oppressive, but many fail to recognize how they rose to power in the first place - through u.s. military support during the cold war era. the point isn't that the taliban isn't oppressive, the point is that a) we should stop putting ourselves on a pedestal, and b) we need to stop making judgments about cultures that we barely know anything about. islamic fundamentalism and terrorism are not the same thing. (side note: you want to know what i think consists of terrorism? i think invading a country under the pretense of 'liberating' the people is an act of terrorism. i'm not trying to be anti-american, but the statistics are there - how many dead iraqi civilians to how many dead americans? honestly, who's doing more terrorizing here?)

i hope i'm not sounding pretentious, all i'm saying is that the course definitely changed my view of the world. anyways, my new goal is to learn arabic next year.

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another side note - i dream of seeing:
- hagia sofia
- st. mark's cathedral
- taj mahal
- versailles


edit: correction, you pick ONE of the mentioned languages for me studies.