i just had a weird experience. I was at a gas station tonight to put gas in my car. But the person in front of me in line (African-American) goes up to the guy at the register (probably Arab) and says:
"Asalam-alaikum, akhi. Could you get me a lottery ticket?"
He then haggles a little about the price of the ticket pointing out that the tickets are cheaper across the street. Then when the man receives his lottery ticket, he makes a point of saying "Shukran". But then when the Arab man says "your welcome" or something else in English, the first guy makes a point of saying that he should say afwan. Then he gives his salams and quickly leaves with his lottery ticket.
I don't mean to be judgemental and I wouldn't even claim that my own life is necessarily free from equally dramatic inconsistencies. But I'm not interested in turning this blog into a confessional where I tell on myself, at least not for the moment. All I'm saying is that the above exchange was really striking and I thought I'd share.
3 comments:
Indeed striking, quite symbolic I think. Thanks for sharing.
I am glad you shared...but I would like to hear your analysis.
It seems bizzare to me all the way around. And now that you are asking me to elaborate I guess the precise analysis would depend on certain assumptions. I would tend to guess that the African-American buying the lottery ticket was probably Muslim, in which case it is bizzare that a Muslim would be gambling. Especially gambling, and then making a point of saying "Asalam-alaikum" and affirming some kind of Islamic identity in the midst of doing something Islam would clearly prohibit.
Then the other level of weirdness is the fact that the Arab Muslim is working at (maybe owning?) a gas station which sells lottery tickets (pork, maybe alcohol, etc.) which is something dealt with in a later blog entry.
(see http://planetgrenada.blogspot.com/2005/07/racial-tensions-in-american-ummah.html )
Another possibility (which didn't occur to me until now) would be that the first person actually wasn't Muslim and so they were doing what they did in order to highlight the second person's hypocrisy.
I guess in general I would say that I see certain faults in the Muslim community (which I'm not exempt from) but which at times become exceptionally vivid in certain kinds of situations.
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