Satirist, humorist, blogger and dear friend, Avitable, wrote an interesting post about an e-mail he was forwarded from his grandfather entitled “Can A Muslim Be A Good American?”

Ummyeah.  What?!

I’ve never received one of these e-mails for obvious reasons, so it took me by surprise.  Then, I thought to myself, well, it is Adam, so it’s probably some fringe fluke thing. Until I looked down in the comment section and almost every comment had some iteration of, “Oh, yeah, I hate it when I get those.”

Of course, a Muslim can be a good American.  Because Islam is a religion, not a nationality.  I think Adam did a fine job of dismissing that idiotic rhetoric, so I’m not going to do it here.

I want to know this.

When Dr. George Tiller was shot in May of last year, in church, by a pro-life maniac, how many Christians were asked if they thought their religion was compatible with being a law abiding American citizen?

Did anyone question why some Christian pro-lifers remained silent about this shooting?  Did everyone assume that their silence was complicity?  I didn’t.  You know why?  Because that is stupid and ridiculous. Every Christian is not pro-life.  Every pro-lifer is not a doctor-killer.

And yet.  People want to know if I can be a good American and a Muslim at the same time because a few guys who are not even within a distant proximity of my parent’s country of origin happen to be Muslim, too.

This Christian man, who shot and murdered another man in church, does not represent the whole of Christiandom, even though he utilized dogma that had been propagated by the more conservative members of his religion to justify murder. 

I didn’t assume for a moment that Christianity made him do it.  Because that would be ignorant.

I don’t owe anyone any explanations.

I will give them to you, if you ask, because you are my friends and you may want to know more.  But I do not owe any apologies or explanations for being an American or for being a Muslim.  I do appreciate the many statements made by American Muslim groups, and for those who question whether these statements have been made, I ask you to turn off your stupid Fox News Talking Point Bullsh*t TV and read some real news.  Remember reading?

But we don’t owe you an explanation, understand?

We offer you explanations because we are committed to the idea that our nation is one of tolerance, social progress and dialogue.  We operate within those traditions because we are Americans.  Good ones.

Just like you.

Finally, I wonder if the people who forward these types of e-mails along realize how mired in ignorance and utterly hateful their actions are.

Do you want to know why I think we’ve been losing the war against terror?  Because “we” have no idea what we’re fighting.

“We” want to believe that we’re fighting a religion.. a faith… a holy book that creates fervent suicide bombers with promises of a seventh heaven and forty virgins.

“We” don’t stop and think about political expediency or commercial media interests and how that affects the information that we are fed.  “We” don’t have time time for books, the kind written by actual academic experts whose lives’ pursuits rest upon studying this situation.

You know, the experts that can actually speak and read Persian or Arabic.  No, instead “we” want to read books by a balding fat guy has been whose only experience with Islam was the Pakistani doctor who wrote him one too many prescriptions for Vicodin.

“We” don’t want to waste time with actually reading about the very real and often secular political situations in countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Afghanistan or Palestine.

“We” don’t bother ourselves with terms such as sovereignty, refugee, border dispute, resources, or artificially constructed nationalisms.  Because, you know, it’s just easier for “us” to believe that people are blowing themselves up because God told them to do it.

No, “we” are too busy … because “we” are being good Americans and forwarding along nonsensical e-mails.

P.S. Adam, No offense to Papa.  I know he’s a great guy. 

An Anti-Drama Precaution:  In case anyone is wondering, this post was not written as a reaction to this post. In fact, it was sort of inspired by this one.

I’m going to ask you to approach this post the way I approach most things… by focusing on intent.

I’m not prepared to engage in long defenses of what I’m about to write here because most of it is grounded in emotion.  The subject is sensitive, not just for me, but for a lot of people.

I don’t mind terrorist jokes.  I think they’re funny.  Because I’m not a terrorist, and I think they’re idiots.

I don’t mind jokes about being “brown,” accents, 7/11s or 9/11, being good at math (or not) or having overly demanding parents.  As long as the jokes are funny, humor wins every single time in my book.

I don’t even mind jokes about my religion versus your religion because as far as I’m concerned, I practice a religion that is 1400 years strong and my faith in it is not going to be diminished by humor or stereotypes.

However.  I’m not fond of feeling like a “token” Muslim or Pakistani-American.

You know, the friend that’s brought up every single time someone talks about the Middle East, Pakistan or Islam.

Maybe I bring up multiculturalism so much that people miss out on the fact that I am mostly American.  No.  Make that all-American.  Yes, I am all American.  Like apple pie.

Perhaps I haven’t been clear.  My affinity and knowledge of India and Pakistan is through association and travel.

I have never lived in India, Pakistan or the Middle East.  I have never bought groceries, driven a car, hailed a rickshaw or lived anything remotely resembling a real life there.

Yes, I have been to those places many times.  I may even know particular places intimately, but for the most part?  I’m a visiting American when I’m there.  I think people confuse my passionate interest in India, Pakistan and the Middle East with a pseudo-first hand expertise and, to some degree, imbue me with representativeness on the culture, politics and religion of those regions.

So, a reminder.  I am an American who is informed by my parent’s heritage.

I’m not a fan of the phrase Pakistani-American. Because, in my mind, I am an American first.  I have a deep love for Pakistan because of my heritage, but it’s a footnote in my identity.  That is a stand that I take regarding my identity and one that makes a lot of immigrants understandably uncomfortable.

People often forget that there’s a difference between asking me a question about my own personal experience of a culture and expecting me to proselytize on the experience of an entire region as though I were from there.

If I exuberantly answer a question like, “How has political Islam impacted the state of U.S. foreign relations with Pakistan?” you should know that I can answer this question because I am well read, educated and informed on the subject.  My ability to discuss this matter doesn’t stem from my heritage.

Yes, one might argue that my interest stems from my heritage.  And one would be right about that, but one would be missing the point entirely.  Because there are lots of Pakistani people in the world that have no idea what the term “political Islam” means or nor do they care about what that might have to do with American relations.

Like most of you, I was born and brought up in the United States.  I watched the same television shows, went to the same schools, read the same books, and, for the most part, ate the same food.  When someone chooses to define me in complete context to my parent’s heritage, it makes me feel like a little badge that can be worn on their arm that says “Look, I’m culturally diverse.  Aren’t I awesome?”

And, besides, if you want to get all racial up in here, for the most part, my views and outlook on life is far more “white” than it is “brown.”  Annd, a quick survey of my closest friends will reveal a 3:1 ratio in favor of white people. Furthermore, I  believe in straight lines, not beating your children, waiting at traffic lights and happily paying the asking price for goods and services.  It doesn’t get much more “non-brown” than that.

(See what I did there?  I got offensive, but it was funny).

I know this may be difficult to navigate.  Because I’m not being totally clear on what exactly bothers me.

It may very well be that I’m not entirely clear on what bothers me.

How about this?

How Not to Make Faiqa Feel Like Your Token Brown Friend:  A Quick Guide

Note: These are my opinions.  I’m not a brown woman demagogue.  If you want to know how other Muslim Pakistani American women married to Indian men raised in Saudi Arabia feel about this stuff, go ask them.

• Of course, I believe in being racially and culturally sensitive.  I just don’t believe in assuming that every black, brown or white person should automatically identify with the broader experiences of their race/culture.  I grew up in a town with two other Pakistani families.  My first generation experience is completely different than a male Pakistani-American who grew up in Jackson Heights, NY.  The whole spirit of multiculturalism is to avoid boxing people in, and I think a lot of people miss that point.

• I do feel slightly annoyed when people say things to the effect of, “This is Faiqa, my Pakistani American friend” when it is out of context.  I find this annoying because, it’s like saying, “Hi, this is my friend Vanessa, she’s black.”  Or “This is my friend John, he’s gay.”  Do I really have to explain why this is annoying?

• I know this seems hypocritical, but being of Pakistani heritage is a part of my personal identity.  I think it’s acceptable for me to choose when to bring it up and when to dismiss it.  I think that right belongs to me alone.

• I also felt highly annoyed at teachers and professors who brought up Islam, women in Islam, the veil,  Pakistan, the Middle East, beheadings, floggings, terrorism or 9/11 as side bars and then asked just me what I thought about those subjects.  I understand that this was, on the part of the professors, an attempt to add perspective and diversity to their classroom.  But, you know what?  It.  Is.  Lazy.  If a professor wants to add diversity to their class, they need to formulate a lesson plan that does so.  Not treat me like their token ambassador to the white man.  If I have something to add to their lesson, I will.

• No, I am not an angry brown woman.  I understand that people who address that I have a heritage different from their own are open minded and highly evolved people.

• I just want to be treated like a person.  A person.  Not a demographic.  Not a check in someone’s little crib sheet of diversity.  If you are of European descent, I seldom consider that you are “white” when talking to or about you.   OK, except for this one time when I went to lunch with my friends at an Irish restaurant.  That place felt really “white.”  Or, no, actually, I felt really “brown.”  But, I digress. What I mean is, I hope that you don’t allow my heritage to color your perceptions of every interaction between us, either.  I would like it to be treated as a footnote.  Not an introduction, summary, abstract and bibliography.

• Are there any Japanese, Malaysian, or Indonesian people reading this blog?  I just checked my crib sheet and found I hadn’t checked those boxes, yet.  How does one go their entire lives without making a single Japanese friend?

See, I did offensive-funny again.  Come on.  It was a little funny.

What about you?  Are there labels that accurately describe you, but that you find are used a little too often for your comfort?  How do you deal with it?  Do you (also) write passive aggressive blog posts hoping people will catch on?

So, I was in the E.R. for four hours yesterday because I had “hives.” Sounds disgusting? It was. And itchy, very itchy. I tried to explain to the doctors that it was because I started trying to customize a Wordpress template, but they seem to think it was something I ate. What do they know? They obviously haven’t ever tried to customize a WP template.

Anyway, I’m posting this YouTube clip of American Iranian comedian, Maz Jobrani. You may know him from the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour which is the source of this clip.

Who doesn‘t beleive that I’ve been asked these questions, like, a million different times in my real life?!

This whole “Isn’t Obama a Muslim” issue has really started to upset me.  And not upset in the sense of, “That-makes-me-so-mad,” but upset in the sense of  ”if-I-hear-one-more-person-say-that-I’m-going- to- start-sobbing.”

That question really, really hurts my feelings.  People are certainly entitled to their opinions. Still, to intimate that the status of Muslim precludes a person from being American enough to be President of the United States equates to the suggestion that I am not American enough, in general.

I’m trying to catch up on my blog and write something meaningful. In the meantime, here’s a gratuitous post meant to bide my time.

I love laughing at other brown people.

<<Aasif Madhvi is Brown Clip from Comedy Central>>