old story--day one

There was once this young girl who had just moved to a new town, about 3,000 miles away from where she used to live. She began to make friends with a schoolmate, who was also her neighbor and he was in her art class. He was quite nice and maybe even a bit shy, although she could tell that liked to be social too. In class she drew his picture, in which he wore glasses and a backwards baseball cap. Some people came around to admire it because although it was not technically 100% accurate it was a good likeness. "I like the earring," one said (She'd given him one, just for fun. She thought that it kind of made him look like a pirate.)

One evening, she was talking about him to the people she lived with, who were kind of like family, and they were also kind of like her guardians. And these guardians said, "So you have made a new friend, that is very nice. What was his name?" And she said it and they said, "Oh, that name means he is Muslim. Well, we do think that it is very nice that you have a new friend. But, you seem to talk about him a lot. You were not thinking about dating him, were you?" And she said "I don't know, I haven't really thought about that yet, I'm just getting to know him." And they said "Well, those cultures do not treat women well, so we're just letting you know that we really don't think that you should." And she said "Well, you can't generalize about everybody." But they said, "No, we're serious. We do not think that men from those cultures treat women well and we really don't think that you should."

The girl had never been close friends with someone who was Muslim and most of what she knew about "the culture" came from a Social Studies class, which brought back images of things like a video of this guy getting run through with a sword in public and a large parade of men who had cut their heads and were marching down a street, bleeding and chanting. And, maybe there had been some discussions about the oppression of women, too. So, then she said, "Actually. I don't think that he is Muslim." Although a part of her felt wrong when she said it, as if it were some sort of a cop out. And the guardians were like, "No, no, he is Muslim, that name is definitely Muslim," and then she was like "You know what, forget it, I don't ever want to talk with you about this again." And she felt very oppressed and angry with them. And they were like, "What is wrong, we are not trying to control who you are friends with, we are only just trying to express that we are concerned..." and she was like "Just forget it. Don't ever talk to me about it again." And they were very amused with her for being so dramatic, but maybe they were also a bit distressed and could probably tell that she felt they were being wicked guardians.