A new national hysteria campaign, Islamofascism Awareness Week is celebrated this week, between Oct. 22 and Oct. 26 at Virginia Tech.
This campaign of bigotry will also be celebrated at more than 100 American campuses, supported by David Horowitz and his organization. Hate and racism come in different forms and target different religions, ethnicities and races.
It is a shameful and illogical fact of our human history that we must eliminate in order to build common values for all of us. Americans, Turks, Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Chinese, Latinos, Mexicans, Germans and Russians must learn how to live together on this planet in peace.
I have always wondered what it was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany in the 1930s; however, today I feel their pain as a Muslim in America. I wonder what it was like to be black in South Africa; I feel their pain too, and wonder what it was like to be a Cambodian when Pol Pot was in power; we are moving in a similar direction in today's America.
We must not forget how Nazis treated the Jews; if we understand them and their pain, then we are able to comprehend racism, hate, authoritarianism and fascism. If we understand segregation and discrimination against blacks, then we would be able to overcome what blacks faced in the 1960s and are still facing today.
I would recommend to all my Jewish friends to read Hannah Arendt, who was a brilliant scholar in 1930s Germany, but could not teach at German universities because she was a Jew. Arendt left Germany in order to understand the origins of totalitarianism and the social background of fascism where we are headed today.
In short, to me, Islamofascism Awareness Week is a celebration of racism. If I were a Jew in America today, I would be first to oppose racism and the celebration of racist events such as Islamofascism Awareness Week.
They would be sensitized to this because of their own painful past, and I share their stories and I take lessons from them as a member of humanity. We must not forget the Holocaust in order to understand today's social and political realities; however, we must also not forget the social and political background of racism in Germany, which was the breeding ground for the Holocaust. Today, people following causes such as this one are building the social and political foundations of racism.
In 1945, the anti-Nazi German pastor Martin Niemoller wrote, "First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."
Turgul Keskin
Graduate Teaching Assistant, Sociology