Blog Week 5

POST 1

There is a major debate over this question, is islam a peaceful religion? I want to say that all religions or practices of faith should and come from a place of peace and love for self growth. Islam is the fastest growing religion, so I would think one would choose Islam, not for it’s “violence” but rather for the practice. There is so much debate around this question, in that a lot of what we hear about this religion are the reporting of attacks and terrorist moves that are called in the name of Islam. It is only 7% of muslims who identify as radical extremest. It is this minority that has put a face of violence of for the entirety of Islam. In class we had talked about how the face of this religion is brown, and in our society today there is a stigma for brownness to be associated with violence.

POST 2

Again with the question of whether or not Christianity is a peaceful religion, my answer stays the same… that I believe all religions are based off a place of good heart and are used and practice to improve and self grow. That being said, I was raised in faith o the catholic church. I can say growing up I took a little more time with my faith, mainly because I had no choice as I was always “dragged” to Sunday mass. Now having grown since then I really do appreciate my parents raising us me in faith. My parents gave us the liberty of whether or not we wanted to continue our faith. They had ingrained in us that whether or not our faith was with he Catholic Church or just self reflection, it was important for us to find selflessness in something other than ourselves. that being said I feel as though these two questions trying to instigate and bring out an argument of what is the more peaceful religion. There have been happenings you know like the Crusades, and the molestation scandals to prove this argument otherwise. But like I said in my answer to whether or not Islam is a peaceful religion, that we cannot allow things like this become the face of a religion. putting judgement and stereotyping the entirety of a religion like that does not make one more or less peaceful.

POST 3

“After I broke the news f the coalition air strikes on twitter, I woke to the eyeballs of the world. My Twitter feed exploded. A thousand war junkies had followed me, but this now allowed upwards tenfold, it swelled, bloated, soared. The Americans wished my safety. Their country bombed mine, and here they were, showing concerned more readily than my own people, who were asleep. What irony, I thought…I wasn’t what they wanted, so soon enough, my followers started to flee. They had expected a Brave Activist— ISIS bad! Very bad!—the sort of boy you could feed some freedom-speak and parade on the conference scene. A Hero from this Terrible War. (179-180)

This passage shows Marwan’s growing social media presence . He notes the irony of how the Americans wished him safety while they were the ones bombing them. He became popular with major newspaper companies started following him, however he started to lose his follower-ship as he wasn’t “the brave activist.” I think it is also interesting how much “drama and action” people are looking for. Like war is a big deal and weather or not your constantly being bombed. Personally, as someone who has not experienced a war first hand, it is through history lessons, news articles, and books such as these where I hear and learn about war. I am able to relate to this disconnect the “Americans” have, as they too do not understand what war is truly like. I feel as though I differ in that I do not expect war to be “dramatic or action filled” because I do understand that it is a very scary and surreal thing for those in Syria, and other places of conflict. I think this passage and this chapter is important in that it shows how powerful social media can be, under ISIS rule it was hard for people to speak their minds without being punished but social media gave Marwan a voice. In this passage he realizes that he need to tell his story. This passage almost makes me feel proud of him because I feel like for a lot of the book he would always talks about the people in Raqqa weren’t doing anything while he wasn’t either but now he’s found his purpose he’s is actually able to use what he enjoys doing with purpose, you know writing and storytelling and the internet. I feel like we for people our age social media obviously plays a huge part in our life as at least for me from social media is where I primarily get my news. This also leads me to think about the importance on how reliable our news sources are. A research gateway of the the importance of social media during war time and how media can shape and or reshape conflicts and how social media is its own “battlefield.”