Round Table Discussion #4

11.       “I expected something like this from an ignorant village mullah, but to get those kind of letter from my fellow Americans made me wonder whether I should just give up,” Mortenson remarked after he started getting hate mail in the wake of September 11. What about these letter writers made Mortenson compare them to “ignorant village mullah”? What have we learned of the village mullah to make this comparison work? What beliefs and emotions do you think were held by the letter writers? What do you think could be done to make these letter writers be more open to Mortenson’s work?

September 11th changed everything in America. The twin towers were bombed by people from Al Qaeda and this started this whole mess in Iraq. With that, some of the people developed prejudice against Muslims and the people of the Middle East. Mortenson started getting hate mail for his work because people believed that he was helping the enemy. He thought of the American people being hateful about his project because they did not know too much about that culture just like the “ignorant village mullah.” Ignorance can really crimple society, developed or not. Ignorance leads to misunderstanding, hate, and ultimately, violence. The less one knows, the more hate is likely to follow behind. The village is cut off from the rest of the world, so they are less likely to understand how things work. So when an outside comes along to them, they see them as a threat. The writers of the letters believed that all Muslims were evil and wanted to kill Americans. They were on a blind patriot high and saw Mortenson as a traitor for helping those school kids in Pakistan. Education is the key to everything. If the people are informed about whom and what Muslims really are, they would come to understand the people more often and be a little more open to them. Of course, that does not always work for all people. But it never hurts to give it all a try.