I’m getting drunk alone at two in the morning, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. My brain is in a rut. Too much fundamentalism. I write about Islamic fundamentalists. I spent twenty-two years with Christian fundamentalists. Sometimes I can set myself outside my emotional reaction to the subject and analyze it. But sometimes it’s dark out, and it’s raining, and I’m exhausted, and I can’t do it.

So many labels. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we possess this pathological need to categorize each other? We’re liberals, conservatives, evangelicals, agnostics, etc. It goes on and on. And I’m guilty of it on so many different levels. I define myself as a feminist, a progressive. I support civil rights and reproductive rights and GLBT rights and children’s rights. For years, I defined myself by a psychiatrist’s diagnosis, and when I was tired of that I replaced it with something else.

Why can’t we just be humans? People who fuck up, people who try to be better. Can’t we all just believe something without putting it on a T-shirt or pasting a bumper sticker to our car? It’s easy to do that. It’s harder to listen, to admit that maybe there’s something to be learned from different points of view. And therein lies the reason behind my extreme reaction to fundamentalism. It’s so fearful, and there’s no excuse for it. I believe people only adhere so stringently to a chosen philosophy when they are terrified of uncertainty. They are too frightened to learn. I read that Iran has a Council of Coordinating Islamic Propaganda and I get so depressed that I am nearly in tears. This incredible civilization produced Rumi and Ferdowsi and Farid ud-Din Attar is controlled by utter lunacy. So many millions of people around the world voluntarily enslave themselves to fundamentalism. They sacrifice so much beauty and they don’t even realize it. At least in Iran, there’s a resistance movement. In the Bible belt, nobody cares.

Maybe that’s why I picked this topic for my research project. I need to believe this Green Movement can succeed, that it really can implement lasting reform. I need to believe that so I can believe that’s even possible, that fundamentalism in all of its heinously destructive forms is conquerable.

PS: if you don’t know what the simorgh is, Google is your friend. I, however, am tipsy and angry at the world, and therefore I can’t be bothered to explain it. Besides, if you look it up then maybe you’ll want to keep reading about it and then you can share my addiction to Persian literature, and we should all be addicted to Persian literature. Aaand that’s enough beer for one night.

Advertisement