JANUARY 27 Thoughts of an American Muslim

How did all this come about? The reasons should be of special interest to Muslims all over the world, especially to those attracted to the glamour of things American. One of the chief reasons is not far to seek—Hollywood. It is difficult — to believe nowadays that at one time amorality was largely confined to cinema screen. People then had a moral ethical sense. One has only to compare crime figures to those of today. Nowadays, movies and television shows are so highly emulated that at times it is difficult to distinguish between what is happening on the screen and what is happening in real life. Show business dominates this country. Movie and television stars are worshipped. Another important reason is one that created an enormous chasm between what happened before and what happened afterward World War Two. It was a war then, to quote Nietsche ‘everything was permissible.’ It was, as everyone knows, the most brutal war ever fought. It was during that period that compassion disappeared. Other countries might have recovered it, but not the United States. In addition, that brutality and that freedom to do anything one wanted without any restraint whatsoever did not disappear in this country with the end of the war. Both persisted and, worse, increased. The Americans were basking in what then appeared to be a perpetual and luxurious sun. The United States had gone into the war a debtor nation and it emerged a creditor nation, with all the allies owing it millions upon millions of dollars. The war effort had also helped to enrich the country. With affluence came an increase in the two other factors that helped sunder human relationships, the automobile and the telephone. The automobile gave individuals a power they did not otherwise possess, a power that enabled them to do a number of things unabated. It enabled them to disappear from the scene where they had done wrong. If a person didn’t like a neighbour, he or she moved, to another part of town, to another town, to another part of the country almost a continent away. The ensuing mobility became a habit, most often in its worst aspect. More and more Americans moved away from their parents and, equally significant, away from their roots. The telephone further exacerbated what was rapidly becoming an American way of life, fragmentation. Personal visits became a thing of the past.