In the land of the cowards, the vocal man is king

But nobody is ready to be the king, just like everyone wants to go to heaven but nobody is willing to die. Tom Cruise is famous for pulling daring stunts in his movies instead of using the stunt doubles like most of the other actors. While he shows immense bravery in pulling those stunts for cinematic value, his bravery completely disappears when it comes to Israel's genocide of Gaza.

His agent Maha Dakhil had posted on social media where she had called Israel's war against Gaza a genocide. She faced enormous pressure from all of Hollywood. The news at the time made it sound like Tom Cruise had come to her rescue thereby saving her over her pro-Palestinian stance. However, what Cruise really did was to make her delete her post and also made her apologise over it. A Cruise jumping in with his jacket and bike and landing on the ground to announce his support for her freedom of expression would have made for a much stronger cinematic and moral value. But that is not the kind of stunt Cruise or anyone else in any American mainstream likes to pull.

America likes to call itself the home of the brave and land of the free. However, I have yet to see an American politician, journalist and Hollywood name with only a few exceptions, who would exhibit the sort of bravery where they would unequivocally call on Israel to stop the genocide and move back from Palestinian lands. Every time a country is invaded or sanctioned by the United States government, citizens from those countries are taken in as asylum seekers and embraced into American society. These are usually the kind of people who had acted against their own people back home and earned American citizenship by shedding the kosher tears and hating the right enemy.

The Afghans who hated the Taliban, the Iraqis who hated Saddam and had perhaps some grievance against his regime, the Iranians who hated the Ayatollahs are all accepted as Americans because they hate the "right" enemy. Those immigrants together with the AIPAC sponsored politicians and media personalities would make one terrific team of cowards that could make America anything but hardly a home of the brave and land of the free.

Enter the Muslims and the countless mosques in America. I do not have experience with all of them but I frequent quite a few. During any Friday service, the main focus of the discussion is over the topic of Zakaat and other benevolent causes espoused by Islam and much of the talk is about how that money for those benevolent causes must be given to the mosque. I do realise that mosques in America are run by donations from prayer goers but somehow there is no information about how much money gets collected and where it gets spent. What are the different expenses, especially the payroll and utilities?

Anyway, back to the service. When they exhaust all their religious arguments and stories about why the money must be given to the mosque, there is a small talk of Gaza and genocide. I'd be lying if I said that I had heard the word genocide. But I sure have not heard the word Israel ever. People are dying and that we should pray for them and for the Muslim Ummah is all I hear. The imam reminds people to address an injustice by physical means, if not then verbally, and if still not then at least in one's heart one should consider it bad. And then they add that that is considered as the lowest of iman. Yet, somehow, the imam himself cannot utter this one word called Israel. In the House of Allah the least the imam or anyone else should be able to do is to utter the truth. Israel is committing genocide is not a controversial statement. It is only the truth.

I am, by the way, that vocal man whom they have labeled as a fitna and what not. And I gladly welcome that title, if that is what a truth teller is called.