Open Doors

I honestly find it a little scary that there is so much xenophobia in the UK today. I think it so sad that the majority of this is caused by a lack of cultural understanding. It is generally not considered cool to be well informed about different cultures; there is this attitude of “My way or no way” which is only going to limit cultural integration in the long run. For example, with the advent of “Terrorism” in the UK there has been a massive wave of Islamaphobia- even boiling down to the little things. I mean it is so easy pick up on differences and focus on them that we often fail to notice the similarities and commonalities. I have had discussions with friends in the past on the difference between Islamic societies and those of other parts of the world and inevitably the topic off “the rules” rears its ugly head.
In one particular discussion we were talking over the concept that our western culture and that of Islamic nations will never be able to understand each other, that there is a different system of logic and reason and the two are fundamentally irreconcilable. The examples given were thus; not being allowed to drink alcohol or eat pork. In discussion the point was made to me that there was no logical reason that is comprehendible to a person created from a western culture for this personal limitation.
I refused to agree with the crux of my friend’s argument, yet those two examples stayed in my head for sometime after. Try as I might, I could not think of logical reasons why these would be forbidden- other than being bad for your health in the case of alcohol. To try and find an answer to this, I decided to ask a Muslim friend, and this is what he said “Well it is quite simple really. You know that Islam is a religion that was founded in the Middle East? Then you will also know that most of that area consists of desert. Pork is an incredibly salty meat, and it was important that the nomadic people kept all the water they could, and as salt draws out moisture, it was banned. In the same way- alcohol dehydrates you quite severely, which is something very dangerous in such a hot climate”.
This helped my understand a great deal more and showed me that it is so easy to jump to inaccurate conclusions when you are uninformed- even if generally, you are an incredibly open minded person. So be proud of learning about other cultures. Be proud of learning new languages. Open your doors to the rest of the world and they will let you in.

A nice little semi-related link is The Language Learners' Declaration of Independence