I wrote the title and realized I don’t have anything to finish it up with. so we’ll say the letter F.  Just because.  Thanks Sesame Street.

Anyway, so at lunch today I’m eating my chili and a coworker comes in, usually she’ll get coffee and head back to her desk.  I keep watching podcasts on my Zune as the soap opera plays behind me.  She apparently asked if anyone watched the memorial service, and another coworker chimes in that she didn’t particularly like it, she though the president was speaking through both sides of his mouth.  First coworker looks up from the coffee pot and asks for clarification.

“Well I think he’s more Muslim than he lets on.”

At this point, I asked what was wrong with that, but she had continued on and missed my question and by the time she stopped again, I buried myself back in the comedy I was watching to calm down.

Now, I’ll look at that comment for just a moment.  Is it like a percentage thing?  How would someone split up holidays?  And yes, people (probably more often than we think) bring in parts of various faiths and make what works for them.  That’s great.  If it works for them, I’d love to hear about it, but it’s their faith, not mine.  Contrary to popular belief, we’re not a Christian nation, heaven help us if we were (I was going to add something about excluding the Episcopalians, but of course, that works for me, not for everybody else, and I wouldn’t want it to work for everyone anyway).  So often people rail against countries in the middle east with a state religion that they don’t believe in or agree with.  How would that be different if it were the U.S.?  Would it just magically be better because it would be Christian?  I’ll go out on a limb and say it wouldn’t be.

Also buried in that statement is the prejudice that Muslims are inherently bad, or maybe wrong.  I’m not sure, again, maybe it’s a mix of both.  But sadly, I guess I’m used to hearing that at work, at least with some members of this group it seems.

So she continues, “He should not have been quoting from the Old Testament since he’s Muslim.”

And I’m going to ignore the theological fallacy, I don’t have the time or patience to get into the basis of the Abrahamic religions (nor can I get to the correct spelling.  Work with me here!).

So here’s a few more rules that I’ve come up with:

• Only the English may quote Shakespeare
• Only Germans and Americans may quote Einstein
• Only the French may visit, take photos of and ascend the Eiffel Tower
• Only the Irish may listen to Bono and U2 (if this goes into affect I may renounce my Irish Heritage just so I don’t have to listen to him anymore.  I kid, I kid, but only a little)
• Only the Lebanese and English may listen to Mika

The list could easily go on for just about forever, but I’ll stop there, I’ve added enough snark to this.