Wrong Perceptions

So, currently I'm in the middle of no where in Syria and can't wait to get back to Damascus tomorrow. Don't get me wrong this place is amazing. Its a hilly place with lots of green, you can see the bedouins and their tents every now and then, and then spot a shepherd with his herd of sheep, feeding on the new grown grass. The sunrise is magical I must say. But I think I found out today that staying for a prolonged period of time away from civilization is not really my thing, especially when the closest shawarma place is 130 Km away (just kidding restaurants selling shawarma are not that important to me...or are they?). I will post a photo of this place and let you people judge for yourself; why not encourage tourism to this country, ey?

So the point of this post is that, yesterday morning I was driving back to the place we are staying with this english guy Im working with and he tells me about this incident that happened to him when he was working in Algeria. So the Story goes,

"I used to work in Algeria in this facility in a remote place in the deserts. The facility was close by a small village, and although we (i.e. the English gentleman and the people working with him) wanted to go check out that village; we were advised not to and were told it was not safe. When my work was done I left and went back to England. On the same day I get a phone call and was told that two of my colleagues were killed by men from that village"

So I asked,"really??!! how come? what's the reason, why did they do it??"

He replies hesitantly," well they were fundamental islamists and thought that anyone who is not muslim should be killed. They beheaded a French guy and a swiss guy but the third one managed to convince them that he was Muslim so they let him go."

All I could say then was,"what a shame."

The story and any discussion ended there, simply because we reached our camp and had parked, so that is an automatic end to any discussion that anyone would have been having in a car (right?).

Anyways, I felt like I had to ask him what he thought about Islam and what not but didn't get the chance to. I wanted to argue that he shouldn't get any wrong perceptions about Islam because of that incident, and wanted to tell him that just like extremists exist in any country and in any time/culture/religion, for example the KKK,extremism and extremists would always be a minority in a minority, because I'm sure that even when racism in the US was at its worst levels, many people at that time would not go around killing people with darker skin colour on a regular basis otherwise there won't be any African-Americans left in America. I am not sure if he has the wrong perception about Islam, he is living in Syria where the majority population are Muslim, but I just find it frustrating having to go around telling people with wrong perceptions about Islam that "we (as muslims) are not evil". It is a tedious job trying to get people to know what something is really about. I could only imagine how tough it was for messengers and prophets or even revolutionary figures of our time had to go through. To continuously be guiding people requires a person with such strong commitment and endurance to keep on going.