Over the past couple of days I have started using this app called TikTok. It is an app designed so that you can create short videos for people to watch. This app is very addictive and people can spend hours a day on it. My internet hasn’t been working very well recently so I haven’t been on the app to much recently but I can see myself getting addicted very quickly. A few days ago I did make two videos that got taken down for being inappropriate so I hope my account doesn’t get banned because I want to keep making videos and since I am being quarantined by my parents I won’t have much else to do in the coming weeks.

Recently, there has been a lot of controversy in France about a new swimsuit that was released called the Burkini. Local Mayors in France have been banning the swimsuit for a variety of reasons that are still a little bit murky to the general public. Some have said they are banning it because of hygiene and others have stated it is because of recent terrorist activity. Some have been straight forward and said they are banning burkinis because they show religious extremism which goes against French “freedom” and “social harmony”. These events do not seem just or fair at all to me they are just acts of racism and discrimination which I do not think is ok and should not be tolerated. I understand if they are scared of acts of terrorism but this is the wrong way to go about this.

I choose to look at the second chapter in Lawrence In Arabia. in this chapter we learn stuff about his childhood and the way in which he was raised so we get a sense of how he came to be the man that people knew him as. Coming from a middle class British family, he attended an all boys school, and he liked to ride bikes. The story of how he got the name Lawrence is very interesting. His fathers last name was Thompson but after having an affair he was forced to live under a new name. Following this he lived in 6 different places by the age of 8 their family had finally decided to stay in one spot and that was Oxford. It’s interesting learning the backstory to peoples lives when reading about them because then you can analyze and start to connect dots on why people actually did the things they did.

Ijeoma Oluo’s book goes in depth on the amount of systematic racism that we see in not only our country but all around the world today and it is terrible and unacceptable. This is similar to our course because we are learning about the Islamic world an the West, the west being oppressive over the Islamic world. With all of the negative stereotypes that there are towards Muslim people and people from the middle east it shocking that we see this in our society today. But like it is talked about in the book So you want to talk about race? this treatment is systematic, it is programmed into peoples brains through things like the media from such a young age.

Lawrence of Arabia was a second lieutenant for the British Military during WW1. In his time he aided in beginning the Arab revolts against Turkey. After getting to know Sherif Feisal by fighting with him, he suggested that him joining the Egyptian Expeditionary Force because he could be of good value. Lawrence then joined Feisal and his forces, they were very successful in cutting off supplies going into Tukey, as well as seizing the city of Damascus. After this stint in the military Lawrence then attempted to help Feisal represent Arabs in the peace conferences, this did not happen. He became a very popular after this and even creating his own play. Lawrence Didn’t like all of the glory so he joined the Royal Air Force under a fake identity, he used the fake identity until he died at the age of 46. I think that he was probably a really good people person and left a good impression on people as well as a great soldier and leader which lead to people loving him even if it was not totally deserved.

Since I broke my leg in July, which was now over eight months ago my fitness has decreased significantly. Especially when it comes to my stamina while running. I have not been on a run in over eight months and now my stamina is terrible. Last night my friend from down the street texted me to come meet him at the intersection to get something he had left at my house so I grabbed it and started running towards the intersection because it was dark out and I don’t like walking on dark streets during the middle of the night. By the time that I got back to my house I was completely winded and it took me like 5 minuets to catch my breath. This is not good considering I am supposed to be able to run for 90 minuets in a soccer game and I just got winded after running halfway around the block. So this has now motivated me to start running again.

I love to play and watch soccer. The team that I support is called Manchester United, as you can probably guess they are located in Manchester, England. This is my favorite team because it is my dads favorite team so when I was growing up I just naturally liked whatever he did as most kids do. When I was younger the team was really good and would always win the league and go far in the champions league(where all the best teams in Europe come together and play each other). However in the past 5-6 years the team has been performing very poorly and can’t seem to get it sorted out. They have hired and then promptly fired a few managers in this time as well as going through countless different players as well as hundreds of millions of dollars, which is insane to think about. Next season I am hoping that the team can sign some new talent and bring the club back to its former glory.

One chapter from this section of the book that I thought was interesting was chapter 17. The chapter was titled Iphone Snapshots and Bombs, this caught my attention first because we had been talking about how during all of this war and fighting these ISIS soldiers still were using smart phones. On page 176 it said, “I’d met the Artist on Twitter-where else?-on which I’d started reporting in English nine months prior, on the IED workshops, the massacres, the graffiti that adorned walls each night, the gifts of unknown hands. Mine was perhaps the only English Twitter account in Raqqa. The artist was a journalist, and I would occasionally give her a quote for an article. Then she drew me for my birthday,…” This part of the chapter stood out to me because even though all this violence is going on he was still able to make a friend through social media which is a western invention which is kind of ironic since ISIS was does not like western culture yet as we can see it helped Marwan.

In this chapter the three men travel to Afghanistan to meet with the Taliban. When they get there they have to change their names. After this they talk for a little bit about how different they are from each other, Abu Abdul-Rahman talks about his love for drugs, luxury items, and women which is concerning to the other men because they all see those things as sins. After this they are brought into a room where they meet Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden is very kind to them and was expecting them before they came so he knew who they were. There is a lot of emphasis placed on the fact that Bin Laden is a very tall man. At the end of the chapter Bin Laden brings the men outside and makes them play volleyball, with the height advantage he destroys them repeatedly until he eventually says Allah desired them to lose. 

This was a very interesting chapter especially towards the end when the three of them talked about how they did not actually like Bin Laden, it seems that if you were going to go through with a terrorist attack for him you would actually like him and support his ideas and ways of going about things.

Silent Night, Deadly Night is a movie about a person who dresses up as Santa Claus and then goes around killing a bunch of people. Atta believes that the movie is a strong metaphor for two different things in the western world and western culture, he thinks it represents the materialistic greed that he believes westerners have as well as the poor treatment the Islamic World gets from the western world. giving us a look at the mindset Atta has when it comes to political matters, seeing through the stereotypes that people see in the media. He does not like how the Islamic world is treated but he sees it and understands where it is coming from.