Thursday, August 2, 2012

About Beards

Trying to keep up a firm voice the guy explained the Syrian state TV - also known as regime TV - that he and the wild bunch around him are serious-taken fearless religious extremists when a grenade impact only a few blocks away shuddered the whole group til' the bones leaving them more or less spechless back.

I'm describing this hilarious outtake from the regime media files not to figure out their dilettantism, no. The dude interviewed was the only one wearing a long beard. At least that one went good for the regime campaigners presenting the public the classical stereotype of a mujahed. Admittedly our interview partner playing a rough fundamentalist appeared more like a hippie version of it.

Show the people guys wearing long beards - they even haven't to say much - and a lot of the viewers will still connect that with radical islamism. 'Salafis!' they will think, comment, shout out.

Wrong. Sensibilize your perception please. A beard alone makes not a potential terrorist. Like a bold head makes no racist.

It'a dirty clichee still surrounding in our brains keeping us away from looking closer, behind the presented façade, the orchestrated curtain.

Captured regime soldiers told being forced not to shave their beards. The beard itself has become a 100% propaganda tool and is therefore not longer an exclusive argument to raise concerns or fears.

'A man without a beard is like a lion without a mane' according to an Arab proverb. And in Latin America your full beard lets you appear as politically left-sided.

It's hard enough to fight the sectarian myth and the conspiracy myth. So please let us all avoid in common a beard myth.

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