Back to the business of identitification
Identity is assumed but must be ‘authentic’ to be respected, whether a religion, state, color, tribe or ‘gender.’ It is examined every meeting.
The Muslim parents seem to stay inside a lot.
They were Berbers, not the Arabs who once drove them into the mountains or enslaved them, orexiles in the Balkans, from Turkey or Syria. Are these neighbors and mothers still illiterate, with their kids pestered and excluded from play at school and from the job-market? These few kids cannot be ‘jihadists,’ if they have not been forced to ‘choose sides’ by their mums, their surrounding schoolkids, colleagues, or worse. By now there are more Surinam kids than there are Muslimat the schools. The Muslim form bands.
‘We,’ even less the former Surinamers, do not ‘like’ them and hardly communicate, vice versa, unless there is some ‘authority’ that ‘tells us to.’ They and their parents ‘prove’ and force their old toddler ‘decisions’ or ‘conclusions’ (un-) to eachother, when there is also other ‘authority’ that ‘tells them to.’ They or their parents probably learned the Q’ur-an, but possibly not to write. We see their mothers at the ‘bazaar,’ where we sometimes discuss what’s on offer in a cheerful way. It seems some are already ‘coming-out,’ or rather ‘in’ and they speak Dutch and deserve some help, even respect and not just service-jobs or subsidized jobs asguards or police, where ‘revenge’ is on the rise. Only maybe a hand-full very obsessed ones might deserve suspicion. We’re in an unplanned but never the less selfmade figuration, in which we force each-other into respective ‘roles, ’‘statuses’ and ‘shared identities.’ It is not just the ‘old group’ that has more than religious, or ‘spiritual’ interests. By themselves they do not try to change these childish assumptions, unless some ‘higher authority,’ i.e., a ‘hero of the clan,’ senior relative, priest, teacher, systematically deescalates these known ‘differences’ and ‘likes,’ that are only entrenchedand ‘pimped’ by the going gossip and in the ‘social media,’ that lack boundaries.‘IS’ is kept ‘alive’ in the ‘news’ this way. They must be bands of exiles orrefugees from the east or south, armed by oil-states. Making people here or there conscious of this, cannot be left to ‘the laity,’ but Church-, Mosque and Case-work must keep behind-the-scenes cronies, volunteers and ‘experience workers’ in check and will have to do their jobs vocally and confidently, not leaving its’ ‘performance’ or jobs to be directed by ‘volunteers.’ So here is what ‘charisma’ entails and anybody knows the meaning of ‘even-handedness,’ when a ‘guest’ among ‘other’peoples bubble, nations, pride-groups, families or similar people, which N.Elias calls figurations.
I will not start on the ‘jihadi-’ suspicions and fears that abide, alongside the broken dreams and the obvious anger about ‘this shaming.’
I travelled across east and northern Africa as a kid and could then get along fine with the ‘majority of kids:’
They were good at soccer and I was not. They bent over backwards to play soccer with me and taught me to pass to front-runners, which was in both our interest. It was fun among Chagga’s (Moshi, Tanzania) and Dinka (Juba, Sudan) even when I had no sweets or money: We were a proud herd and we were fed.
