But I’d say follow you’re guts. if it feels safe to write to her, than do it, if not, I’m sure that she, more than anybody else will understand and feel empathy with your situation.

good luck on your immigration battles. you are in my thoughts.

I’m so paranoid about writing to Aafia Siddiqui. I’m trying to become a permanent resident in the U.K. (I’m American married to a British citizen) and I keep thinking they’ll come after me for writing to an alleged “terrorist.” I know that sounds stupid but seriously, can you blame me?? Do you think that would happen or is it safe to write to her and send her books from Amazon.com??

“it is, as I said, an intentional lack of interest in Muslims and Arabs. And sorry, but there’s no excuse for it.”

I’m clearly saying there is no excuse for the racism in the “intentional lack of interest in Muslims and Arabs”. I don’t know what reasons you may be searching for to explain why things are the way they are in the blogosphere. I just gave you a reason: “intentional” racism against Arabs and Muslims. Racism and hypocrisy ARE inexcuseable. You may see other “logical” reasons, but both reasons you cited still actually come down to racism in the end.

Bq wrote: ” I also think part of it is the general lack of interest among Americans in things that relate to the world “out there” and foreign policy despite living in a neo-imperialist state.”

I am NOT talking about Americans in general. Yes, average Americans are exactly what Bq just described. But I was very SPECIFIC that I am not talking about average Americans but very specifically about the hypocrisy in the PoC blogosphere.

By you shifting it to being about how Americans in general are ignorant of these things, you are shifting the conversation away from putting any responsibility upon the so-called progressive PoC blogosphere. In that way you are may not be excusing it, but you are comparing apples to oranges and it comes off like completely ignoring/invalidating my statement. You did not in any way respond to or engage with what I was actually saying, but turned it around to how Americans in a general sense are ignorant.

I too appreciate that Bq can express herself in few words, but it doesn’t change the fact that those few words were irrelevent to what I was trying to express, and thereby pretty much implied that there was no meaning worth contemplating in what I had said.