Some Thoughts on a Culture of Violence

One of my Omani coworkers is preparing for a business trip to the US and came to me with some concerns last week -- she's worried about how dangerous the US is and her parents are concerned about her facing violence there.  I started to scoff at her concerns, but then thought of the most recent act of senseless violence in Santa Barbara.  And I thought of the Sikh man in New York who was almost beaten to death by teenagers accusing him of being a Muslim fanatic.  And I thought of how acts of violence in the US are so commonplace now that we're not even surprised by them (though we do still manage to feel appalled).

When I was preparing to move to Oman, my friends and family were concerned about my safety here.  I assuaged their concerns by telling them that Oman is one of the safest countries in the world.  Despite my cited statistics, many still felt that terrorism would be rife in the Middle East.  And while that may be the case in other parts of the Middle East, it's certainly not the case here, and sadly I'm more likely to be the victim of a terrorist attack in the US than here.  Other friends raised concerns about some cultural acts of violence in the Middle East that we occasionally read about in the news -- women having acid thrown in their faces, women being stoned to death by brothers and fathers, tribal clashes, etc. Apart from the fact that this would be extremely rare in Oman, I was never concerned for my own safety by these stories since these are aspects of certain cultures and I'm not a part of their culture, merely an observer.

It occurred to me today, while reading about the Santa Barbara shooter, that it's important to make distinctions between cultural violence and random violence.  Each culture accepts certain levels of violence, which other cultures may find appalling (for a moment take "right and wrong" out of the equation and just look at examples).  The death penalty in the US; euthanasia in certain European countries; being stoned to death for adultery in Yemen; genital mutilation of women in Africa; male circumcision; abortion, etc.  Some cultures may find the death penalty cruel and horrific, yet the American culture has, for the most part, accepted the practice.  These could be classified as cultural violence and, to the extent that certain cultures have practices that the majority of the rest find abhorrent, we should focus on education and providing people with alternatives to such violence.  Not because our culture is better or theirs is worse, but because by reducing some of these violences people can have better qualities of life.

Yet what we see so often in America is not cultural violence but random violence.  We've seen so many school shootings, movie theatre shootings, bombings at sporting events and so on that we've become immune to the fact that only in America does random violence occur with such frequency and severity.  From a foreigner's perspective, it may even start to seem that the random violence in America has become cultural violence.  And that's a sad state of affairs indeed.

So when my coworker expressed concerns about how dangerous America is, I didn't have a good response.  I tried to make her feel better as best I could and then gave her advice that made me feel ashamed.  I advised her not to wear her abaya -- there are still too many ignorant Americans who think that all Muslims are terrorists and I didn't want her to call unnecessary attention to herself while traveling in the US. 

For all of you that worried about my safety here, feel better knowing that I'm very safe indeed.  I only wish I could honestly tell my coworker that America is just as safe.