Our Moroccan guide, Zak, confirmed the setting of the sun with an i-phone app, then took a long drink.  “This is the best sip of water you will ever have,” he said, grinning.

Our guide couldn’t eat or drink all day because it was Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset.  Zak  couldn’t have even a sip water while schlepping our luggage,  making sure we all made it on the bus, finding “happy places” for our bathroom stops, and accompanying us to restaurants.  He had gotten up at 3:30 that morning to eat his only meal until his cell phone confirmed that the sun had set.  Nothing by mouth for 16 hours.

.But Zak never stopped smiling, cracking jokes, discretely checking up on those of us (most of us) who had travelers’ diarrhea.

But according to a friend’s Facebook feed, which I read while in Morocco, I should not trust this person because he was a Muslim.

***************

We were in Marrakesh, Zak’s hometown, the night before Ramadan began.  Zak had called his mother and asked if he could bring his American tour group over for dinner.  Sixteen Americans!  Not only did she agree– eagerly, according to Zak– but she wanted to know what we’d like her to prepare.  Zak suggested some choices, and our group decided on lamb.

Our tour group entered a door flanked by noisy street vendors.  We followed Zak up a tall, narrow flight of stairs.  After we removed our shoes on the landing, Zak led us into the narrow front room.  There were beautiful carpets on the floor, lustrous tiles on the wall, and a glistening chandelier suspended from the high ceiling.  The periphery of the room was lined with cushioned benches.  The room probably could have held fifty.  All the Moroccan homes we’d seen, even poor ones, had these narrow reception rooms.

Zak’s mother, whom we had heard so much about, wore a hijab (head scarf), a jalabba (long gown), large glasses, and a warm, toothy smile.  Zak, the baby of the family (his next older sibling was 13 years his senior), was a self-professed Mama’s boy.  We had heard all about his mom, and she was all that he had said.

Zak’s mother and late father were Berbers (the indigenous, migrant people of Morocco) who came to the city decades ago and first made their living selling spices and jewelry.  They were illiterate, yet most of their seven children, including Zak, were university graduates.  His mother had recently taken classes at the mosque to learn how to read and write.

Our group sat on the cushioned seats, admiring the architecture and appointments of this home that Zak’s father had built.  Throughout the evening, an endless stream of Zak’s siblings and nieces and nephews came In to meet us, all offering handshakes and cheek kisses while wearing broad grins.  Zak was a favorite uncle; all evening little kids jumped into his arms or onto his lap.

One nephew came around with a large teapot full of warm water which he poured over our hands, as another held a pan to capture the water and give us a towel.

In the midst of this hospitality, that Facebook post nagged me.  These were dangerous people?

Tea in a field–No matter where we went, no matter how impoverished our hosts, they always insisted on serving tea.

Our group munched from huge trays of dates and nuts that were placed on the low tables, and we drank the obligatory mint tea that was served everywhere, even in mud huts in the desert.  There was no alcohol, as Zak and his family were observant Muslims.

After our appetizer, Zak’s sisters  brought in steaming platters of food: tagine lamb, couscous, and warm salads spiced with cumin and cinnamon. The tagine lamb, cooked long and slow in a shallow earthenware dish with a conical lid, was aromatic and succulent. Mama kept insisting, “Akthar ‘Akthar” (More! More!).  I couldn’t eat another bite, but 25-year-old Zak kept plucking pieces of meat from the platter with his hand.  (“I hope you don’t mind,” he said to me.  “This is how we eat with family.”) Dessert was orange slices dusted with cinnamon, what we’d had after almost all our meals.  (Try it!  Delicious!)

After our meal, we talked with many of Zak’s siblings, most extensively with the two sisters and their families who lived with Zak and his mother.

Zak’s vivacious fourteen-year-old niece, who spoke perfect English, sat down next to me. She did not wear a hijab or jalabba, unlike her mother, and she said she never would. By this point in the trip, we weren’t surprised, as we had met several female university students who also said they would never wear this traditional garb which, they said, was cultural, not religious.

I said to the girl, “It must be terrible fasting during Ramadan while going to school.  Is everyone whining, ‘I am staaarving.'”

She responded, seriously, “No, that would completely defeat the purpose of being closer to God.  Ramadan is when you try to be your best, your kindest.  It is not about you.  It is about your relationship with God.”

Zak had bragged about this brilliant niece who had just won a speech contest refuting the perception of Muslims as terrorists.  Zak’s opinion was that no terrorist could call himself a true Muslim.  I wrote to my Facebook friend and told her what Zak said.  She insisted that he was lying to me.  “Do you believe me?” she asked.

It was hard to hold two images in my head:  this loving family juxtaposed with the video my Facebook friend had posted of Muslim children singing a violent song.  It was harder still to accept the friend’s alleged motivation for posting it:  “to encourage people to educate themselves on EVERYTHING.”

I responded that she didn’t post videos of white supremacists espousing Christianity while advocating the annhilation of Jews and non-whites.   I was not alone in the Facebook pushback, but many of her allies agreed that we could not trust Muslims.

I described on my friend’s timeline what I was experiencing in Morocco, the outpouring of love, acceptance, and generosity.  About the strong family ties.  About Moroccans’ devotion to God.  About what the people had told me about their faith, and Ramadan, in particular.

Her response to me was that they were lying to me, that “the Koran is permitting them to lie to you right now.”

She cited violence in the Koran, but she rationalized and discounted the violence in the Bible.  Had I read the Bible? she challenged me.  Yes, I had, but I didn’t answer and decided at that point to leave the fray.

This Facebook conversation stayed with me.  Like a pair of too-tight shoes, I could not stop thinking about my discomfort.  I thought about it when I had tea in the desert with a nomadic Berber, his wife, and their one-month-old baby.  I thought about it when I visited the one remaining synagogue in Fez.  I thought about it when I heard the muezzin’s Call to Prayer. I thought about it when I passed the public square  where thousands of Muslims were praying before breaking their fasts.   And I especially thought about it while drinking mint tea with Zak’s family.

It bothered me a lot, but with age comes wisdom, maybe.  I prayed mightily not to get in the scrum of this Facebook exchange, to wait until I could give a reasoned response to this FB friend, this lovely young woman I once taught.  And here it is.

I am not a fool.  I know there is evil in the world.  There are atrocities committed in the name of God, the God of every religion.

But I have traveled the world and found little but kindness and empathy:

Dining with a Vietcong general who hated all war and held no grudge against Americans.
Drinking tea and sucking weird Japanese candy with a family struggling to care for their adult disabled son.
Meditating with a Japanese Buddhist monk.
High-fiving a Moroccan teenager who sang me his national anthem.
Wrapping my head around our Cuban guide’s description of Animism.
Laughing with my Cambodian guide, Ting, who claimed that it was the cool season, even though it was 107 degrees.
Sympathizing with Boniface, our Tanzanian guide, whose six siblings had died from AIDS.
Weeping with the man whose mother was killed in Hiroshima.
Thanking the Serbian woman who shared, through a translator, her meatloaf recipe.

Janet, our Cuban guide

Berber Nomad

Boniface, our Tanzanian guide

Vietcong Soldiers

Moroccan boys who sang to me

I never once felt fearful in Morocco.  Certainly not in Zak’s home or in the Medina or in the Sahara or in a mosque.

I don’t believe you can say that all 1.8 billion Muslims fill-in-the-blank, or that all 2.2 billion Christians fill-in-the-blank, or that all fill-in-the-blank are fill-in-the-blank.

I contend that you can divide people into two groups just by asking this question:  Are humans good or bad?  Don’t allow them any wiggle room, no qualifiers like “more” or “most” or “usually” or “it depends.”

I choose to believe that people are good, that goodness is the default setting for mankind.  I have seen it all over the world and I believe what I see, what I feel.  People everywhere are just trying to take care of their families and give their children better lives. And they’re looking for connection, not isolation.

If I post a video, image. or link on Facebook, it will be one demonstrating this goodness which abounds in the world.*

So, no, FB friend.  I don’t believe Zak and his Moroccan family were lying to me.  I believe they are people of peace. I believe they respected me, that they liked me. This is an optimistic world view; I admit that.  If I am wrong, so be it.  I would rather err on the side of trust, love, and inclusion rather than suspicion, hate, and division.

There are 7.7 billion humans on this planet.  Let’s focus on how we are alike.  We’re in this together.

*Here is an article that describes how New Zealand women donned headscarves to show empathy with the victims of a terrorist shooting in New Zealand.  And here is a video about Muslims visiting churches in solidarity with Christians. After the deadly white supremacist rally in Charleston, hundreds gathered to protest racism.

This is a related Blogpost:  A Horse is Not a Dog