Where is Osama bin Laden

Just finished watching this documentary and it ended up being more thought provoking about a particular idea that I initially was not expecting to even come up. My overall feeling about the documentary was that it rightfully expressed that it doesn't matter where Bin Laden is because the conditions that gave birth to him and the conditions that make people follow people like him are still going to be there regardless of whether he lives or dies. It's true that he has become symbol of this radical movement where everything that is western is bad and ought to be destroyed, and removing this symbol would slow this kind of movement. But this radical movement is not going to die away if poverty is all over the place and people who express this radical thinking are the only ones who are around to offer some hope for the future (on earth as well as after life).

Anyways, about the interesting idea that I mentioned in my opening statements; there is one piece of american culture that is digested and enjoyed by even the most radical groups of individuals all over the arab culture, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan. Can anyone guess what that is? It's wrestling. Yes, American wrestling, which is thought by the general populace in the U.S. to be something that is on T.V. for the simple minded folks. But this is the piece of american culture that is accepted to the point that not only do they watch it, but they even sell merchandice (T - shirts for e.g.) and publicly wear it. In fact, I saw in the documentary one young individual wear a T - shirt about Jihad and a few scenes later a street store owner selling t - shirts with Rey mysterio, John Cena, Kane, undertaker, and other wrestling personalities. And I imagine they watch wrestling and enjoy it for the same reasons as american wrestling afficionados. Sure, at the most basic level, we enjoy it because includes these really interesting characters that look like suer humans and it contains violence. But when looked a little deeper wrestling shows also tend to contain storylines that flesh out these characters and their motivations for fighting. Various characters represent various archetypes, a hero fighting for all that's fair and good, a villain fighting for glory, a black and white character that's sometimes good and sometimes bad, among others. The storylines aren't that deep but they are good enough to express these viewpoints across.

I can say a lot more, but let me end this post by saying that this is one thing that we share with the muslim world. There are intellectuals who say that if we want to find something common with them, we have to analyze the chirtian and muslim holy texts and show that we are really all praying to the same god (chirtians and muslims at least). But this line of reasoning would be attractive to only those who actually know about these texts in good detail. Most people just don't care about religion to the extent that they actually put effort in understanding the metaphors expressed by these books. As Sartre would say, they are acting in "bad faith". But we have a common ground with our enjoyment of wrestling. If WWE puts effort in creating a face muslim character and the person playing that character has enough of personality to pull it off to the extent that people cheer for him instead of mindlessly chanting "U.S.A" whenever he wrestles, think about how the muslim world would actually change their perception about the U.S. Wrestling is a greatly underutilized tool that is being ignored by people who want to change american perception around the world. Most of the time, it's the simple ideas that are most effective.