By L. Crane
I don’t know how many of you out there were treated to the same experience, but I had the misfortune of being privy to the local morning news several times this week, as photos of model planes and a blank anonymous avatar frame was shown while the phrase “homegrown terrorist” was repeated over and over to describe http://www.examiner.com/domestic-crimes-in-national/home-grown-u-s-terrorist-charged-al-qaeda-plot-to-attack-pentagon-and-capitol-video-photo-1 who apparently planned to target the Capitol and Pentagon. Not even the name “Rezwan Ferdaus” was enough to dissuade them. It took photos showing a man so obviously of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent that even a Kindergartner would notice to make them drop usage of the phrase. Apparently they have no idea what the word “home” means to understand their effect. Ironically, each misuse of the term only showcases how place of birth or piece of paper does not a citizen – a vested community member – make.
The term “homegrown terrorist” is an offensive oxymoron, implying that what is at the heart of American society birthed the human monstrosity the media has decided to highlight this week or next, the monster du jour. Only Islamic jihadists are anything but “homegrown” here – with less than a handful of exceptions, they are first or second generation citizens of Third World cultures where Islam dominates. Or they are one of the few antisocial exceptions who became extremists precisely because they could not fit in with their home culture – the dominant value system of this country, which is anything but terror-oriented. The homegrown non-Muslims like Timothy McVeigh and Andrew Joseph Stack targeted the IRS, not their community members. Despite their mindsets and effect, what drew their focus and action was what they felt struck at the core of “home” – the Federal equivalent of mob debt-enforcing thugs. There can never be a “homegrown terrorist”, any more than Charles Manson was a homegrown terrorist, or Charles Whitman, the Texas A&M University shooter. Their acts glowingly brand them as outsiders, the antithesis of belonging. To those of us who understand what “home” means, what community means, the phrase elicits a bitter laugh – or offense – at the implication.
Since the media doesn’t understand, “homegrown” means “from the home”, specifically something “grown” or “cultivated” from that place. And “home” is a special, if not outright sacred, concept – a place of much greater significance than physical dwelling, as implied by the phrases “a house is not a home” and “home is where the heart is”. Before the media attempted to hijack the adjective, “homegrown” was applied to things like tomatoes, corn, beans, produce cultivated at home. Although it’s been applied to things like lacrosse, the point is something “of/from where we belong” or “where we live” in a more than physical sense. Just like the words “hometown”, “homespun”, “homemade”, “homegrown” too refers to something created or brought into being in a process that stems from the hands and heart.
Islamic terrorists do not, not in this society, not in this country. And the homegrown citizens inspired to violent acts are either criminals or driven to desperation by economic strangulation, the last straw before the violence often involving divorce – the removal of the last reason for putting up with the slaving and suffering, their spouse and children. So those “terrorists” are “system-grown”, which is about as antithetical to “homegrown” as you can get.
Rezwan Ferdaus and his attraction to Islam did not come from the American home for him to be “homegrown”. He was influenced by a foreign ideology, born of a foreign culture, across the sea. And looking at his face, it’s not surprising he’d be drawn to the religion of his ancestral “home”, the trappings of a place and identity that called him. Where you come from – your family, their values, their ethnicity, that with which you organically self-identify – defines home much more than place or paper ever could.