Someone’s putting her foot down about a stamp

LOLITA HARPER

It is that time of year again. Time to give thanks for the good

fortune of having clothes on your back, food in your cupboards and a

healthy spirit running through your veins.

It is a time of thanksgiving, when people come together in joy and

festivity. A time to pray and be grateful and to distribute your

wealth to those less fortunate.

So why is such a holiday striking a chord with people?

Because I am not talking about Thanksgiving or Christmas. The

above holiday is the Eid -- a festival celebrated during the new moon

at the conclusion of Ramadan. And Ramadan is an Islamic holiday, or a

Muslim holiday, as many refer to it.

The United States Postal Service has released a commemorative

stamp to honor this holiday. It can be found in your local post

office, right next to stamps that honor Christmas, Hanukkah and

Kwanza.

It is boiling the blood of some of our most respected local

residents.

Russ Niewiarowski, a west Santa Ana Heights resident who is vocal

on issues of annexation and the airport, forwarded to the Daily Pilot

inbox a mass e-mail calling for a boycott of this holiday stamp.

Among the many inflammatory statements in the e-mail was one

reminding people of the “Muslim” bombings of the American embassies

in Africa, the military barracks in Saudi Arabia, the USS Cole and,

of course, Sept. 11, 2001 -- still a gaping emotional wound in the

hearts of most Americans.

The e-mail links all those terrorist attacks with the Eid stamp

and calls for people to “adamantly and vocally boycott this stamp ...

. To use this stamp would be a slap in the face to all those

Americans who died at the hands of those whom this stamp honors.”

I called Russ and asked him why he forwarded this to the paper. He

told me it was just for our information.

“It seems very, like, scary,” he said in a phone interview on

Friday. “If that is true, it makes you wonder what has really

happened to the foundation of the country.”

What is so scary about a holiday? I asked. Especially one that

serves as a celebration for Muslims who have completed the fasting of

Ramadan and allows them to “express their thanks to Allah by means of

distributing alms among the poor and needy on the first of Eid,”

according to the Web site of the National Islaam Organization.

“I don’t know much about the holiday, or the people; I just think

that, as a country, we should not be commemorating and remembering

everything from other countries,” Russ said. “I don’t know that I can

support a country whose underlying philosophy believes that we are

the devil ... . It would be like having a commemorative stamp for

Adolf Hitler.”

Whoa. What? First, Eid is a religious holiday, not limited to any

one group of people, or one country, etc. The holiday is also very

popular in India and guess where else: here in the United States. You

don’t have to be born in the Middle East and have smooth olive skin

to believe in the teachings of the Koran.

Rev. Dennis Short, whom I spoke to later that afternoon, confirmed

that.

Short said he was proud of the postal service for recognizing one

of the great religions of the world -- “one that has many adherents

here in Orange County and a number of those who participate in the

Newport-Mesa Irvine Interfaith Council.”

(Short is the president of that council.)

Russ and I discussed various views on freedoms and somehow got on

the topic of the misguided food pyramid and the airport -- of course.

But the gist of Russ’s argument was how the country seems to be

catering to extremely liberal opinions and honoring everything under

the sun.

“I don’t mind Jews celebrating their holidays or other people

celebrating their beliefs, but we have to get back to the foundation

of this country,” he said.

“Like, freedom of religion?” I asked.

“Well, right,” he said.

Toward the end of the conversation he stopped himself and said,

“You know, I am going to have to do more research on this before I

continue this conversation.”

Russ agreed that blindly forwarding such vehement messages without

taking the time to learn exactly what it is that is so “scary.”

“Most people in this busy world take certain information and

forward it and believe it as gospel; just look at what South County

did with the El Toro airport,” he said.

Whoa, come back to me, Russ -- let’s stay on topic.

“I simply trusted the person who send it to me,” he said. “It

seemed to make sense.”

And who sent it to him? Former Costa Mesa Councilwoman Heather

Somers. The reputed watchdog. The one who recently had an

unsuccessful run at a seat on the Orange County Water District.

She confirmed that she had sent it when I talked to her Friday

afternoon. She went on to talk about the sanctity of the holiday

season and used the term Christendom over and over.

“This is a Christmas holiday season, and here we are celebrating a

faction of a religion that is doing everything it can to annihilate

Christianity,” Somers said during the calm portion of the

conversation. “It is not true of all, but it is definitely true of a

faction, and for us to celebrate that faction of a Muslim religion

and celebrate that heritage during a Christian season is

blasphemous.”

I asked if she could separate zealous fanatics from the true

followers of a religion -- such as most Christians distance

themselves from the supposed “Christian” bombings of abortion clinics

and the supposed “Christian” emphasis of the Ku Klux Klan. Somers

suddenly got defensive.

“I don’t even want to be quoted anymore,” she said. “If this is

where you are going with this, I don’t even want to be quoted. It

wasn’t for the Pilot to see anyway. I forwarded this to my Christian

friends, who see things the same way I do. I don’t even know how you

got ahold of it.”

So there it ends. Well, it didn’t really end there, but that is

all I am ethically allowed to report. Trust me, your not missing

anything profound.

In an effort to check my own Christianity, I called Short. He

quelled my fears and restored my faith in my faith.

“To blame the vast majority of the devoutly religious and

peace-loving adherents to Islam, I feel, is just not right,” Short

said. “That is just amazing.”

He also mentioned the bombings and the KKK and said neither of

those is representative of Christianity and it wouldn’t be fair to

judge Christians by those acts.

Eid is also regarded as a day of remembrance, a day of harvest, a

day of forgiveness and a day of peace. I suggest we all embrace the

goodness of that message and remember the innocent lives lost in this

war against terrorism, forgive one another for our closed-minded

views and spread peace -- not venomous mass e-mails.

Perhaps Russ said it best:

“The world is full of misguided fanatics.”

* LOLITA HARPER writes columns Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

She may be reached at (949) 574-4275 or by e-mail at

lolita.harper@latimes.com.