Morocco

Considering the blossoming civil war in Libya and the wave of anti-authoritarian protests that are sweeping all of North Africa and the Muslim world, it would be naive of me to give current travel advice for a vacation in Marrakech. While Morocco is a very stable country and its protests have been limited to calls for constitutional democracy rather than absolute rule by King Mohammed VI, who is one of the most progressive and open-minded leaders in the Arabic world, it would be playing with fire for American college students to go for a weekend on the town there until well after the outbreaks have been allowed to run their course and the scars can heal.

That is a shame, because it is in such turbulent times more than ever that Americans need to crush their prejudices about Islam, which even those who scoff at the theory that President Obama secretly wants to institute Sharia Law and are outraged at Peter King's recent Islamophobic hearings have been inundated with through two Gulf Wars and 9/11. When a dozen friends and I first made plans to spend a week in Morocco this December, for example, the only other American who wanted to go was forced to pull out before we went, because her parents, two generally well-educated middle-class adults from Long Island, asked that she stay in Germany. They argued that if she spoke English or showed her passport, even in the airport, she would be followed and attacked. Their reasoning here was almost sympathetic; they oppose the war in Iraq and thought that Muslims would naturally feel strong enough to stoop to violence against any and all enemies of their co-religionists. They meant no harm, but it is exactly this ingrained idea that there is something inherently different or savage in the Muslim faith that needs exposure to be refuted.

I imagine that most people who study abroad are much more culturally sensitive than your average American to start with. They probably know that Islam is not inherently warlike than Christianity. Its early history may be characterized by war and expansion, but the Catholic Church in that time period did not do much better, with its strong persecution of heretics and the two-hundred fifty years of the Crusades. They would assert that Muslims are no more fervent or liable to religious discrimination than the devout Christians who are particularly strong opponents. Nonetheless, it is an eye-opening experience to be able to go to a land whose beliefs are so different from your own and see that the people are not inherently alien. They may all be trying to convince you to buy something, but so is everyone on a given street in Manhattan; the Marrakechans are just more open about it. And they have enough heart, for instance, to stop a crowded bus so a Canadian tourist who has forgotten to hit up the bathroom before she left can relieve her tormented bladder. That's more than can be said for most American or German bus-drivers, I think.