there's a really annoying thing that happens to us when we make an earnest attempt at reading or (gasp!) even studying the Quran, which is every time we try, there's an explosion of noise from obscure sources within our plurality that's almost certainly connected with the fact that we soaked up so much trashy 1980s and 1990s media in which Islamophobic stereotypes are standard-issue. consciously we reject that stuff but still, a highly dissociated mind exposed to a crapload of trashy whıte-American media can't help but pick up a lot of memetic greeblies. bigotry is meant to be memorable, after all. you're never supposed to forget what a bigoted stereotype looks like, and what it's supposed to mean.
and so now we have to contend with (to pick a specific example) being haunted by memetic copies of the generic "terrorists" gunning down Doc Brown from Back to the Future in our head when we're trying to work on the Quran. having a Muslim headmate's a great help—she at least tries to keep our attention where it's supposed to be—but yeah, it's still an Issue™. still way too much noise in our system, and we've been slow to take out the trash, largely because aphantasia (traumatic I suspect) has severely damaged our ability to inhabit a coherent headspace.
~Χαρά
