I’m not sad today. I’m not melancholy. I’m not remembering the first time I saw a sunset reflected off the west-facing side of the towers. Today doesn’t elicit any of those feelings in me.

This day makes me pissed off.

And I’m not just pissed at the terrorists. I’m pissed at the panty-waist theatre community I am a member of.

Case in point: “One of the first plays about Muslim life in the United States debuts in a time and place fraught with symbolism: Sept. 11th, in New York City.”

The two-act play which the playwright likens to a Muslim-American “Death of a Salesman” opens tonight at the Nuyorkian Poets Cafe, about 2 miles from ground zero.

I have a thought: Could we maybe have one or two plays written about our heroic soldiers or the brave first-responders, or a human drama about the devestation the families of victims of 9/11 have had to endure BEFORE we have a play about the struggles of Muslim life in the United States?

The play is called “The Domestic Crusaders” and its web page describes the play in this way:

With a background of 9-11 and the scapegoating of Muslim Americans, the tensions and sparks fly among the three generations, culminating in an intense family battle as each “crusader” struggles to assert and impose their respective voices and opinions, while still attempting to maintain and understand that unifying thread that makes them part of the same family.

According to the MSNBC article, playwright Wajahat Ali was heavily influenced by the 9/11 attacks:

When the World Trade Center towers fell, Ali was the head of the Muslim Student Association at the University of California, Berkeley. As the son of a Pakistani immigrant family who “never hid my Muslim identity,” Ali says the tragedy came to define his college years.

He devoted 70-80 percent of his time to activism — organizing Jumaa prayers outdoors on campus, distributing flyers, inviting students to discussion panels — in a relentless effort to fight what he considered misinformation about Islam.

Apparently, Ali has had trouble getting his play produced. The reason?

“I think it was because the hysteria, the fear, that kind of represented the voice of the Bush administration were still lingering,” Ali says. “Even Dixie Chicks, the whitest women in America, who loved Jesus and the Apocalypse, were branded as traitors…. here I am, with a multi-syllabic Arabic name. I am sure people freaked out.”

But now Ali’s play will premiere tonight, on 9/11, in New York City. Ali says: “Right now, it’s 2009. It’s kind of a different atmosphere.”

Yeah, it sure is. And that’s another reason why I’m pissed off.