Twenty years after Velvet

You may not need me to tell you this. Or maybe you do — if you're like the pre-study abroad me, your only knowledge of the Velvet Revolution is a faint guess that it's something that might happen when a cluster of rich old hags duke it out over something at Gucci. Either way: Today is a major day for the Czech Republic. Twenty years of freedom! Twenty years of KFC and McDonald's! How sweet it is.

Ignoring last year's debacle in the Kimmel Center, I'd imagine few of us have experienced a situation where an occupation by an all-consuming political force is a real possibility. As NYU students, we love wearing our hammer-and-sickle paraphernalia. We tremble with self-satisfied ecstasy as we list "The Communist Manifesto" under our favorite books on Facebook. Stalin who? Eastern Bloc where? Massive logical fallacies what? Those Soviets are just, like, totally wicked cool, guys.

Yesterday I traveled to Brno, the second-largest city in the Czech Republic, seeking interviews with members of a religious foundation who continue to wrestle with a government that didn't give their religion (Islam) official recognition until 2004. During my trip, I couldn't help but think about what we, as Americans, can take from what transpired in the Czech Republic. An appreciation for our views on free speech and tolerance of most any faith — barring one that worships by slaughtering infants in the streets — is certainly up there.

Brno was something of an illuminating experience. There are two mosques in the entire Czech Republic. I couldn't see how that was fair, and I said so.

"This is supposed to be a free country and Islam wasn't even recognized until 2004," I said to the people at the Islamic Foundation. "Your first mosque, of two, wasn't built until 1998."

But they took it in stride. They noted that the government might have initially caused problems — but, hey, there's discrimination everywhere.

"We have the same freedoms as everyone else," said Muneeb Hassan Alrawi, the head of the Islamic Foundation in Brno. They don't feel that Muslims are particularly discriminated against, but he did note that, every now and then, a native will yell something akin to "You don't belong here," which they ignore.

My head spun a bit. This is an OK situation? Even though there's obviously still so much to be done?

But then I thought, "Where was everyone 20 years ago?" What freedom did anyone really have? How is this so outrageous to me when just a couple of decades ago, any average person had to worry about ... what? A Soviet tank blasting them to smithereens on the way to the Goulash Mart? That must've happened all the time.

In light of the Velvet Revolution, one could easily take one of two views about what's happening with religion in the Czech Republic today. It's just as easily viewed as inspirational as it is viewed as, well, kind of crappy. I'm sort of caught between the two myself. But for today, we owe some modicum of reflection, some string of thought-processes, to this country.

What has the Czech Republic come from and where are they today? And where does that leave us?

Damon Beres is a columnist.