AMMONNEWS - By Abdulillah - With the recent developments in Europe between the West and the Middle East and Islam in particular, the West and Russia as well as the West and Asia, one wonders why such tensions have been increasing these past 20 years.
Many scholarly and others less profound articles have been written about the clash between civilizations, that of the modern secular west and the backward underdeveloped zealots in the middle-east. Meanwhile others have blamed this phenomenon on socio-economic disparities between the rich and poor, and others have gone even farther than that blaming these developments on racist tendencies between whites and people of color. It makes one’s head spin thinking about the root or cause of these tensions and why extremism on both sides have escalated to proportions where name calling, cartoon caricatures of beloved religious symbols and profound and open racism against people of color and gender, and of the rich verses poor has reached to these levels.
I have really never been one to over think these issues too deeply having lived and having personally experienced and witnessed some extraordinary developments in such a short lifetime, where neighbors, brothers and sisters, people of the same color and different color, people of the same faith and identity have resorted to verbally abusing each other, followed by violence and war.
Yes I have lived and seen the 1960’s and the present black struggle in America, where cities burned in riots and destruction. Where Asians were called evil names and killed by carpet bombing their country just because they wanted unification and to live under different political societies. Where one faction of the same faith have verbally attacked and then killed the other for over 20 years only to leave their homeland in complete destruction and their people scattered all over the world. These development we are living today are not new, they have just been formulated in different ways and given different names. Yet they all have one common denominator and that is EVIL and HATE; one that grips and strips the individuals humanity of moral behavior to one of evil and immorality. Once this common denominator reaches the human heart it festers into a blackness covered by a veil of denial and hatred, where the light of goodness and forgiveness can never reach. Where the perpetrator and the defender resort to common language of why they have a reason to do the evil that they do to each other.
We always seem to be searching for causes to such evil and hatred, and in some cases we find that yes some of it is brought about because of socio-economic reasons, jealousy of the poor verses the rich, pure racism where faith, color or gender discrimination is involved. We believe we can fix these issues by dumping in more money, buying off the poor, punishing some of the racists, and quelling violence with even stronger violence. In some cases we are successful for a time doing this, only to see it erupt once again. What is the answer?
To a simple fellow like myself, it really boils down to what were taught as kids growing up. To do unto others as you would want done to us, and that every human soul belongs to an unseen higher authority which created it and you, and to treat each one with dignity and compassion. Yes; even those who commit evil or are our enemies should be treated with dignity because once we stop treating them in this way then we have lost our own dignity.
As for those who feel that their free speech is to be used to inflame others or to turn one human against the other because they have been afforded such as privilege, should consider that one day, they will meet the person they have besmirched or attacked for little reason either on this earth or later. Having to face them to explain the lies and hate against them. That whatever message they wished to convey was lost in their vitriol of hate, leaving only hurt and a wish to retaliate by their supporters.
And as for those that use these types of free speech attacks as an excuse to commit heinous retaliatory attacks, escalating the problem to even higher levels, I must remind you, that there has been no prophet or holy person that has not been attacked by his own people or from those afar,way before those doing it today. They should ponderthe words and the actions of the prophets themselves when they were attacked first before committing such heinous retaliatory acts of aggression. If they did, they would see that the prophets never escalated a dialogue of hatred and when confronted with such vitriol of hate, they always walked away from the evilness around them or held their tongues, knowing that answering suchignorant provocations was not only going to make the other escalate the answer back,thereby making you the cause of such a curse from his mouth.
Our beloved prophet Mohamed (pbh) once said the following:
"It is one of the greatest sins that a man should curse his parents." It was asked (by the people), "O Allah's Apostle! How does a man curse his parents?" The Prophet said, "'The man abuses the father of another man and the latter abuses the father of the former and abuses his mother."SahihBukhari Volume 8, Book 73, Number 4:
"The best amongst you are those who have the best manners and character."SahihBukhari Volume 4, Book 56, Number 759
But the best was the following:
“You will not enter Paradise until you believe and you will not believe until you love each other. Shall I you something that, if you did, you would love each other? Spread peace between yourselves.”Sahih Muslim 54.
So to those who like to spread evil and hatred amongst the people of the world, remember there are more good people than are of your kind, and we will not keep silent to your hatred, nor will we succumb to you or your ways of inciting fear and demonization amongst us.
May Allah/God Bless Jordan and its People
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