No More Death, please.

Its becoming harder and harder isn’t it, to contend, that the Muslim body politic iw innocent. It is becoming more onerous by the day to blame all our ills and all our misfortunes on the West, and the United States, and that wonderful scapegoat George W. Bush. Until what time can we continue to blame everyone but ourselves for our misfortunes and the daily calamities that befall our people and our cities? If the forces of history and global political strategies have served as prods to ignite anger and frustration within the masses and society at large, the upheaval that they have wrought on our societies is on no one’s head but ours. It is our people, members of our societies, people who breathe the same air, drink the same water and seek shade from the same sun as us; it is people who have gone to the same schools, walk the same streets, and buy their daily rations from the same stores as us; it is our people who live our lives, who one week suicide bomb a wedding, and then a week later, wreck carnage with the same modus operandi at a funeral. It is our people who wrap psychiatrically ill women in bomb vests, and then send them into markets where mothers are buying milk for their children, and fathers are earning their families’ daily bread.

If the purpose is protest, then what protest is served by the deaths of our brothers and sisters? If the purpose is defending our honour in the face of the West’s power over us, then what honour asks us to kill our own with the utmost of savagery? If it is a desire to fight the armies of occupiers, then what armies were destroyed when the tomb of Imam Hasan Askari was destroyed? If it is a jihad, then what jihad asks us to wreak havoc on those who are not only living life, but celebrating the joining of hearts in marriage? If it is in defense of the sacred, then what sacred will is exhibited in the murder of mourners at a funeral? In our disconnected world, is any moment of greater connection with all that is sacred then the moments we spend in mourning and contemplating death at the funeral of a young man?

We cannot blame anyone else for such depravity and for actions which are nothing short of devilish. We can only blame ourselves for not being able to construct societies which allow for a process of dialogue to deal with differences. We can only blame ourselves for being part of a populace that contains elements and individuals who sympathize not with those who lost their lives in these acts of pure and unadulterated hate and violence, but with those who perpetrated these acts. We can only blame ourselves for the collapse of our families and our societies which has allowed such hatred and disdain for human life to grow.

If we are to work in any meaningful way to change our fates, to change the way our societies function, then we must change the way our societies approach conflict. We must transform in ourselves the automatic blood rage that any real and presumed slight brings, into a force of will which renders us greater than the insult, greater than those who have imposed upon us. We must not let the violation of our basic rights by others lead to a world where we ourselves become our greatest enemies. For in this “Global War on Terror”, we have become the perpetrators, the victim, the enemy and the ally. In this war, we are fighting ourselves and in every single way that is a losing proposition.