I think that humans have an inherent, innate desire for power. For superiority and dominance over someone else. Throughout history, one can find instances where one group has sought to control another group, group with members belonging to maybe a different gender, religion, race, colour, caste, piece of land. There has always existed this desire to be dominant over someone else, to achieve which they build stories and give reasons to justify the atrocities committed on others. Be it the Whites' atrocities on the Blacks, the Aristocrats' on the Peasants wars, Crusades, Holocausts, Genocides, Terrorism.
The phenomenon is becoming increasingly clear to me. Yesterday, armed men allegedly claiming to be 'jihadis' from Al-Qaeda stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French daily which was previously under attack for having spoofed Prophet Muhammad by way of caricatures and cartoons, and killed its editors and various other cartoonists allegedly in retaliation to some tweets against the ISIS Chief. Later, they stormed out of the offices shouting that they have avenged the Prophet and their Chief.
What makes men believe that they have the right to take away another man's life? Our own lives are so precious to us, there are so many things that we wish to do with and in our lives. It is preposterous for another man to come and take my life away simply because he has ideologies and beliefs different from that of mine. Are you going to force belief out from me at gun point? Is that how little faith you have in your ideologies that you think you need guns to propagate it?
What I know is that its only when you have no knowledge or basis for your belief in your faith, that you cannot take any criticism or any questions against them. When you are sufficiently knowledgeable, you are open to criticism and have the ability to be cynical about your beliefs, in fact this way you strengthen your own beliefs. If you do not have the ability to do that, you resort to violence, force and denigrate others.
Shouldn't we be doing something about it as opposed to just making observations and verbally condemning the attacks? Its our collective silence that spawns an avenue to inflict more harm and subsequently endanger the entire community. Many of us Muslims know that we oppose such acts, but are not even vocal about it on a public platform. We have to act and not go about living our lives oblivious to all that is happening around us, thinking that it isn't happening to us after all. Today it is not, tomorrow it may. And if that is inevitable, we can at least rest eventually knowing that we have done all that we can towards building a life that is better for generations to come.
Sometimes I think that we humans have survived through so many generations, lets say lived through, lived through so many generations, and people in each generation may have had grand plans for the humanity, for the liberation of man's mind from petty things and to focus it on important things such as love, respect, honour, courage. And along may have come a few who sought to break these in their war for power, and in the process, taken humanity back to being uncivilized. Next some others rise, trying to steer humanity towards better values and restore civilization. Thus the cycle continues. A wheel, that may have been set into motion from the moment humans graced this earth, and which may continue for eternity. It makes me wonder what is the point of it all? What difference does it eventually make in the grander scheme of things? What is the grander scheme of things? What is the point in me even attempting to try to change the society if the society is to eventually fall back upon itself the moment it gets the opportunity to do so? Is it only for the sake of a clear conscience on my death bed? I hope its more than that. I hope that these little acts actually add up to something in the grander scheme of things. I hope that there IS a grander scheme of things where we are moving towards the better and where these thoughts and actions of ours have played their part.
- 8-01-2015
The phenomenon is becoming increasingly clear to me. Yesterday, armed men allegedly claiming to be 'jihadis' from Al-Qaeda stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French daily which was previously under attack for having spoofed Prophet Muhammad by way of caricatures and cartoons, and killed its editors and various other cartoonists allegedly in retaliation to some tweets against the ISIS Chief. Later, they stormed out of the offices shouting that they have avenged the Prophet and their Chief.
What makes men believe that they have the right to take away another man's life? Our own lives are so precious to us, there are so many things that we wish to do with and in our lives. It is preposterous for another man to come and take my life away simply because he has ideologies and beliefs different from that of mine. Are you going to force belief out from me at gun point? Is that how little faith you have in your ideologies that you think you need guns to propagate it?
What I know is that its only when you have no knowledge or basis for your belief in your faith, that you cannot take any criticism or any questions against them. When you are sufficiently knowledgeable, you are open to criticism and have the ability to be cynical about your beliefs, in fact this way you strengthen your own beliefs. If you do not have the ability to do that, you resort to violence, force and denigrate others.
Shouldn't we be doing something about it as opposed to just making observations and verbally condemning the attacks? Its our collective silence that spawns an avenue to inflict more harm and subsequently endanger the entire community. Many of us Muslims know that we oppose such acts, but are not even vocal about it on a public platform. We have to act and not go about living our lives oblivious to all that is happening around us, thinking that it isn't happening to us after all. Today it is not, tomorrow it may. And if that is inevitable, we can at least rest eventually knowing that we have done all that we can towards building a life that is better for generations to come.
Sometimes I think that we humans have survived through so many generations, lets say lived through, lived through so many generations, and people in each generation may have had grand plans for the humanity, for the liberation of man's mind from petty things and to focus it on important things such as love, respect, honour, courage. And along may have come a few who sought to break these in their war for power, and in the process, taken humanity back to being uncivilized. Next some others rise, trying to steer humanity towards better values and restore civilization. Thus the cycle continues. A wheel, that may have been set into motion from the moment humans graced this earth, and which may continue for eternity. It makes me wonder what is the point of it all? What difference does it eventually make in the grander scheme of things? What is the grander scheme of things? What is the point in me even attempting to try to change the society if the society is to eventually fall back upon itself the moment it gets the opportunity to do so? Is it only for the sake of a clear conscience on my death bed? I hope its more than that. I hope that these little acts actually add up to something in the grander scheme of things. I hope that there IS a grander scheme of things where we are moving towards the better and where these thoughts and actions of ours have played their part.
- 8-01-2015
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