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Human First
By: Ali Sina
May2/02
I received 3 emails
just today from Muslims and their supporters with pictures of Palestinians
being victimized by the Israeli soldiers. Yes I know that has happened and
that is most regrettable. I saw even a video showing Israeli soldiers
trying to break a Palestinian captive with stones. Those pictures angered
many Israelis as well. But does that make Islam a true religion?
The problem is that
Quran advocates violence and violence breeds more violence. The
Palestinians are reaping what they wrought. Their human bombers kept
blasting innocent people in, pizzerias, markets, restaurants, busses and
they celebrated calling those terrorists “martyrs”. You and all other
Muslims justified these barbaric acts as “acts of desperation of a
victimized people”. Now the Palestinians who jubilantly cheered the death of
the Jews are dying by hundreds and now they portray themselves as victims.
Why not celebrate now? Don't you believe in martyrdom anymore? Or is it
that martyrdom is not valid until you kill innocent people?
The Muslims in India
burned a train full of Hindus. They did it with utter malice motivated by
their religious hate. They did not calculate or care about the
consequence. The consequence was that Hindus retaliated and murdered
innocent Muslims including children and women ten times more.
Why Muslims do not see
evil in all the atrocities perpetrated by their fellow religionists and
cry foul only when their victims retaliate?
Retaliation is bad but
it is uncontrollable. When people lose their loved ones, they lose their
rational thinking and act with their animal instincts. I am a man of
peace. I do not let any thought other than love occupy my mind. But if
someone deliberately and out of malice murders my loved ones, would I
still remain calm and cool headed? I do not want to know the answer to
this. Who knows? May be I will become a beast too. May be I will seek
blood too. Retaliation is evil, but it is a genuine animal instinct
present in all of us.
My friend, you and
others keep sending me heart-wrenching pictures portraying Muslims as
victims. But we Muslims are primarily victims of our own violent mindset.
We are incapable of living peacefully with other people. We are incapable
of living peacefully even with our own selves. The recent Sunni/Shiite
massacres in Pakistan are proof that as long as people adhere to Islam,
peace will be only a chimera.
As long as you show the
Muslim victims to justify more acts of violence against the non-Muslims,
this status quo will not change. More people will die from both sides and
more victims will be added to the statistics.
Time has come to search
for a solution, to find where we went wrong, to look for the cause of
these wars. The cause of all these wars is in the hatred that we harbor
against each other. As long as we erect tall walls of distrust around
ourselves and sort humanity into Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Kafirs,
Believers, unbelievers, Blacks, Whites, etc, the distrust will linger and
these wars will not end. Why don’t we see each other as humans first and
then anything else? We have fought wars with more wars; combated hate with
more hate, confronted violence with more violence and this is the result.
Soon if our race is not wiped out it will be decimated unless we change
our ways. Now we have the means to destroy ourselves and the will is there
too. Why not give peace a chance?
But peace will not come
by “subduing” our enemies and forcing them to surrender, believe in
our deity or pay Jizya to us as is prescribed in Quran 9:29. Peace is
not possible when we follow a man who said "I will expel the
Jews and the Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any
but Muslims." (Hadith Muslim 4366). Peace will
come only when we abandon doctrines that promote hate. Peace will come
only when we do not call others najis (impure), Kafir (disbeliever) or
enemy of God. Peace is the fruit of equality and social justice. A
religion that does not recognize the rights of others to exist let alone
allowing them to practice their
own faiths and worship their own god is a religion that promotes
injustice. We will not experience peace with our lips eulogizing it while
our hearts are filled with hate.
Why Muslims all over
the world can see only the rights of the Muslims when they are violated
and are deafeningly silent when their Muslim brothers violate the rights
of others? Why people from Bangladesh or Iran care only about Palestinian
victims and not the victims of Palestinians whose body parts are blown to
the sky with bombs? Why this pack mentality? Why can’t we see each other
as humans first and condemn the evil wherever it comes?
You speak of the
Palestinian rights to defend their land. But, what about the rights of the
Jews!? Jews are hated in all Islamic countries, as ordained in Quran and
their rights are systematically abused. Shouldn’t they have a land to
call their own? Should they continue to live, (or rather die) seeking the
mercy of brutal doctrines such as Nazism and Islam? Why don’t you speak
of the rights of the Jews? Or is it that they have no rights because they
are zimmis and hated by your Allah?
Why when Baha’is are
persecuted no Muslim complains? Why they can be jailed, tortured to
recant, their properties confiscated and executed while Muslims say
nothing? Why Hindus can be murdered and wiped out from Pakistan and
Bangladesh and no Islamic apologist would condemn these barbarities? Why
is it that you only write to justify the crimes of Muslims and never
protest?
This world is in
turmoil. It is anguishing in pain. We are all victims of our false
beliefs. Let us abandon those beliefs that make us hate each other. We
Muslims are the sinners because we have embraced a doctrine of hate. All
religions are false but no other religion cultivates this much hate in its
followers as Islam does. All religions promote disunity but none is as
explicit in fomenting hate as Islam. Let us empty our minds of these
spurious beliefs. Let us cleans our hearts of these hatemongering
doctrines. Let us embrace each other as brothers and sisters in humanity.
Let us be Human first
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Comments on this article
Dear Mr. Sinna,
Fri, 3 May 2002
I just read your article "Human First". Nevertheless to say my
heart is filled with emotion, my eyes
welled with tears.
Yesterday a friend of mine asked me to serve on a eed to help but informed her that I would be tempering
this support with a commitment to my own people and ALL people.
What I mean by this that I see suffering all around me and feel
frustrated by so many people's nearsightedness in thinking that they are
the only people suffering.
I find this selfish self victimization in many
communities. We all are
related. We are all members
of the same family. When I go
to this meeting I plan on telling the people there that besides assisting
the people of Israel we must also reach out to others suffering from the
same thing be they the people enslaved in the Sudan, those innocent Hindu
and Muslim children destroyed by the terrorist violence in India, or even
the people we meet at work or school who are simply struggling with the
complexities of life.
I am a simple person. I
do not make a lot of money and do not have an important job or career.
To "put my money where my mouth" is as we say in America
these are my commitments. I sponsor
2 children overseas through the Christian Children's Fund and Children
International. I give $10 a
week to the American Anti-Slavery Organization (www.iabolish.com). I will
continue to write letters of support to prisoners of conscience in places
like Iran as well as to free/save people unjustly condemned to death like
Sufiyatu Huseini in Niger. When
I heard a neighbor of mine in my building lost his job with barely knowing
him I went to his door and said I would help to get a job where I work
(although it does pain me to think that as a Muslim from Iraq that he
might actually hate me if he knew I am a Jew.).
And if there is a G-d, be his name Allah, Ha-Shem, YHWH, Jesus,
Buddah or whatever if he or she chooses to bless me with wealth I promise
to give it away happily and generously.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I truly
appreciate it. I know this letter is a bit dramatic and even
"corny" but the current events going on in this world or ours
fill me with a sense of hopelessness.
Most sincerely yours,
Matthew. F.
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Sat, 04 May 2002
Ali Sina wrote : "You don't have to convince me
of the Israeli atrocities against Palestinians. This government is a
terrorist government".
Freethinker: (the one who commented on the debate
between Ali Sina and Abu Adam, and rebutted Avijit Roy's articles on
Israel): The distinction between terrorism and a legitimate resistance
movement is quite simple: terrorists DELIBERATELY target non-combatants.
This means that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaida, Hezbollah (at least up
into the early 90's), the Algerian GIA, ETA, the IRA, Colombia's FARC
& ELN, the LTTE (Tamil Tigers - again, up to the early-mid 90's) and
various groups operating out of Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Chechnya,
Bangladesh, India (primarily Muslim groups), Uzbekistan, Afghanistan
Tajikistan.
The targeted killings of Palestinian militants
associated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad by Israel is NOT terrorism by any
stretch (though the benefit to Israel of continuing these killings is
subject to debate).
Ali Sina Responds: Yes the target killing of
Palestinian militants associated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad is not
terrorism. But many Palestinian children are torn apart in these
"targeted killings" houses are destroyed and innocent young
children are killed. Shouldn't Israeli military be more cautious? Or to
them "a good Arab is a dead Arab"? Why there is no enquiry
in the actions of the soldiers who kill children? Does declaring state of
war justify all atrocities? Shouldn't Israelis who tasted the terrorism
more than any other nation and have been victims for so long be more
careful in their struggle for survival and not become victimizers
themselves?
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[email protected]
Dear Ali,
This is regarding your article 'Human First'. You mentioned that
Muslims started the riot by killing 58 hindus motivated solely by religous hate,
but it is not so. Please read the following article in washintonpost on why the
train incident really happenend. Please include this in your article for people
to get the whole picture. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A43122-2002Mar5
I know that the way the muslims retalitated by burning the 58
people is in-excusable and plain WRONG, but dont make it sound like the hindu
zealots did NOTHIG to provoke the muslims. 'Taali do hath say bajti hay' (You
can only clap with two hands, not one). However, I agree with you that most (not
all) Muslims only tend to see the attrocities commited against muslims and not
those commited by muslims. Your focus seems to be more on muslim extremism, and
not relgious extremism in all forms (like how hindus are killing and raping
muslims right now in Gujarat). Why is that? ps. I have read Most of your
articles, and have really started seeing religion as a source of evil. Be it
muslims, hindus or whatever other religion, they all seem to have some violent
side. I have also sent your site link to many folks to get them to start
thinking outside the religous thinking that has been forced on to them. So
thanks, you have done a good job.
Saima T
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