Unity and Division

Creating divides within humanity defeats the purpose of unity. The principle of ‘Unity’ that is taught to us by our religion, Islam. Many learned and influential people with power in their hands, that power being the media, have catered the problem of division amongst humanity.

There are some stereotypes that are not “ labeled “ as stereotypes but have the same effect of dividing humanity. One of the most common one being, that people with beards ( Mullahs or Maulvis ) are all extremists, completely illiterate, and should be kept at distance, as if they are stray dogs. Maybe the West which mostly consists of non-practising christians has forgotten that Jesus[(may peace be upon him) who was a Messenger and human according to the Islamic faith, also had a beard, the statues of him(Jesus) in their churches bear witness to it.Its sad how we have enrolled ourselves into this stereotypical society and rather than treating each other and everyone with equality and respect, we use the power, which is the media, in sadistic ways. We are helping the real enemies of Islam and creating divides within ourselves through stereotypes and sectarianism, ‘DIVIDE AND CONQUER’ is the way in which they operate and we are only making their jobs easier. Today, we have forgotten what unity stands for, the only event that seems to unite us is when Pakistan takes on India in a cricket match which lasts for a day, for that one day, you’ll come across anyone, whether he is a balochi, Punjabi, sindhi, pakhtun etc regardless of what area or city he belongs to he’ll be supporting Pakistan, he’ll only be talking about a Pakistani win. The rest of 364 days, we will busy trying to prove how Punjabis are better human beings than Sindhis and so on and so forth.

Innocent until proven guilty has been the motto of the West until recently, why do I say until recently because of the dozens of stereotypical labels being fastened to Muslims all over the world which makes me feel Guilty until proven innocent is the new Western way.

Stereotypes such as, all Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are muslims, as if terrorism is a muslim monopoly , I bet the recent Norway killing rampage of Anders Behring Breivik an anti-muslim Christian extremist and killer of 77 innocent people proves otherwise, and I wonder why this story was taken off the global headlines so fast, maybe because the west doesn’t like to make a great deal of fuss about their home-grown terrorists and the only ones that attract them are the ones with beards especially if they come from a muslim background.Anyway, the point here is, we have stopped using our brains and have started believing whatever is fed to us, we don’t bother researching over the matter as that’s too much hassle. In my opinion, the ability to think and understand is one of the biggest gifts that Allah Almighty has given to us, but unfortunately we don’t bother doing that as we like to take shortcuts and those shortcuts would be to believe whatever CNN or BBC tells us. "United we Stand, Divided we Fall"

 

Shehryar Hamid, BBA2 section H, ID:10U0460