The Ghandi-ism Today
We all read, and praise Ghandi, when he said “If they slap you on one cheek, offer the other”. Gone are those days, but stays the learning. No, I think the word learning is undermining our true understanding of what he said. In fact we have outdone Ghandi in his teachings. I will tell you why and how, but just bear with me for a little while.
Barely a few weeks ago, a suicide attacker just blew himself up in a busy supermarket in center of the city. It was just reported like any other attack starting with numbers, the numbers indicating the killed and injured. What it failed to report was that it actually whipped out a whole family of 6 in one go. Easy to write about it, but no one would ever understand the grief it caused to their families.
A week after that, another bomb blast, rocked the City Center shopping area and hotel. The killed were security guards, who stopped the suicide attacker from entering, and when he found himself cornered, he detonated his explosive vest taking with him the guards. Pacha was one of them, who left behind 5 young kids.
A fortnight ago, Jalalabad witnessed another horrendous attack. The death toll increased by the minutes as reports were coming in. Final official toll records them at just another random number: 40!
A week ago, in Kunduz’s population registration center, around 30 people, women and children included, lost their lives in another suicide attack. They had come there to get the national ID card, or Tazkera showing they are Afghans! Those who came to get themselves an identity died and little did they know they will die unknown, and unaccounted to the government.
Yesterday, a double bomb last, hit Kandahar killing another 8 civilians. I just listed the most recent attacks in span of two weeks or more that have shaken the very belief and understanding of people of the very highly mentioned, debated and used words: Terrorism, Islam, and Democracy!
Am being controversial when mentioning these words all together, but lets be honest to ourselves and dare to question those using these words in justification of their acts.
The history remembers our beloved prophet, Mohammad (PBUH), as someone who brought a message of peace and brotherhood. But today, his followers, some I must say just so called followers, destroy that message by writing it in blood. Blood that comes from their own kind. I use kind because I see no such belief in them understanding other Muslims as their brothers and sisters. However in the meantime I still am being so kind at recognizing them as humans though they don’t show any traits of it, if you ask me again.
I want to ask them which Islam are they following which allows killing of the innocent, allows them to take pleasure at it and boast of their success at the killings open and about in any media outlet they get hang of. Is Islam a justification for their acts? It is of course not. But do our leaders at the helm of power and decision making take account of this and hold those responsible against it? Again it is of course not the case. They instead hold talks, talks of peace and reconciliation that comes at the cost of lives of scores.
So I begin to wonder about what Islam are we talking about, all of us. Are the ones who kill apathetically and call it Jihad Muslims? Or are the ones who took oath to defend the people of this country but still call them their disenchanted brothers? Or are they both really “brothers” in the same faith they have come up with but dressed it with the name of Islam. I am saying this because Islam does not allow for any harm to be done to another innocent human being, yeah even if they are not Muslims, nor does it allow tolerating injustice and atrocity, and yet keeping silent over it.
All of us, citizens of this debacle of a country and living under this debacle of a government, talking figuratively, end up being the bait for never taming beast of unrest, terror, and “disenchanted brothers”. We lived and died the days when they would sprinkle rockets around us fighting the “communists”. Then they would kill us calling us Tajiks, Pashtons, Uzbeks, Hazaras, etc, and you would only survive if we belonged to all of these else spare the one you belong to, others would be off with your head.
And today too, the Ghandi teaching I mentioned at the beginning and said we have outdone it is in order: they kill one of us, and we offer another. For how long can we and for how long will you stay silent?
