Intersections between race and religious discrimination
Keysar Trad
In
the name of Allah the Source of All Mercy the All Merciful. [1]
I
acknowledge and pay my respect to the Gadigal people and the Eora Nation.
I also acknowledge HREOC's effort to include the Arabic and Muslim community.
This
is really a talk in point form so that I can fit it into 12 minutes,
there is much to explain with respect to all the following points.
From
Islamic religious perspective, we acknowledge that people are given
negative traits and positive traits and these different traits have
important roles to play, for example; even hatred has its place just
as much as love has its place, for if we did not know how to hate acts
of evil we would end up being indifferent to them and then we would
turn into a totally unjust society. Similarly, the negative trait of
egocentricity must be acknowledged as having a role in everyday life
that is not always negative. This trait saves lives when a person's
esteem is low, it can also create competition and it also motivates
people to seek justice. If there was not a certain feeling of egocentricity,
one may always forgive every form of injustice again leaving us with
a negatively competitive world. Further, good qualities are more appreciated
and more valued when one knows, understands and experiences the opposite
of these qualities.
Every
person has the potential to fall on any one of the myriad of negative
or positive traits. They can also harness these traits and develop them
to either regress into a monster or to ascend into a very beautiful
human being.
These
traits do not work on their own; they also feed off impulses to activate
them - hence a person who is accustomed to acts of evil may not engage
in these acts if they do not receive the required stimuli followed by
the impulse.
Again,
these impulses are necessary for the preservation of our existence as
people. For example; an impulse of impending danger allows a person
to make preparations for that danger.
What
is important is how we as a society recognise these traits and these
impulses and train our young to deal with them and also either reward
or reform the rest of our population when they react on the basis of
these impulses. These traits, attributes and impulses are not going
to go away, every person has them and every person has to learn to deal
with them and control them so that they do not breach their limit, if
they are not trained to deal with them adequately then society in its
entirety stands to suffer and suffer dramatically.
These
traits, characteristics and impulses have the potential to cause stress
and depression to both victim and perpetrator and this emotional injury
will grow to impact on the whole community.
Every
time a person causes an injustice through an act of racism, this injustice
leaves its impact on the perpetrator, with the first act, they have
to deal with the pangs of their conscience, with the second act, they
start to become desensitised and hardened until eventually, if they
keep at it, the evil that they started eats away their humanity and
they become totally destructive to society around them. The price then
is paid by friend and foe and deservedly so because society did not
have the safety checks to reform this person early on in their evil
spree.
As
for the victim, the emotional traumas, the reduced esteem, the disenchantment
with this world, perhaps also in many cases the domino effects of the
racial act as they try to take it out on those weaker than they are,
all serve to create a very destructive counterproductive imbalance in
society as a whole.
We
do not choose those with whom we share this world - we only have control
over how we behave towards them. The demography of our society is something
that none of us can really escape - as such, it is imperative to work
together inclusively with every member of the broader community otherwise
society will suffer, it may become diseased, it may decay and it may
die. There is a delicate balance in this world and every aspect of society
is there for a purpose, any form of exclusion on the basis of race can
lead to social ills like crime, illness and injustice thus leading to
the failure of society. My religion advises me to consult with every
member in the community who is likely to be affected, it promotes inclusion
of all who share society with us.
I
am a Muslim, it is my faith that gives me this understanding, however,
I do not wish to stir stereotypes that may distract some listeners from
my message, I am going to keep resisting the temptation of linking my
words with religion, though when I speak I speak on the basis of religious
guidance. I will not use spirituality in this talk, though spiritually
is crucial, I will talk in material terms as much as possible, because
generally, those who employ policies of discrimination or exclusion
understand material arguments better than spiritual arguments.
Society
has human resources as well as material resources, with material resources
every astute person, especially an egocentric person will use all their
material assets and resources, they will not refuse to use a dollar
because it fell on the ground and has some dust on it, nor because it
has some rust. Similarly, they will not throw away a bank note if it
was creased, ripped, dirty, old or fresh off the press. They will also
not refuse to eat from a tree because it grows in a sheltered position
or because it has some branches missing. Similarly, a plum is not a
pear, but being a plum lover does not lead one to hate pears nor to
destroy them. Further, when these resources are yours, you neither waste
and squander, nor exploit and abuse. When they belong to you, you become
ever so careful in including everything and in protecting and preserving
everything.
With
material resources, we do not see this discrimination and exclusion,
we only see people displaying it with others, with those who are more
like them - this is very sad, its repercussions are just as damaging
to the racist or exclusionist as they are to society as a whole as they
are to the victim.
Those
who have a child with a disability can identify with the qualities that
their child has, they can also see how the negative discrimination impacts
on their child and effects the child's development. Yet, parental love
would in most cases stop this parent from also discriminating against
their child and from excluding this child.
I
remember a colleague who used to work with me once said to me: "God
is so cruel". Why so Mr. Colleague? He was referring to when he
first saw a certain woman at his place of work. He stared at her beautiful
face and he was captivated, immediately fell in lust and lived through
several fantasies in his mind. Then she stood up and walked, and he
found that she had a noticeable handicap, okay, some adjustments need
to be made to all these fantasies. Then he discovered that she was a
Muslim (she did not have her hair covered). All his plans were shattered
at that moment, Of course he did not blame himself for being racist;
he blamed God for both the handicap and the religion. To him, how could
God give this beauty to someone who was Muslim and handicapped? It was
just not fair. Who missed out in the end - it was my colleague. The
lady went on with her life, probably much better off that she was protected,
by her handicap and her religion, from the fantasies of this racially
motivated person. This person never shared these feelings with the lady
herself. Her condition and choice of religion spared her the risk of
being sexually harassed by this person.
What
happened to this lady is nowhere near as harmful as the cigarette burns
that were inflicted on a Muslim girl repeatedly, just because she is
Muslim, now, decades after the event, she tells me that the experience
made her stronger, but how long did she suffer, how often did she question
the reasons that she was targeted and her inability to defend herself
or to find someone to help her? What about those who forcibly remove
headscarves from Muslim women? This also is not as permanent as when
a Caucasian adult struck a young Muslim boy in the head, merely because
the boy's name was Mohammad, the blow was so hard that the boy died
within half an hour.
Spiritually,
we grow when are fair to others, especially those who are different,
materially, we cannot afford to exclude members of our community. We
need the skill and intelligence of every member of society, we also
need to experience the joy of including others and the bliss of helping
others retain and maintain their dignity by according to them the respect
that inclusion, fairness and equity bring to them. It would really make
a great deal of sense to introduce programs to promote social harmony
and cohesion to all members of our society. We have to work with the
youth and we have to also work with our politicians. Lately, some politicians
have become the biggest promoters of racial hatred and exclusion in
our Australian society, we usually see this hatred and fear mongering
and exclusion promoted around election time, the damaging repercussions
on society are just too great.
Every
person in society has their qualities, qualifications, experiences and
humanity to share, it is only by unbiased inclusion of every member
of society that we can all reap the reward. My religion states that
all races are related and all have the same origin. It also says that
differences in language, colour or ethnicity among people are signs
of the greatness of the Creator. My religion states that differences
were allowed to develop amongst us, despite our single origin, so that
we can get to learn from one another. These differences serve to enhance
culture and civilisation, they are amongst our greatest blessings (and
assets). Harnessing these differences peacefully and justly without
exploitation is among the greatest challenges facing humanity today.
We
saw the disastrous effects of exclusion in South Africa, eventually,
after much death and much pain Apartheid had to go. We also saw the
terrible result of the Holocaust, attempting to eradicate an entire
race, it totally failed, it in fact had the opposite effect, it, like
the Balkan genocides against Muslims, had the effect of bringing people
together and it gave these people strength from their new united purpose.
However,
does the world community learn from the past?
The
continuing marginalisation of the Aboriginal community shows that many
politicians do not learn, this marginalisation will also fail just like
Apartheid failed.
The
present trend in Australia with respect to asylum seekers is also creating
concentration camps and engendering racism. I pray that these trends
do not also tarnish us as individuals - that we do not get dragged down
with those who promote this race-based hatred.
Attempts
to wipe out peoples with the present Bush War Juggernaut and accompanying
Rhetoric will inevitably fail just as miserably as the failure of Nazism.
The exclusions and massacres against the Palestinian people, the Kashmiris
and the Chechens will also fail just like Apartheid, Nazism and the
"Ethnic Cleansing" in the Balkans failed.
Similarly,
denial is not going to make the truth go away.
My
message is, a politician who plays the race card whether demonising
asylum seekers or members of his constituency is really a traitor to
his society, his acts of exclusion impair the progress of his nation
in its entirety. Our laws do not really reach that far, to target a
politician one must also target all those who will defend them on talkback
radio, on television, in the print media, and all those lowest common
denominators who take the word of these politicians as gospel. We have
an exclusionist, isolationist, one-eyed racist federal government and
we can see that our present laws are too impotent to do anything about
this. We have to develop our laws to cater for these problems, we must
also work on our youth to instil in them the benefits of inclusion and
the benefits of understanding and acceptance of others irrespective
of their "imperfections", the responsibility for this role
must be shared by the school, the media and the government. There is
no one who is perfect except God. Let us teach each other to work together
for the sake of this world that we, like it or not, share together.
Note
1.
Please note: I did not say the following at the conference. Though they
are very important, I did not say them because they are strictly religious
teachings. They explain in better detail the nature of the negative
impulses that I discuss throughout the paper. God tells us in the Qur`an
that He created the soul and perfected it and then inspired it with
knowledge of the evil that it is capable of (so that it can know that
this is evil and can strive to avoid it) and knowledge of the goodness
that it is capable of (so that it can do this good work). The prophet
Muhammad (peace and blessings upon him) explained further by saying
that every person has two receptors, one for angelic impulses and one
for demonic or satanic impulses, the good acts are usually promoted
by the angelic impulses and the evil conduct is always promoted by the
impulses from the evil spirits like Satan. Hence feelings of racism
or discrimination or exclusion are impulses sent by Satan to pretty
much all people, it is up to the person to learn to control these feelings.
A person may spiritually mature to completely block out these feelings,
to such an extent that the evil spirits or Satan give up and no longer
attempt to send these impulses. I will be happy to elaborate further
if desired.
