Anti-Muslim anger and rhetoric in the West is at its height. The presidential election in the USA has made it worse. It is especially hard on children. In one incidence in Texas school, a student refused to sit with a Muslim student and the teacher did not object. Apart from discussing openly with children at home what suggestions anyone has to cope with this difficult situation?
Fayyaz Sheikh
Dr. Fayyaz Sahib has posted here a very intriguing question. Its answer is not easy. However, in my view, the only teaching we can give to our children is to transmit love and absorb hate with self dignity; to preserve patience and display respect to others. Love is the only way of life that can help us live together. They can also tell their classmates or friends, that we belong to new generation of scientific civilization, and what is happening in the world is the politics of older generations.
Mankind, whether in the East or the West is on its way to shift from old civilizational traditions of different peoples, societies, ethnicities, disciplines, religions, and educational systems to a new common “Scientific Civilization.” Though I believe that the virtue of love is the only way that can bring human beings closer to each other, but the way emotionless science is overpowering every wake of our life, we are left with no other choice. Instead of confronting the scientific civilization we need to impregnate it with the spirit of a new moral and social order. Unfortunately after Carl Marx, whose ideology is now dead, no great philosopher has appeared to give a new sociopolitical ideology to mankind which can enable us to enrich the emerging scientific civilization with the dynamism of humanistic values. Today, science is giving us information of cosmos and man’s creation as a miracle of science, but how to live together as charismatic human beings of body and soul or consciousness which is viewed by some the scientific alternative of the soul, is still out of the realm of science.
The current chaos in the Middle East, though seems to redefine the state boundaries, in fact it is the struggle between the Western Materialism and the Eastern Spirituality, for example, the emerging Hinduism in India, Buddhist religious traditions in Myanmar and Thailand. In this struggle Muslims are on the frontline because Islam has dominated the old world from Eastern Europe to Indonesian, and Central Asia to Central Africa and its idealism of spiritual dynamism is far and above any other religious or social traditions.– MIRZA ASHRAF
There is no “on demand”, pre-packaged remedy to administer to our children to prepare them for anti-Islam onslaught that we fear. It is going to take a long time to change the perception that has been created about our faith and culture – by none other than us Muslims. We have to go a long way and here are some remedies and same old debate;
The best way to see our children not become victims of religious hate in our adopted country is to assimilate in this society ourselves. I am not advocating that we should encourage drinking and dating. We should not indulge ourselves in these Western norms and show by example that these are not really required to be adopted and we can be good citizens and adopt the good qualities of politeness, honesty and hard work and dress up decently etc. When others go to church, we can (if not atheists like me) go to the mosque, when others celebrate Christmas or Jewish holidays we can celebrate Eid and Ramadan and there is no shame. What makes us stand out is desi dress and Hijab and I don’t think it is a big sacrifice to give these up. We can wear our dress at the time of cultural events or holy occasions, I am referring to our daily appearance. I have seen foreigners in Pakistan dress up in Pakistani dress and they also do it to not stand out and look different.
I am not talking about philosophical remedies like “transmitting love” or “absorbing hate”, I am talking about pragmatic approach. All humans, irrespective of ethnicity are same in loving or hating and without going into detail I would just say that some parts of our holy book that are hateful should be explained in an enlightening way and literal meanings debunked. We must choose teachers in our mosques from among the educated theologians only – when children go away to join jihadi movements, its no their fault its their parents and teachers fault. If we don’t know the thinking of Imams or teachers in mosques we should not send our children there – there is all the education available in schools here that is needed to form the character of our children.
Talking pragmatically, we should also be prepared to accept our children adopting the culture of this country, good and as well as bad. If things are going the negative way, we have no right to blame the West and should pack up and go back. Americans wish exactly the same good life for their children as we do and not all families achieve that and that’s real life.
The only way to cope with hate against Muslims is to prove the haters wrong by showing that we are not here to change their way of life, we are here to adopt their way of life -those who disagree please leave and rejoice your way of life back home. There are pitfalls back home too and there are drugs and fornication over there too and we have to try our best to tell right from wrong where ever we bring them (our children) up.
There is nothing worse, that we can do, to harm our children, than telling false history and only telling how Muslims are being dealt by the West unjustly. We have to tell them how Muslims treated others when they were at the helm. We have to be honest intellectually and in our dealings as well.
Babar