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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

 

 

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.

 

 

 

From:

"Wali al-Shaytan" <[email protected]>
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? 

   

 

 

[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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