I remember when I was a kid watching a cricket match between Pakistan and South Africa with my Dad but
our Pakistani cricket team was not performing as
well as we were expecting. The bowlers were
giving away runs and the opposition was making the most of the loose bowling. At that point, a neutral English commentator
in his enthusiastic tone, was praising the batsmen for their marvelous batting
performance and criticizing the bowlers for their loose bowling. My Dad
on the other hand was absolutely not happy with the commentary and reacted as follows, "Look how
the commentator is enjoying the situation; he looks so glad that our team is going to lose this
match and why not? After all he's a non-Muslim, he'll always
hate Muslims and that's why he's so excited." At that time Dad sounded very cynical to
me and his words triggered my immature mind to wonder why do the non-Muslims hate us so much?
Why are they so jealous of us? However now I've come to the conclusion that the facts are completely different because the hate virus is actually in our own blood.
We're living in a society where we are born to hate. Since childhood we are taught that the non-Muslims are our enemy and their only motivation is to plan and destroy the whole Muslim nation. Thus we begin to consider all the non-Muslims as our enemy from a very young age. Even eating with non-Muslims is considered a sin. When we grow up we are taught that the only true sect of Islam is the one which your family follows and all others are just delusional pretenders so we start hating all other sects of Islam also. As we become older and mature, the hatred becomes a permanent trait of our personality.
We're living in a society where we are born to hate. Since childhood we are taught that the non-Muslims are our enemy and their only motivation is to plan and destroy the whole Muslim nation. Thus we begin to consider all the non-Muslims as our enemy from a very young age. Even eating with non-Muslims is considered a sin. When we grow up we are taught that the only true sect of Islam is the one which your family follows and all others are just delusional pretenders so we start hating all other sects of Islam also. As we become older and mature, the hatred becomes a permanent trait of our personality.
I still remember when I was in class 10th, there was a chapter "سومناتھ کی فتح" (Conquest of Somnath) included in our Urdu text book which was a narrative written by a famous Urdu prose writer Muhammad Hussain Azad about the courage of Mahmud of Ghazni explaining how he attacked a sacred temple in the city of Somnath in India, which was one of his 17 attacks on India and how he recklessly killed the innocent people of Somnath. Now let's imagine the people of Somnath, worshiping their idols in the temple, minding their own business and suddenly some militants attack them and start slaughtering them in the name of their god. The people of Somnath even offered them gold and other luxurious things to withdraw their interest but the hate against Hindus was so great that he didn't listen even a single word and destroyed the whole temple including their idols in front of their worshipers. This was clearly deluded and a grave cruelty but instead of cursing the oppressor Mehmood Ghaznawi is considered a symbol of courage and bravery in our society and is a role model for us. It is pretty clear that the narrative is used as a tool for spreading hate against the Hindu religion and their followers.
Hate against the other non-Muslims is also worth mentioning here. For instance, let's take the Jews, the followers of the faith of Judaism. Both the religions i.e. Islam and Judaism share almost similar values, guidelines, and principles but there has always been an intense rivalry between these religions. Fortunately Israel is not situated next to Pakistan otherwise we would have witnessed another extreme war in the name of religion just like the one between India and Pakistan.
Terrorism in Pakistan has become a major and highly destructive phenomenon in recent years. The main reason behind terrorism is also this hate factor which has further divided the nation. The recent bombings of a church in Peshawar shows how much we hate Christians. Attacks on Shia Muslim's religious gatherings show the hate which Sunni Muslims have for the Shia Muslims. It doesn't just end up here because the next element is the ethnic discrimination because of which we are further divided into different ethnic groups like Sindhi, Muhajir, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Balochi, Memon etc. In the megacity of 20 million people Karachi, where communities are divided by language and ethnicity, people struggle to live peacefully with each other.
It feels really good that, even in the current situation,where there is nothing but hatred and malice towards everyone, a goodwill step was taken by the Shia community of Multan when they delivered Christmas gifts to the Christian families by going door-to-door in the form of small delegations. Hundreds of Christian families received the gifts with open arms and much excitement which means there's still some hope left.
Racism and hatred are cancers that eat