I BELONG
The soot vaulted sky shunned the sun, casting the starved like spectres in a grey genocidal wasteland.
Falsehood must inevitably fall as truth, inch by inch, reclaims the narrative and restores life to the desolation which is Palestine today. But an unsettling question still looms large: How much of Palestine and its people will remain after this protracted spate of willful Israeli hate and slaughter?
Gaza, Palestine’s coastal limb, is haemorrhaging, not just under the weight of a sophisticated and amoral military onslaught, but also under the suffocating and shameless silence of a world refusing to extend Palestinians the same liberties which they enjoy.
Palestinians must constantly prove their humanity, just like all the victims of colonialism have to do. The coloniser’s notion of an acceptable victim, or the ‘barbarian’ proving his civility, is not as per René Descartes’ Cogito, Ergo Sum—I think, therefore I am—philosophy, which extends to “I am, therefore I belong“, without qualification. Instead, colonialists insist that the road to belonging means subsuming their way of life and thought. Those who oblige earn ‘honourific titles’ such as: ‘Enlightened Black, Arab or whatever other non-Western racial group’, ‘Good Worker’, and ‘Intelligent Native’. And their ‘benefactors’ say things like: ‘He speaks good English for a Black. I didn’t know they could sound cultured,’ and ‘She doesn’t stink. She washes herself,’ and ‘The acquiescent are the good ones. They don’t cause you any trouble.’
Why does a non-white Westerner require all sorts of qualifications to be considered human?
This Western attitude is not unfamiliar to Muslims, especially those acquainted with the following verse, from which we can draw a similitude: ‘The Jews and the Christians will never be pleased with you unless you follow their ways. Say, ‘God’s guidance is the only true guidance.’ If you follow their desires after the knowledge that has come to you, you would find no one to protect you from God or help you.’ [2:120].
As Muslims, regardless of the era, our duty is to speak just words in the face of tyrants and their henchmen, not follow their desires.
E.T. SEEKS THE ONE
If an alien only had information about the Prophet’s character, that his legacy left behind a massive following, and that he was an earthling, nothing more, not even that he was a Prophet, a Muslim, or that his name was Muhammad, but wanted to learn more and visited Earth to meet the Prophet’s followers to teach him, and the only indicator to recognise them would be via his attributes, which the alien adores, would he locate us easily?
Would the alien seek an audience with you and me because he observed the Prophet within us?
If the truth confronts you, what do you do?
Say: Welcome, I’m Muslim too.
Until next week, InshaAllah
P.S. Remember to write weekly to the President
Zaahied Sallie
Author of The Beloved Prophet – An Illustrated Biography in Rhyme
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