In today’s world, it is all too easy to become an activist with a barrage of tweets, articles, or videos, eavesdropping here and there, inciting people to wage ill-conceived wars that claim innocent lives.
War knows no victor; everyone is a loser both in the short and long term.
Eliminate Injustice
Defending an innocent nation is a noble humanitarian imperative. Peace cannot coexist with injustice; it can only be achieved by eliminating injustice and establishing equality and justice for all humanity. There is a significant difference between someone who calls for lifting injustice from a nation or state based on a shared affiliation, such as race, religion, language, or culture, and someone who calls for lifting injustice from a nation or state based on the shared dignity of humanity. Humanity and the peoples of the world are united in their right to global peace and in their shared humanity, particularly regarding the right to life and the equal enjoyment of its blessings and bounties. We should defend humanity simply because we are human beings.
Peace and coexistence are the common nature for all people on a land that can accommodate everyone. Wars, enmity and conflict are diseases created by humankind throughout history with closed-minded policies, contemporary lust and reckless politics.
Some politicians across the political spectrum instigate wars. We have to be careful and avoid generalisation so as not to criminalise other members of the same political body to which they belong.
However, the collective consciousness sometimes falls victim to generalisation and uncontrolled narrative, the kind of which we see in some social media writings. We have witnessed the negative impact of such content in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Some people attempt to incite troubles in India and Nepal as well. Reason in the face of wars, enmity and conflict does not stem from impressions or negative emotions stirred by some who are safe and secure in their homes. Some of them fly into a rage if the electricity and water were cut off for half a day, or if their salary were reduced, they would lash out at those around them. It is not easy to witness thousands displaced, hundreds killed, women widowed and children orphaned, while others incite wars as if it were a football match, not a war that spares no one.
Essence of wisdom
Patience and reason are the essence of wisdom. Those who call for peace are not the same as those who call for war; those who strive to extinguish conflicts are not the same as those who ignite them, and those who advocate for the sanctity of human life are not the same as those who seek to divide people and incite discord and conflict among them.
What I have mentioned does not mean downplaying the calamities and destruction occurring in some parts of our Arab world. Nor does the existence of these calamities mean that we should be held hostage by reality and become instruments of corruption and destruction in other parts of the Arab world. We must first liberate ourselves from selfishness and ethnic belonging.
The Spirit of Humanity
We must unite to extinguish the wars in Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Gaza, and elsewhere, and to work together to reconstruct these countries through development, science, knowledge and progress. This spirit stems not from Arabism but from humanity. If intellectual, religious and cultural discourses are refined and freed from the narrow affiliation, embracing the broader scope of humanity and existence, this will influence politicians and their supporters. This is because they always cling to affiliations to fulfil their ambitions, using these issues to justify the instigation of wars. I don’t say this out of sentimentality or wishful thinking, but rather, in my view, as a vision that may lead us to some form of healing. When we think with the spirit of humanity, peace and revival, and recognise the compassion within human nature, we will see positive fruits in neighbouring countries before those farther away.
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