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Wed 24 Dec, 2003 06:00 am
Recent events remind us that racism remains rampant. Yet we can easily end racism through understanding and education.
People must realize that God created all humans from one couple, thus making the entire human race one large extended family. God says:“ O mankind! Be careful of your duty to your Lord who created you from a single soul (Adam), and from him (Adam) He created his wife (Eve); and from the two of them He spread abroad a multitude of men and women” (Qur'an 4:1).
Furthermore, we must understand that no race is superior to another. We appreciate a garden having many different flowers because we realize that each adds something to the beauty of the entire arrangement. This is why we do not object to the color of any flower. In a similar way we can see the world as a garden decorated with people of different colors. Let us appreciate that each variety of people contributes something to the spice of life in this world. God says:“ O mankind! We have created you male and female , and have made you nations and tribes that you may know each other. Verily, (start w/this word). The noblest of you in the sight of Allah*, is the most pious (righteous) of you” (Qur'an 49:13).
The noblest are the most obedient to God. Such persons may belong to nay race or country. What really matters is their conduct and behavior. The prophet Mohammad* publicly declared that Arabs are not superior to non-Arabs, and one color is not superior to another. In a day when light-skinned people could not imagine a black person as their leader, the prophet appointed a black person Usaamah, the son of zaid, as a leader.
As a result of following these teachings, many people have banished racism from their thoughts and actions. You can still see racial harmony today in the mosques of cosmopolitan cities. You will find people of various colors worshipping together, all with equal status before God. Rich or poor, black or white, kind or pauper all line up side by side to worship. No special preference is given to anyone based on color or social status. The leader in a mosque is appointed for his learning in the religious sciences, regardless of skin color. There is no such concept as a 'black mosque' or 'white mosque'. Islam removes such destructive concepts.
The sentiment is laudable--hanging the entire proposition from religious text is a tedious reminder of the inability for independent thought which breeds evils such a racism.
Here, how about this--let's educate the human race to understand that there is but a single race, and that therefore, any expression of racial hatred is equally an expression of self-hatred.
Let's leave the scriptural passage for the children's story hour.
It is really simple to end racism. Stop indulging in tribal groupthought, (a condition that religion perpetuates), and treat each person as an individual, not part of a group.
It is this whole idea of "them and us" that perpetuates racism and bigotry!
So how to end racism in others?
set, as humans we have a congenital need to develop and use myth as substitute for understanding. Now, as biology has nicely taken apart our overall"recipe", we cant argue that we are separate species and what sam asserts is scientifically defensible. The hard part is getting the word out.
obviously religious myth is so loaded with internal inconsistencies and flat wrongheaded reasoning, yet the 'true believers" dont question anything. Nor does their 'god" allow them. i think that another 3 or 4 centuries is going to pass bewfore we have a decent defensible and acceptable genesis story and attendant sub theories like "people are all the same".
Id love to be on the editorial board of that creed.
Science keeps pushing and theologies and philosophy keep reluctantly giving ground. i think that the biggest (albeit just as silly) accomodation to modernism that has recently been made is by the Fundamental arms of uS christians and jews. Wherein theyve together cobbled a theory that an 'Intelligent designer" (deity unspecifiied) was responsible for using all the rules of science, and by doing so in the proper ages as weve been able to discover, created everything once.
thats a very(at least to me) exciting accomodation to science and the weight of discoveries. Yet the ideas and lessons of the underlying myths remain as "lessons and teachings"
I say, as long as theyre not running around in traffic or hurting the little kids, lettem be. comfortable with their mythology, itll evolve in a couple hundred years and they wont even notice the transition.
I would only quibble that myth was originally intended as understanding, and i consider it to be a snake oil sales pitch delivered by a handful of perceptive individuals to the very short-lived, fearful and clueless tribal society.
Tribalism promotes the perpetuation of superstition, as any challenge to the accepted credo is seen as a threat to the tribe.
At any event, we're stuck with it, and the consequences.
Have a good holiday, Boss, stay out of jail--i've had huge expenses lately, and can't afford to bail ya . . .
Re: How to End Racism
sam2 wrote:Recent events remind us that racism remains rampant. Yet we can easily end racism through understanding and education.
Switch "ON." This might prove interesting.
Quote:People must realize that God created all humans....
Switch "OFF." This is bullsh*t!
Re: How to End Racism
Frank Apisa wrote:
Switch "OFF." This is bullsh*t!
Eloquent, and straight to the point.
ya can always count on frank to distill away the solvent and get to the essence
set, amuk is that which i shall not, this year, run.
Thanks for the kind remarks, folks.
Allow me to wish everyone a Merry Christmas -- happy holidays.
May the year 2004 bring everyone here peace and contentment.
Wouldn't mind seeing a bit more "peace and contentment" everywhere on the planet!!!
I say we make illegal to breed WITHIN your race for two decades......then we'll all be one homogenized race and we can find another illogical reason to hate each other......
Think of the women...how many of them might look like Maria Carey.....
But the dark cloud around that silver lining... Think of the men...how many of them might look like Michael Jackson.
(Oh. Very Bad!)
farmerman wrote:set, amuk is that which i shall not, this year, run.
Priceless, Boss, i loved that . . . reminds me of Churchill, referring to sentences ending in prepositions:
"That is something up with which i will not put."
but seal michael jackson is Diana Ross with the Nancy Reagan surprised look from all that surgery.
For better or WORSE!!!!!!! Michael is already a trans race woman.
How nice that everyone worships side by side. Now if only foreign domestic workers were treated as equals outside of the mosques ...
Grouping people into "us" and "them" is part of our evolutionary legacy, and whether you base your prejudices on color, nationality, religion, gender, caste, intelligence, political party, sexual orientation or some other distinguishing feature, it is not that easy to overcome.
I don't think homogenizing the species is the answer, but perhaps an exchange program where every teenager spent a year living with a family of another race, religion, or culture would give them a new perspective.
winnie and mark Twain have always given us their best stuff.
Gotta second something Terry said -- and something I've really put to the back of my mind.
Exchange students!
Best idea ever.
We oughta do much, much more of that.
I remember how exchange students from Iran and Pakistan changed my imperssions of those countries back when I was in high school.
The Ukraine Govt is presently trying to get chilldren from the kiev-Chernobyl areaplaced as exchange students for a period of 3 to 6 months. Each month that they can get away from the huge backgound radiation l body burden they carry, can help each child live an additional 5 years (statistically driven mort tables). its sad but we had 2 kids ourselves and they were a challenge . theyve developed a fatalism and , unless they move away permanently while still young, their outlook is bleak.
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