Stop Discrimination and avoid prejudice
‘I believe discrimination still exists in society and must be fought in every form’
By JAVAID JAFRI
Discrimination in its root meaning is not at all wrong; it simply refers to the act of distinguishing one subject from another. However, in modern usage, the term refers to “wrongful discrimination,” or distinguishes among people on the basis of prejudice instead of the basis of prejudice of individual merit.
In psychology, it is the ability to perceive and respond to differences among stimuli. It is considered a more advanced form of learning than generalization, the ability to perceive similarities, although animals can be trained to discriminate as well as to generalize. It is an old strange problematic activity in our today’s society.
Many a times, I have interacted with my colleagues from different school of thoughts regarding the same issue and have complained for the same. Islam is against all forms of racism and bigotry, on the basis of both revelation and reason. Racism is defined as the belief that one ethnicity is superior to another, or one color of skin is superior to another, or the people of one region or superior to another it is a type of prejudice, to prejudge demographic of people based upon their benign and arbitrary physical characteristics .Such repaginate beliefs are the traits of pre-Islamic ignorance (al-jahiliyyah) rather, in Islam we believe all people are born equal before Allah and the only characteristic that makes someone superior to another is righteousness (al-taqwah) .
Allah has dignified the children of Adam all human beings in the world, with blessed provisions such as reason, intelligence, and empathy.“Respect and honor all human beings irrespective of their religion color, race, sex, language, status, property, birth, profession/jo and so on”(Al-Isra,17:70).
Gender inequality, a hot issue is genetically ascribed to religion whereas its causes are purely non-religious. It originates from political, economic, social and cultural factors as for Islam, gender equality is part of its jurisprudence and fundamental teachings.
Indeed the various languages, colors and castes of human beings, is the sign of Allah’s majesty and a beautiful lesson for us to learn about humility, equality and the Appreciations .“Mankind! We created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and made you into tribes and nations that you may know each other.” (Al-Hujurat, 49:13) Verily, when we take a look in our past discrimination was of only 3 or 4 types ie, color, creed, religion and sex. Among these gender issue was on its peak. Girl child was being buried alive surely that was a kind of illiteracy and lack of real knowledge . Numerous verses of holly Quran and prophetic traditions enjoin gender equality which categorically proves that gender inequality is not faith/based “O Mankind! Fear your lord who (initiated) your creation from a single soul, then from it creates its mate, and from these who spread (the creation of) countless man and women” [throughout the earth] (Al-Nisa, 4:1)
Day by day it has become one of the severe and alarming issues of our society. It is our duty and responsibility that we must take an initiative and pains regarding the same otherwise it would be very hard for our upcoming generation to survive especially for the family of lower classes and minorities of our society because they are suffering a lot by different means and are the prime targets and worst victims of this menace.
Meanwhile, society has petrified in such a way that when someone is looking for marriage proposals we and our family enquires about his or her caste first followed by color, profession, property/income and so on, instead of his or her moral education nobleness, kindness towards his/her parents, elders and society. Irony is that even so called responsible, educated and well aware people are sailing in the same boat in this modern era. It must be prohibited at its earliest. While, as now we have promoted it to various kinds which is really very hard to bear for a layman. Peoples are being labeled by their jobs, profession, salary bars and wages. Surely, every individual is having a different job or profession to serve their life and family, but we must not discriminate them on the basis of their job. It is the way God has created a balanced environment. This kind of discrimination creates a depression and psychological pressure/disturbances.
Sometimes some egoist elements of our society use these thin classes for their political purposes. They use us just for vote bank and nothing more than that, Here I would like to convey my personal message to my society “please for god sake don’t pay heed to so called leadrers and representatives of our society Who have audacity to say that prayers will not be accepted if we don’t vote them.” Without shadow of doubt, they only use us for their own political purposes by dividing us in various sects. Those who believe that they have a lot of sympathy towards us are wrong but in actual these are the humanity contractors and they use everyone for their own political interests . “I believe discrimination still exists in society and must fight in every form”.
Honestly saying I have seen and interacted with couple of families of lower classes of our society which are performing well & can contribute tremendously to our society in their future in various fields But mindset & behavior of our society towards them functions as a barrier resulting that they fail to show their talent & performance. One another big issue is “prejudice” means to pre-judge and in simple words we can say that, “Discrimination is putting your prejudice into action”, we are becoming judgmental to judge a person from their past life which also affects one’s life by different ways. Hazrat Ali (a.s) has said “Don’t judge a person by his past”.
If we take an example of two Children from two different families rich and poor surely there is the hell of difference between duo in their standard of living. But it is the duty of our parents, teachers, elders and responsible persons of the society who can give the lessons on daily basis to their wards and youngsters till the age of maturity regarding discrimination and humanity. So, that will adapt a habit to treat every mankind in a good manner and with respect. In every field, humans are being treated in different ways .In our society the child belonging from a rich family is being treated in specific way and the child from poor family is treated vice versa.
I hope this example will make us understand the importance and drawbacks of discrimination no doubt such an act can ruin or build the life of a child .So, it is all in our hands .it is our duty and responsibility to give respect to every child of a nation and encourage them because children are our future assets “EVERY CHILD IS SPECIAL AND EVERY LIFE IS PRECIOUS” As Adam smith has considered child as the father of nation “.Once we lose the value of child definitely we have lost our whole nation.
(The writer is a government employee working in the Police Department and can be reached at [email protected])
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