BECOMING CITIZENS OF THE WORLD FIRST

Abhijit sent this very sensible mail from Dubai which I wish to share with everyone ... I have written a lot about this earlier but it always helps to reiterate that while each one of us must keep our individualim intact, we must work towards becoming global citizens if we wish make any sense of the life we are living ... if we wish to make any progress at all and want peace in the life of our children...

In any religion there are fundamentalists (for lack of a better word) who hijack the religion to further their own ends (political, wealth, power,socio-economic, etc). We can gripe and moan that these guys are ruining the image and philosophy of the religion concerned, they are a minority,etc. etc. However, if the majority are indeed secular, they now need to stand up and get their voices heard - staying under the tortoise shell and watching the world go by is not going to cut it. The Muslims in India took the first step by not allowing the terrorists to be buried as Mulims intheir graveyards - this to me represents a huge step forward in the right direction, and dare I say, a 180 degree turn from previous sentiments issued by their religious heads (Bukhari being a prime example). I am not a Hindu fundamentalist, but the rise of the Hindu fundamentalist movement came at a time when the so called minority were getting way more advantages than the average Indian citizen and that was creating resentment. This was taken advantage of by the politicians leading to the India we now know.

Coming to the specific topic of Islam, I ask myself why is it that Muslims world over are Muslims first and citizens of a country second? Why is it that over 90% of the terrorist activities are being carried out in the name of Islam funded by Islamic countries like Saudi? Why do the Muslims in India celebrate Pakistan's victory over India in a cricket or hockey game? Why conflicts between nations are represented as conflict between Islam and "somebody else"? If the true Muslims want to become true global citizens, they need to stop whining about religious discrimination and make their voices heard decrying terrorism and fundamentalism. They need to become like my friend Parvez who prays every Friday at the mosque but walked out with his son last Friday because the mullah was spouting venom and he did not want hisson to be exposed to such garbage. Parvez and his wife did Ganesh/Lakshmipuja with Islamic prayers for the new office - his office credenza has Ganesh sitting next to Allah ho Akbar with an Inukshuk next to that (gotit from Canada for him). He is a true Muslim and more importantly a true global citizen. Seeing guys like him, how can I say that Muslims are bad?

When our son Ankush, was born, there was no family around to help - all our help(and a lot of it) came from our neighbours, all Muslims from B'desh, Pakistan, Palestine and Egypt. So how can I forget those people and simply generalize the negatives of the few and push them on to the majority? But these good humans need to stand up and say enough is enough!