A child is born artless, nameless, and then subject to the conventions which stuff him and teach him pecularities. The holy Prophet has said 'God has made the whole earth a mosque for me'. Won’t the partitioning of this mosque sadden the heart of the Prophet!
Don’t we call ourselves pious? Though God set lands apart but aren’t the voids filled with water to bring us all together to share wisdom, knowledge, and to make each other known of the unknown that one knows but others know not. Is it not wrong to partition this fane; a country itself? Why is it mandatory to sow seeds of hatred among people of different communities by raising walls of gore! One of the great philosophers - Rousseau says - ‘man is born free but everywhere I see him in chains’. Haven’t we ourselves made this world a prison? We fight each other on small pieces of land. Kahlil Gibran penciled “Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.” And today what I see is that pride has sucked humanity and left man dry. Gone are the times when blood valued, when love beckoned people to spread joys and in times of pain to shoulder sorrow. Lost are the times when moral decencies such as altruism, justice, freedom, truthfulness and compassion were embraced.
In this universe there is space for everybody, yet we have not learned to live together. Ghandi took everything away with him to the world of the blessed. Left is a stone-hearted concrete man sans humanity. Man became materialistic and ego-centric. The 21st century promised a time of scientific and technological growth at all levels - hence converting human being into a robot which triggered chaos, disruption, war and above all discrimination. Lack of human values have given us economic imbalances in our society; many are poor, few rich.
Peace is what everyone seeks but it can never be secured from the outside world. Accumulation of the riches and power cannot endow peace. Peace can only ooze from the fountain of humility and compassion. The greatest of all virtues is love and the irony is that its actual tenor is forgotten. Aftermath of all this is what we clearly see around us – betrayal and deception, and betrayals in turn wound the dignity of human beings resulting into death of humanity. Man has lost his emotions. The skin of man has toughened, thus no felling of compassion or contrition prick the conscience.
Human values like humility, generosity, compassion are the need of the hour in this world. Truth, right conduct, love, peace, non-violence - these are the basics for a global harmony. Man has lost himself in the mere intellectual lexicalization and fails to understand the sublime stuff.
Don’t say yourself blind. Gone is gone, at least, if we want the coming generations to preserve humane-ness, it becomes our utmost responsibility to see that our children do not get into this mad, material race, chasing all unnecessary things. Thus, if we want to refresh the human values, we necessarily have to devalue these "precious" commodities psychologically.

(Tabish is doing BA (Honors) English from Amity University. Feedback at mohammadtabish@ymail.com)

Lastupdate on : Sun, 13 Mar 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sun, 13 Mar 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:00:00 IST