On Being Human by Osman Latiff

There is much we can see of ourselves in others. We all hope for basic survival, at the least, in a world of hostilities. Sometimes our primary focus in life can relate merely to the pressures of simply surviving. This could be in the form of paying the rent, bills, financial burdens, family and/or work stresses. The Muslim should understand that this can take its toll on any person and may affect their perspective when engaging in ideas around God, life and purpose.

We reflect on Mūsa and Hārūn in their mission to call Pharoah to Allāh. The information Allāh provides us is astonishing for how it describes that the initial theatre of struggle between the tyrant and the Prophet (peace be upon him), actually is first, an internal one.

Though the apparatus of propagation in Mūsa’s case is staged with spectacle since Pharaoh had assembled his people, (“gathering his people, proclaiming” [79:23]) with the presence of magicians on a day of festival, the objective and preparation was entirely intended for spiritual renewal and reformation. It is in the overcoming of one’s inner self that sincerity can take root. The latter can be seen when Allāh first instructs Mūsa to go unto Pharaoh who had transgressed. Allāh directed Mūsa to say:

79:17 - ‘Go to Pharaoh, for he has exceeded all bounds, 79:18 - and ask him, “Do you want to purify yourself [of sin]?

79:19 - Do you want me to guide you to your Lord, so that you may hold Him in awe?” These verses emphasise the great need for spiritual purification as a remedy for human wrongs. Pharaoh of course had been active in the murder and persecution of a great multitude of people but Allāh’s instruction to Mūsa was to allow Pharaoh to consider his own human disposition and his need to believe and revere the One who created and sustains all beings.

The Muslim is not aloof, but is understanding of his social environment and realities. He does not erect walls of superiority, but can instead connect with the common man. He does not seek out only the influential so as to create a spectacle around his presence and communication, but sees in everyone a potential and purpose. We are reminded as our Prophet (peace be upon him) was reminded in Sūrah ‘Abasa that all men, of all ranking, need spiritual purification. We should reflect deeply in this light that the same word (zakkā – to grow in purity) is used to describe Mūsa’s mission to Pharaoh and furthermore used in the opening verse of Sūrah ‘Abasa (80) for a blind man, Ibn Umm Maktūm. Both tyrants and the socially vulnerable are in need of Allāh.

80:3 - for all you know, he might have grown in spirit 80:4 - or taken note of something useful to him.

To sum, Allāh informs us that there is a conscience at work in every man. Even in the midst of a prevailing negative status quo, such a conscience can be awakened. The following three examples, (two from the Qur’ān and one from a Companion of the Prophet (Allāh be pleased with him) can aid the Muslim in understanding how a changed state of mind and heart can have a bearing on beliefs and attitudes.

The first example concerns the Prophet Ibrāhīm (peace be upon him) at the point wherein he, as a young boy, smashed the idols his people were worshipping. When the townsfolk left for the day, Ibrāhīm tore down the statues and placed an axe around the neck of the most prominent of the idols. As the townspeople returned and saw the shattered remnants of their carvings, they pointed blame at Ibrāhīm (upon him be peace), and so he was called. The Qur’ān describes in Surah al-Anbiyā’ (27):

57 - By God I shall certainly plot against your idols as soon as you have turned your backs!’ 58 - He broke them all into pieces, but left the biggest one for them to return to.

59 - They said, ‘Who has done this to our gods? How wicked he must be!’ 60 - Some said, ‘We heard a youth called Abraham talking about them.’ 61 - They said, ‘Bring him before the eyes of the people, so that they may witness [his trial].’ 62 - They asked, ‘Was it you, Abraham, who did this to our gods?’ 63 - He said, ‘No, it was done by the biggest of them– this one. Ask them, if they can talk.’ 64 - They turned to one another, saying, ‘It is you who are in the wrong, 65 - but then they lapsed again and said, ‘You know very well these gods cannot speak.’ 66 - Abraham said, ‘How can you worship what can neither benefit nor harm you, instead of God?

67 - Shame on you and on the things you worship instead of God. Have you no sense?’ Verses 64 and 65 are of particular interest, as they highlight that the people with whom Ibrāhīm was contending had a sudden lapse. Turning against their own people, they exclaimed, “Behold, it is you who are doing wrong.” The argument put forward by Ibrāhīm – to question the surviving idol – was overwhelming and aroused within them some reasoning.

The question was to ask the shattered idols if they might have seen who caused them such harm and whether it was the surviving largest idol. Confounded, they turned on one another, comprehending for that small moment the error of their ways. The brief moment of clarity was short-lived as “they relapsed into their former way of thinking” and confronted Ibrāhīm for suggesting what they too knew, about the futility of idol-worship. This moment is an interesting one, as it reveals an agitated self that momentarily recognises a previously disregarded truth. The implications of this narrative demonstrate the power of facilitating a reawakening and then holding onto the reawakening to trigger a deeper understanding than before.

This is crucial in the Muslim’s role since it reminds him that the self can at any moment be re-awakened. Hence, the Muslim must never lose hope and remember that all conviction is a matter of the heart and mind, which are susceptible to the subtlest and greatest of changes.

The second example concerns the Prophet Mūsa (upon him be peace) and the people to whom he was sent. The focal verse here is verse 14 from Surah al-Naml (27): 12 - Put your hand inside your cloak and it will come out white, but unharmed. These are among the nine signs that you will show Pharaoh and his people; they have really gone too far.’ 13 - But when Our enlightening signs came to them, they said, ‘This is clearly [just] sorcery!’ 14 - They denied them, in their wickedness and their pride, even though their souls acknowledged them as true. See how those who spread corruption met their end! We are told that the clansmen of Pharaoh to whom Prophet Mūsa was sent, rejected the signs given unto Mūsa, though “in their minds were convinced of their truth”. Ibn ‘Abbas said it means they had “certainty in their hearts.”3 Al-Sa’di says that “they did not reject the signs due to any doubts and uncertainties but rejected them out of pride and arrogance despite having full certainty in the truth of the signs they witnessed.”4 This reflects that in certain instances what is expressed outwardly in speech and actions is not what is truly and fully felt and understood in the heart and mind of the one being addressed.

The dynamics of confrontation can oftentimes obscure what is happening at the inner level of each person, such as inner feelings of guilt, sympathy, and remorse. They might be contained for hours or even 8 years or expressed immediately. Once, some of the Makkan leaders stood outside of the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) home in the night and listened to the Prophet (peace be upon him) reciting the Qur’ān. Unaware of one another’s presence, they were absorbed in the recitation and remained until dawn. When the men noticed one another, they castigated each other for listening to the Qur’ān and promised not to repeat their action. The next day and the third day, the men made their clandestine way back to the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) house. The example reveals how even the Prophet’s (peace be upon him)

enemies were moved by the Qur’ān although personal vengeance, tribal loyalties, jealousy and hatred prevented their acceptance of the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) message.

The final example, which is applicable in light of understanding the human cost of atrocity and suffering, concerns the case of an early companion of the Prophet (peace be upon him), Sa´īd ibn ‘Āmir (Allāh be pleased with him). Sa´īd ibn ‘Āmir, before his embracing of Islam, was one of the spectators who had gathered in Makkah to witness the execution of the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) companion Khubayb bin ‘Adiyy (Allāh be pleased with him).

Prone to fits and fainting later on in his life, Sa´īd ibn ‘Āmir once reluctantly confessed to the caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (Allāh be pleased with him) that the mental image of Khubayb’s pain, tears, shrieks and the stripping away of human dignity as swords and spears cut through Khubayb’s body left its invisible, yet indelible mark on his own conscience. It shows how witnessing human suffering can take a severe toll on a human and how the fanfare of excitement among the Makkans came to be transformed to a horrific spectacle for Sa´īd ibn ‘Āmir. It was nothing more than the sadistic killing of a fellow Muslim whose unswerving love for the Prophet (peace be upon him) impressed even his enemies.5

As humans, we are fully capable of seeing people in ways which differ from common stereotyping and one example of this can be found in new media examples of blogs, websites and online communities. It is essential for the Muslim to remain mindful that opinions routinely formulated for TV talk shows or on radio broadcasts are not the sum total or the majority of opinions on any matter. Though the media might cloud or darken perceptions about Muslims, (often even stereotype and vilify), it does not mean that the general public necessarily hold to those same views or are in agreement with them. It might, in fact, be the very opposite. People can be alert and sensitive to mistreatment and unfair representation.

This is shown in an example concerning the tragedy of 14-year old Abeer Hamza Qasim al-Janabi, a young girl raped and murdered by American soldiers. The crime undoubtedly received grossly skewed coverage in the U.S mainstream media, however the reception of the story within online communities differed drastically from this. The response to Abeer’s killing reflected a repositioning of the narrative to draw on the human suffering of a child-victim and the murder of her parents and younger sister.

On March 12th 2006, five U.S. Army soldiers of the 502nd Infantry Regiment, SGT Paul E.

Cortez, SPC James P. Barker, PFC Jesse V. Spielman, PFC Brian L. Howard and PFC Steven D. Green left their checkpoint for the Janabi farmhouse to the southwest of the village of Yusufiyya, in the town of Mahmudiyah, Iraq. As Howard acted as a lookout, the other four entered the family home. This was subsequent to a plan devised by the assailants of raping a ‘Hajji’ girl. After noon that day, the soldiers entered the home where Barker, Cortez and Green took turns to rape Abeer. The remaining members of the family were shot dead. The men then shot dead Abeer, set her body on fire and left the house. Green, also an ex-drone operator, stated that he raped the 14-year old Abeer and killed her alongside her family because ‘he didn’t view Iraqis as human.’6

The Daily Kos blog, founded by Markos Moulitsas in 2002 is one of the most popular political blogs to date.7 The blog is a discussion-oriented alternative to mainstream media enabling bloggers to critique and draw on existing reports in mainstream media. Interestingly, it hosts more than 25 articles/posts that contain some information pertaining to Abeer and the Mahmudiyah killings from 2006 to the present. The Daily Kos posts draw on the muted media response and seek to emphasise her age and the differential media attention to the case.

One of the posts, ‘It’s her 15th birthday! With a poll!’ comments ‘This Saturday August 19th would have been the 15th birthday of Abeer Qassim Hamza. I am one of some folks who are going to fast and a vigil in memory of Abeer, and symbolically all the innocents who have suffered in the Iraq War’. Other posts include: ‘Never sixteen and so sorely missed’ (19/08/07); ‘Happy Birthday Abeer Qassim Hamza. R.I.P’ (19/08/10). In the report, we also find this speculative storying:

“Abeer must have died knowing what was happening to her family. While Cortez and Barker raped her, she probably heard screams and may have noted a sharp silence after the last gunshots were fired. After Green entered the room, presumably with her family’s blood on him, there can have been little doubt. We can hope that her terror prevented her from focusing on these details, or from feeling, however wrongly, that it was her fault that her parents and her sister had been killed so the soldiers might get to her. Perhaps she had a moment to thank Allāh that her two younger brothers were away at school. They were later found crying by the burning house, where they could look inside and see the bodies. We can’t be sure, of course. Key witnesses are dead. But this is what a war crime looks like.”8

The same humanising act of storying is taken by the “abeermemorial” blog which advertises a series of vigils held in the U.S and U.K, sponsored by the Abeer Qassim Hamza Memorial Committee:9 “Imagine where her and other Iraqi women would have been today if they weren’t murdered. I could imagine Abeer in school (if the schools were still or are still functioning, of course), preparing perhaps to attend college in the hopes of bettering her society. Or maybe she would be at home, eating with her family or reading a poem. She would be a living, breathing, human being. But she was murdered.” Kaplan (2011) explains that “Witnessing has to do with an image producing a deliberate ethical consciousness through empathic affect not related only to a specific person or character.”10 The empathic concern also entails that the witness would seek that justice is done. The responses of popular media outlets such as The Daily Kos reflect witnessing empathy and though the injustice is largely focused on child victim Abeer more than the other members of her family, it was a response to media reticence that spoke of alerting the consciousness of larger, global communities about her rape and killing and the failure of the media to adequately draw attention and empathic concern for the tragedy. The Daily Kos’ attention to the Abeer story and recurrent ‘envisioning’ of her plight and the tragedy formed by and around the atrocity is in line with Nussbaum’s idea of compassion as “a painful emotion occasioned by the awareness of another person’s undeserved misfortune.”11 Essential to challenging self/other binaries, the storying does not appropriate a Westernised space to highlight the tragedy, but accentuates an ethical awareness around understanding the meanings of the event.12

The differential media responses to the killing of Abeer at a heightened point in U.S media wherein pro-war attitudes were very high, shows that people are not the same even in the face of relentless mainstream media bias. The Muslim must bear in mind that the common man has access to a range of media and that even media output should not be characterised as being entirely the same. There is a vast diversity of media organisations, as well as narratives and images, web blogs, songs, poems, visual displays, media – both mainstream, popular and new media. These can produce counter-hegemonic meaning and open spaces and facilitate greater empathic bearing. The Muslim must not interact with another on the assumption that he or she is predisposed to othering or dehumanising of Muslims (or other groups), but instead approach and engage with another without prejudice. We must be conscious of that person’s innate nature - that it can be awakened by the will of Allah (upon whom all praise is forever due) irrespective of the time or climate in which he lives.

It should be noted that the distinctions that Allāh makes between believers, unbelievers, hypocrites, sinners, truthful etc. are clear, but each of these people still have a human self. This inner being can be overcome with the negative traits of denial, rejection, arrogance and indifference, but can also, even simultaneously, exhibit the lofty emotions of care and displays of mercy. The lowly and lofty parts of the human self are mentioned in Surah al-Shams:

91:7 - by the soul and how He formed it 91:8 - and inspired it [to know] its own rebellion and piety!

A poem by the Nigerian novelist, poet and social critic Chinua Achebe entitled “Vultures” draws on such a conflicting nature of man. It challenges us to imagine the juxtaposing features of a vulture’s life. The vulture rests its “bashed in head” on a “broken bone of a dead tree”. A scavenger, it keeps a watch on its “hollowed remnants in easy range of cold telescopic eyes” having “picked the eyes” of its “swollen corpse in a water-logged trench and ate the things in its bowel.” The scene is bleak and repulsive - until we see another, contrasting, side to the vulture. For example, Achebe describes how strange it is that the same vulture demonstrates “love” by tidying and cleaning its site of blood and gore. The vulture will even sleep with “her face turned to the wall!” and not looking upon the bleakness that surrounds her. It will even “nestle close to his mate”. It is with this duality in mind that Achebe then turns our focus towards human beings. They too can exist with such dualities, and be perceived as such.

A further example of this rests in the example of the Belsen Camp and the commandment issued therein. The Bergen-Belsen camp, situated in northern Germany was a concentration camp used in the execution of Jews in the Holocaust. Approximately 50,000 Jews met their death at the camp including well-known child diarist Anne Frank, Achebe describes the commandment:

“…Thus the Commandant at Belsen.

Camp going home for.

the day with fumes of.

human roast clinging.

rebelliously to his hairy.

nostrils will stop.

at the wayside sweet-shop.

and pick up a chocolate.

for his tender offspring..

waiting at home for Daddy’s return … Praise bounteous.

providence if you will.

that grants even an ogre.

a tiny glow-worm.

tenderness encapsulated.

in icy caverns of a cruel.

heart or else despair.

for in every germ.

of that kindred love is.

lodged the perpetuity.

of evil.”13

What the poem emphasises is that man can be inspired by positive displays of kindness and care and plunged into the abyss of depravity. This is made all the more true today with the means of mechanical dehumanisation. Nazi guards would feel better knowing that it was not they, but the fans, that were killing human beings in the gas chambers of the extermination camps.

In contrast to Achebe’s Nazi commandant having “fumes” in his nostrils of victims he had gassed to death, in drone strikes “there’s no flesh on your monitor, just coordinates.”14 A former CIA officer describes: “You could see these little figures scurrying and the explosion going off and when the smoke cleared, there was just rubble and charred stuff.”15 Like the commandant stopping to buy a chocolate for his child, Colonel Michael Lenahan, a Predator pilot and operations director for the 196 th Reconnaissance Squadron, says, “It’s bizarre, I guess. It is quite different – going from potentially shooting a missile, then going to your kid’s soccer game”: a killer in the morning and a father in the evening.”16 As Allāh had informed us, the human self is imbued with moral failings as well as with consciousness of God! (91:8).

In an interview with former Israeli Army combat soldier Eran Efrati who served as a soldier in the occupied city of Hebron, he describes how the systematic oppression against Palestinians is underscored by layers of dehumanising that began from when he was very young and become more pronounced during his drafting into the occupied territories.

Children, he explained, are taught that Palestinian life is not to be accorded the same value as an Israeli life, that an Israeli soldier cannot intervene if a Jewish settler is abusing a Palestinian, even to the point of carrying out the murder of a Palestinian. He explains how Palestinians are not considered fully human, but sub-human. The latter is reflected in that there is no differentiating between man, woman, child, disabled, mother, or orphan in Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy during curfews in the occupied territories. Efrati describes:

“How can a Nazi soldier get up in the morning, give his wife a hug and kiss and go out to the camp and do his job? I just couldn’t understand it. And when I got into the Occupied Territories for the first time, I understood how there can be a contradiction inside yourself. As a human being you can do your job and be one person at home – be a loving, caring boyfriend, or son, or brother and at the same time hold people under a regime so oppressed that people are dying not only from your bullets but from the amount of calories entered into their territories like in Gaza, from oppression or sickness. This realisation during my time as a soldier… put me on the right side of history.”17

People are not all the same, and nor is one single person the same throughout. The Muslim must therefore bear in mind the complex nature of a person. Perceptions of another at one given time is not the complete picture of anything. Similarly, a negative idea about another community which proliferates on the media should not require a Muslim to change his outlook on others nor radically change his method of calling others to Allah. Remember that everyone is born with an innate disposition in being able to recognise Allāh and it is in realigning the human spirit with one’s real human potential that lies at the root of the Islamic call. Sometimes people tire of hearing the same negative stories about others; other times they navigate from mainstream to forms of new media; other times their relationship with that community member inhibits the formulating of negative opinions.