Six years ago, during the Rohingya crisis, I was roundly condemned for pointing out that Bangladesh was in the midst of its own humanitarian crisis resulting from unprecedented floods at the very moment the online ummah believed it should be opening its doors to the streams of desperate refugees fleeing from neighboring Myanmar.
It’s strange, then, that today I am condemned whenever I say neighbouring Muslim countries should open their borders to enable the Palestinian people to flee to safety. Strangely, this seems to be the only conflict zone in the world where we demand that the victims stay where they are to face whatever the belligerents intend to throw at them.
Of course, I am not so naive that I don’t know why this is so. But it would really help if we could temper our myth-making with a sober and rational engagement with reality. Across the region, all parties are playing politics with civilian lives, which they seem content to sacrifice for the sake of some far-off strategic goal.
None of them dare recall that Quranic rejoinder that the unjust will not be successful. Indeed, all of these means fly in the face of the Book we claim to proclaim. It is as if none of us believe we will be held to account on a fearsome day that is drawing near. Without a doubt, all participants will be asked about these Great Games in which the lives of the common people were wrecked for no good reason at all. Do we not tremble?
Last modified: 21 September 2024
