The burning of the Jordanian pilot Muath Kasasbeh last night in a horrific video stirred the Muslim world’s emotions and anger again.
The scene of burning a human alive captivates the worse emotions into each one of us. Is it a result of this closer scene to hell and its epic punishment? Or is it just a reminder of the burning feelings of pain that persist with burns?
The burning of Bou’zazi that ignited the Arab Spring in a reflection on the refusal of the suppression ad oppression of governments in starving its peoples to a level where the body is sacrificed and set on fire. Bou’azizi’s burning alive and the flames or his burnt body were the torches that the Arab world used to ignite their revolutions.
In another scene the burning of Mohammad Abu Khdeir alive by a group of fanatic haters of Zionists, managed to stir a different kind of emotions in the Arab feelings, that showed how much hate can be expressed through an enemy. A mutual enemy.
However, the burning of Muath Kasasbeh took a different form. We all participated in pouring the gasoline on his living body before ISIS burnt him alive and forcing us all to watch it. A crime we all took part in, the moment we divided ourselves between them and us. The fanatics, extremists and the so-called moderates. IT was our choice in their breeding and it was our choice in creating new dictatorships that we claimed them as us.
ISIS, Nusra, beit al maqdis, al-Qaida and others, are all a result of our own making as a response to what we believe as oppression and suppression. We followed blindly a hideous dream of regaining Islamic reign that is implanted in our childhood and fed on the hatred of the other to us. Our divisions to faith and excommunicating anyone who believes other than our own belief.
We are all part of those crimes that are committed against our own humanity by our own hands and approval, each moment we decide that the other can be sacrificed. Each time we agree that the other doesn’t belong to us so his life isn’t of any meaning or need.
Our resentment to the acts of ISIS is a reflection of our own criminal souls. The difference is that they brutally, savagely show us our realities. While we allow our governments to kill others under the name of terror in the same means.
The support to ISIS started when ISIS was fought as a unit, as a body of existing terror that our governments created to scare us maybe from a hideous horror that only them can save us from through eliminating them with tremendous weapon that only kills the victims among us.
Each time we fight those terrorists by justifying killing them brutally, our death become closer. Each time we forget that those people recruited to such organizations are a product of our own education and our own oppressions created by our governments whom we chose and allowed them to kill on our behalf we become closer to being criminals and future victims.
Our applauds to the killing or anyone who doesn’t present us is a crime that results in more extremism. Each time we differentiate between human being and classify them into a deserving death and not, we bring our own ends closer.
Each time a body is burnt alive… the ashes of that body dwells into our disturbed souls and condemn forever in a sin that we all continue to be part of…
Part of societies of burnt souls….
Thank you for saying what few are brave enough to say. Every day, in my practice of taking on the suffering of others and sending them prayers for comfort and relief of pain, I breathe in the suffering of the victims and inflictors of violence so that they will find peace and compassion. You are so correct that we are all connected. Your words are wise and compassionate.