By Shazia Anwer Cheema
Thank you, Prime Minister Imran Khan. Thank you very much once again. You raised a vital question on Sunday in your speech at the Rehmatul-Lil-Aalamin conference that I have been trying to tell my compatriots since I started my studies in Europe years ago.
A particular state of mind in our society portrays the West as an ugly and immoral society and our youth have become a victim of this propaganda, taking the West as our enemy. Such “youth disillusionment” can be found on social media where a majority of our young people curse Western standards and this behavior actually helps our enemies portray our society as an anti-Western society.
Thank you, Prime Minister, for telling the nation that the West is much better than us if we are talking about humanity, tolerance, interfaith harmony and coexistence. Yes, we can say that this model of social harmony is borrowed by the West from true Islam, but now we do not find this true model of Islam anywhere other than the West, particularly in Europe.
Prime Minister Imran Khan presented an excellent model of global progress for Muslims in his Sunday address, stressing that interfaith harmony, tolerance, adaptability, acceptability of the rights of others and respect for other religions are necessary for a solid foundation for a beautiful and better society.
Prime Minister Imran Khan said the Rehmatul-Lil-Aalamin Authority (PBUH) will have renowned academics who will monitor the schools’ curricula and tell us whether the curriculum needs to be changed or not and the teachings and history of others. religions will also be taught in educational institutions. Let me add here that the study of all religions is compulsory in Europe at the level of primary education.
Prime Minister Khan said the authority will conduct research in universities that have never been done in Pakistan before, adding that it will also assess the pros and cons of Western culture and its effects on Pakistani society.
He is right that when we bring western culture to our society, we have to assess what are the pros and cons as they have better morals than ours, but it also affects our family system. We haven’t done any research on this.
Prime Minister Imran boldly informed us that no nation can progress if it lowers its moral standards. There is no doubt that Imran Khan is the first Prime Minister to have accepted wholeheartedly that moral standards in the West are higher than ours and that their judicial system is better than ours and that the standard of humanity in the West is higher than ours.
In his speech, Prime Minister Khan cited that the Byzantine Empire was a superpower in its day, but people used to go to Muslims for legal decisions because Muslims had a better justice system by following the directives of the Prophet (pbuh).
Since Byzantine Empire is part of my studies, I want to share with Prime Minister Imran Khan the main reason for the collapse of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of the Ottoman Empire.
Historians claim that eight civil wars were the main reason for the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, but anthropologists and philosophers believe that the hate factor was the main cause of the civil wars. the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. Hate towards weaker social groups, hatred towards other religions, hatred towards different ethnic groups, hatred towards other royal families and hatred towards immigrants (foreign groups) triggered the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire because Turkish Muslims offered a hate-free society where Christians and Jews held prominent positions in the Palace, weaker groups were protected, intra-religious marriages were the norm, and interfaith harmony was ensured by the state. The best teaching staff were brought together from all over Europe in educational establishments (Madaras) regardless of their religious, ethnic and racial origins. The Qazi (justice) system operated independently, the administrative structure had members of all religions, and Sufi Islam was the ruler of the rulers. Performing arts were sponsored by the state, philosophers received annual scholarships, storytellers were honored, etc.
If we have an honest audit to find out why our society is far behind where it should have been, we will find that one of the main reasons for the constant degradation of our society is the hate factor. We hate people sometimes with and sometimes without reasons. We like to use phrases with a proud air that I hate A or I hate B. Rich hates the poor and the poor hates the rich. The powerful hate the powerless and the powerless want to slaughter the powerful. We are a divided nation – divided by caste, creed, ethnicity, language, sectarian preferences, and so on. Divisions within society can be seen in other societies as well and almost all societies have such fault lines, but division at the level of hate is always dangerous for every society. The hate factor is deadly and society cannot survive for long if this factor is not taken into account by the state.
I recently read some very credible research on the “hate factor” and learned that hate has two main origins. The first is an unconscious defense mechanism called projective identification. The second cause of hatred stems from an individual experience of dehumanization. Ironically, projective identification is what forces an individual to devalue or dehumanize another person, so a cycle exists. Breaking the chain of hate requires an understanding of both projective identification and the experience of dehumanization.
We understand that projective identification is an unconscious defense mechanism that protects a person with an extremely fragile ego, and the person hides behind a large facade of smoke, mirrors, and bravado in order to protect a weak ego. This person who hates others is unable to tolerate parts of themselves, so they project the hated parts onto someone else, making them feel entitled to blame, control, dominate, punish and humiliate the other person. In other words, the person earns their security by making someone else feel inferior.
In a comprehensive review of classical and more contemporary conceptualizations, several scholars describe hatred as the most destructive affective phenomenon in the history of human nature. These destructive implications of hate on human life have been extensively documented in several recent contributions. The literature shows that hate has been defined in various ways, a problem characteristic of emotions in general. Hatred was seen as an emotional attitude, a syndrome, a generalized form of anger, generalized appraisal, normative judgment, and a motive for devaluing others.
The theme of hatred is no longer a subject reserved for psychologists; Fairly extensive empirical research on hate has been carried out over the past four decades by other disciplines, such as sociology, political science, communication, and social justice.
Taking advantage of this writing, I call on Prime Minister Imran Khan to develop a strategy to mitigate the factor of hatred in our society. I suggest that there should be discussions and seminars of experts, religious scholars, academics and experts in semiotics and communication to examine this important question.
I believe the state should sponsor research to uncover the reasons for intolerant and passionate behavior among people and should find ways to alleviate this behavior as hatred kills the soul of coexistence which is a prerequisite for life of any society.
Note: Writer Shazia Anwer Cheema is a Prague-based foreign affairs expert who writes for national and international media. She is a doctoral student. Researcher in semiotics and philosophy of communication at Charles University in Prague. She heads the DND Think Tank. She can be reached at her: Twitter @ShaziaAnwerCh Email: shaziaanwer@yahoo.com
