Fighting Against Racism

Muslims in many countries are currently affected by the racism against them. This is not limited to a certain country or a certain part of the world, this is a universal issue in almost all the countries with Muslim minorities.

Born out of mere hatred, Muslims too make some mistakes which makes these issues worsen. Since we cannot completely control the wrong fixations in others' mind, it is time for us to focus on something that we can.

I'm not intending to talk about how we can gradually make the non-Muslims’ Islamophobia go away with us following Islam properly. That's a whole other topic. This article is about how the Muslims can face the actions resulted by Islamophobia.

Right now in Sri Lanka, a so called Buddhist empowering organization is using a fear mongering strategy to make the Buddhists look at Muslims as enemies and to a certain extent, it does seem to work. When the society comprises of followers and not rational thinkers, this is very easy to achieve since fear drives people easily to create an illusion of something that doesn’t exist in their head. The common man takes this as an opportunity to show his personal envy and anger towards the minority which results in the burning of shops, breaking into mosques, assaults of defenseless people, etc. 

Dear Muslim brothers and sisters, fear not! This is all just a part of a political conspiracy that we all fail to understand. Once the political party that is behind this gains power, they are not planning to wipe all Muslims out. No! It’s not their long term plan for the country. This is only to gain votes in the upcoming elections. 

Whichever party that creates these problems, they will continue to create this fear to get the votes until the election ends. 

To stay safe, follow the below tips.

1. Note down the emergency hotline numbers intended for helping racist violence in your phone. It will come in handy for yourself or to someone else.

2. Do not share the hateful statements and remarks by racists. It only will make the Muslims fear and angry. Try to always stay calm and reassure the people around you and ignore the thought provoking comments.

3. Girls try not to travel alone. The defenseless are the ones they target.

4. Teach your little kids that religion doesn’t separate us and we are all the children of the mother Sri Lanka and nothing can divide us from the bond we share. This conceptual unity built from the beginning of the new generation will help in building a peaceful and rationally thinking future generation.

5. It is possible to see many people trying to argue and create rude conversations with Muslims with the ulterior intention of creating an issue to initiate violence online as well as offline. Do not try to explain anything to such people as they are not creating the conversation to understand what you are explaining. Therefore do not respond to such bullies.

6. No matter what happens, we are all human. Whatever comes and goes, there always will be much more good non-Muslims than extremist haters in existence. Therefore do not stop doing good things for them altogether just due to the very few extremists’ activities. Keep on loving others as that is the teaching of Islam as well as Buddhism.