Re: Rwanda
Charmi Miller <[email protected]> Thu, 27 May 2004 08:39:34 -0400
| Newsgroups | gmane.culture.religion.muslim.progressive |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
--===============1193695515== Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------3539F5A9B87ECCC8B49FE4D1" --------------3539F5A9B87ECCC8B49FE4D1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit sister aisha, i'm not afdhere, obviously, but i want to respond to you... but I know, as much as I can know anything it IS only "as much as you CAN know" - none of us can know for sure what we are capable of until we find ourselves face to face with situations we haven't yet been able to imagine. for example, sometimes when people have been hurt or abused to extreme degrees they become capable of acts they could never have imagined. and sometimes, yes, all it takes is becoming one with a mob to cause some people to do things no one else could have imagined them capable of doing. but, i think it might be that if you know you hold no true enmity in your heart, and suffer equally for all suffering people, and already have the habit of speaking up, you are building for yourself protection against ever becoming one with a killer mob. i'm sure you know that in all these situations there are those who resist successfully. but they don't have that ability just because they saw what was going on in that emergency situation as being dreadfully wrong; they have that ability because they had fostered in themselves a deep sense of what is right and wrong, as an automatic sense. hehe.. i might be saying all of this as much for me as for you, since i hope that i also could never, ever, do such things. but... the only other thing we can do is remain true to ourselves in holding a love for people deep deep in our heart - a real love and respect and acceptance. i think that's the basis for never developing the malleability that drives a mob, whether the mob is molesting women - as at that parade in nyc, or trashing and burning cars after some sports event, or carrying out murders and rapes and tortures - anywhere. charmi --------------3539F5A9B87ECCC8B49FE4D1 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html> sister aisha, <p>i'm not afdhere, obviously, but i want to respond to you...<i></i> <p><i>but I know, as much as I can know anything</i><i></i> <p>it IS only "as much as you CAN know" - none of us can know for sure what we are capable of until we find ourselves face to face with situations we haven't yet been able to imagine. for example, sometimes when people have been hurt or abused to extreme degrees they become capable of acts they could never have imagined. and sometimes, yes, all it takes is becoming one with a mob to cause some people to do things no one else could have imagined them capable of doing. <p>but, i think it might be that if you know you hold no true enmity in your heart, and suffer equally for all suffering people, and already have the habit of speaking up, you are building for yourself protection against ever becoming one with a killer mob. i'm sure you know that in all these situations there are those who resist successfully. but they don't have that ability just because they saw what was going on in that emergency situation as being dreadfully wrong; they have that ability because they had fostered in themselves a deep sense of what is right and wrong, as an automatic sense. <p>hehe.. i might be saying all of this as much for me as for you, since i hope that i also could never, ever, do such things. but... the only other thing we can do is remain true to ourselves in holding a love for people deep deep in our heart - a real love and respect and acceptance. i think that's the basis for never developing the malleability that drives a mob, whether the mob is molesting women - as at that parade in nyc, or trashing and burning cars after some sports event, or carrying out murders and rapes and tortures - anywhere. <p>charmi <br><i></i> <br> <br><i></i> </html> --------------3539F5A9B87ECCC8B49FE4D1-- --===============1193695515== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline _______________________________________________ ProgressiveMuslims mailing list [email protected] http://ganymede.nitric.co.za/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/progressivemuslims --===============1193695515==--