A Weeping ‘Mother Earth’ Asks of You
By Dr Amineh Hoti
Washington, DC
Kane killed his brother Abel because he was jealous of his wife.
Pharaoh chased his brother Moses because he challenged his way of life.
Sinai, disappointed as the people Moses rescued, turned to build a golden calf.
Jesus, symbol of Love, Simplicity and Peace, labeled “a rebel”, nailed to a cross.
Mother Mary wept for her beloved son’s bleeding hands on that dreaded cross!
Jerusalem cried, “What a huge sacrifice of a very special life!”
Prophet Muhammad’s beloved grandson was slaughtered and beheaded.
Zainab and little Sakinah, the orphans, cried as they were chained and humiliated.
Parched Karbala wept, “Alas, what a terrible stain on the history of humankind!”
Dachau and Auschwitz told millions of stories of human starvation and suffering.
Women and children stripped and thrown into showers of death and destruction.
Oh, how I cried to see the exhumed masses of human bodies piled up high!
Jews and Palestinians now live side by side – but how many have died!
Hebrew and Arabic, Judaism and Islam; people could be brothers, instead of foes.
Bosniaks, friends of Serbs one day, became victims of their hate crimes overnight
Girls, only 12, gang-raped in front of parents in the darkness of those tormenting nights.
Srebrenica cried out in agony for each of its 8,373 innocent human lives!
Kashmir the valley of beauty – a heaven on earth, turned into a river of blood.
Military soldiers, meant “to protect”, have become enemies, rapists and killers.
Indians and Pakistanis you are one – you are brothers – yet fight like bitter foes.
Myanmar 2017, you are yet another stain on the bloody sheet of human history!
Oh, poor Rohingyas—denied citizenship, denied property, denied food, denied life!
Your military men are brutes who gang rape women and chop their limbs!
These are the same women for whom feminine dignity is their very life.
Where are the teachings of Buddha, and acceptance of all, in you?
Where are the teachings of Moses, Prophet of justice and the poor, in you?
Where are the teachings of Jesus, symbol of Love and Simplicity, in you?
Where are the teachings of Muhammad (PBUH), mercy to God’s creatures, in you?
We are all children of Adam and Eve, brothers and sisters, are we not?
Then why? Why! Do you deny ‘the Other’ a right to exist in harmony and dignity?
(Dr Amineh Hoti is the executive director of the Centre for Dialogue and Action. She was the co-founder of the first Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations in Cambridge and of Dialogue and Action at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. She wrote Sorrow and Joy among Muslim Women: The Pukhtuns of Northern Pakistan - 2008, which was nominated for the 2007 Kiriyama Prize)
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