Courageous voices have stood in the face of a campaign of
harmful comments on the incident of the death of Jordanian boxer
Rashid Sweisat, and the proceedings of his funeral at Fuheis Church.
اضافة اعلان
We will not get into the details, as they are known to
anyone who followed the case on social media platforms, and with each similar
case, expressions of bewilderment appear on the faces of many of us, in anger
and disdain over the comments they read and hear, as if they are happening for
the first time and are an unexpected surprise.
Hate culture, in all its forms, is a global phenomenon that
our community hasn’t been exempted from. It does not distinguish between a
democratic society and one living under oppression.
Some of the oldest of democracies are today suffering from
the epidemics of intolerance, hate, and discrimination. In the heart of Europe,
refugees are facing oppression, discrimination, and hate crimes including
murder. In the aftermath of the tech revolution, the ideologies of the radical
right in European communities that hold personal freedoms most sacredly cause
the dissemination of the worst forms of hate, such as the phenomenon of
“Islamophobia”.
In the US, deemed as the leader of the free world by many,
society was almost drawn into a second civil war due to the rise of radical
rightwing ideologies and anti-humanitarian populism, headed by
Donald Trump and
his gang.
If all this is happening in communities that are fortified
with ancient democratic traditions and progressive constitutions, as well as
entrenched values based on respecting diversity and rejecting bigotry, what do
you expect from communities that have been living under oppression and the
absence of freedoms for decades, not mention living through sectarian and
religious wars and persistent colonial calamities? With the exception of short
glimpses in our history, our entire journey across the Arab world is one of
long and heavy years of oppression and darkness.
Despite all the bitter complaints against the phenomenon of
intolerance in
Jordan, we are still better off than many around us. We still
have a chance of relative recovery and building cultural immunity, in light of
our history of coexistence and internal peace.
But over the many years, we have wasted great opportunities
to change the status quo, and instead recorded huge setbacks on the cultural
and national fronts. We have not demonstrated sufficient will to fight the dark
ideologies and the culture of intolerance. On the contrary; official
institutions provided support to and fostered on all levels the culture of
intolerance, voluntarily conceding progressive values and traditions that have
ruled the state’s journey for many years.
Our record in this arena is terrible, and we are now paying
the price in our national unity and civil peace. And I don’t mean aspects
pertaining to religious culture, but the position on the rule of law,
citizenship values, as well as intolerance in all its forms. We have become
unable to escape this impasse, and are looking instead for ways to humor it and
coexist with it with minimum losses.
Incidentally, none of the officials are concerned with this
discourse, as they are all preoccupied with the losing battle with the symptoms
of the crisis on social media, without bothering to stop at its root causes and
origins.
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