devotion to a cause

Palestine and Iraq are dwindling further into chaos and hardship. We, on the outside look on and cheer when they take a difficult yet dignified stand, even when they are starving. We, on the outside look on and scorn when those starving ‘beg’, and we accuse them of selling the cause for a crumb. We, on the outside, dont have a leg to stand on.

We live in the lap of luxury, with the convenience of fantastic health care, education and career choices. We are mostly free to be ourselves and determine whichever path to direct our lives. Do we really have any right to judge the Gazan, who has spent his life under occupation, who has had the house he built demolished, who has been burnt by white phosphorous, and who blew himself up on a bus of Israeli’s? Is it fair that we sit, bellies full, and minds rested, and say ‘that is immoral, that is not the islamic way’ when we do nothing to help this person in their plight?

The world looks on as the Palestinians implode upon themselves, and resort to extreme measures to free themselves from the shackles, and condemns them.

In Iraq, a country where women were strong, highly educated professionals and mothers, who now cannot leave the house without a male escort, for over 200 Iraqi women have been kidnapped and sold into the sex trade. Where many now live as refugees in neighbouring countries, and those who remain, deseperate for work to support their families are blown up at the job market by and unknown sadist.

We do nothing but look on and tut, we may give charity to help, we may include them in our prayers, some may even return to do humanitarian/charity work, but is that enough? To be able to truly help Palestine and Iraq, and in doing so save our dignity and thus our futire, requires self sacrifice, of the sort that those of us brought up in the pristine streets of the emirates cannot comprehend. The type of sacrifice that swallows you whole, where your personal desires cease to exist. This is where marriage and family life get thrown out the window, where careers get flushed away, and you become a robot of the cause. Then you will die, alone and misunderstood, demonised by the world, and turned on by your own people brainwahsed by those you sought to free them from.

Looking at the Middle East, any ‘solution’ will require the type of self sacrifice I mentioned above, the ending is a bit extreme, but when you devout yourself to a cause, you can no longer ‘connect’ with people, and therefore be viewed as weird or odd. It is the kind of devotion that pushes people to join Hamas or Hizbullah, even though it is a career death sentence, or a ‘life outside of struggle’ death sentence.

We look on, we tut and cheer as the whims take us, and at the end of the day… could we ever devout to the cause?

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