#BTColumn – Violence, victims and villains

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today Inc.

by Suleiman Bulbulia

One the greatest tragedies of our modern times is human beings’ inhumanity to their fellow human beings. And while this is not a new phenomenon, as it has happened throughout history, with the leaps and bounds in technology, science, education and information, one would have expected a world that was much more understanding, tolerant and loving.

Instead, history repeats itself in vicious cycles, each more violent, more unbelievable, more unacceptable than the previous. The causes are perhaps numerous, difficult to comprehend and outside the realm of our understanding.

But it must never stop us from speaking up and out and desperately searching for solutions that can in the least eliminate some of the hatred and violence.

June 1st marks the 100th anniversary of the massacre of Black Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1921 an organized white mob attacked residents, homes and businesses in the predominantly black Greenwood section of the city. The event remains one of the worst incidents of racial violence in US history and it is also one of the least known and not taught in schools.  Tulsa was a growing and prosperous community. It was the black “Wall Street” of the State. But it was a Jim Crow segregated city known for vigilante justice of all kinds.

Blacks were often wrongly accused of violating norms like speaking to white girls and lynched. The massacre in Tulsa in 1921 wiped out the possessions of the entire black population there with little or no compensation to this day.

Barbados has had a history of the most brutal assault on humankind ever carried out by one race on another. And that alone should make us a people who will always stand up against violence and brutality to another human being.

Yet, in spite of that extremely tragic history, we have today in our society acts of violence that have most of us worried and concerned about what will happen next.

I stood at the Newton Enslaved burial ground last Tuesday attending a ceremony that had persons from several faiths in Barbados paying homage to the space and remembering those buried there. Recalling their sacrifice, blood, sweat and tears, ending in a place hundreds of miles away from their homes.

As one speaker reminded us if you perceive another human as less than or not even a human like you then you have the mindset to do to that person whatever you wish to do without any sense of remorse.   

Is that where some of us are at today? We have no sense of remorse to gun down another human being? Is that violent cycle coming back to haunt us? This time it is not racial intolerance it is blind evil.

To accept that taking another person’s life is as easy as pulling a trigger and to boast of such achievements is to reject all that is civil, moral and noble about humanity.

Human beings are the best creation of the Creator, we are endowed with intellect and the capacity to think way beyond other creatures. All faiths hold up the principle of “love for your brother/sister what you love for yourself”, but clearly some have lost that guiding fact.

They have been taken hostage by the evil force that causes them not to think beyond violence and retribution. They have dismissed all that our fore-fathers fought so valiantly against, oppression, tyranny and abuse and instead exact the same on their victims without thought that they are their own people, flesh and blood.

Our ancestors over 300 years were stripped of their dignity and left to be nothing more that chattel. That dignity doesn’t return overnight and cannot be easily restored without true justice and reparation.

But we fight the demons that it brings with it and we seek to move on and build our lives. For some it is easier than for others. We all must share in the responsibility to restore the dignity that was stolen, that was stripped away, that was violently removed. My faith reminds me that if someone takes a life unjustly it is if they have taken the lives of all humankind and if they save a life it is as if they have saved the lives of all.

Our responsibility, each and every one of us, is to save lives. In this state of increased gun violence wreaking havoc on our nation what can we do? We can choose to remain silent or we can choose to speak out. Our Government asks each citizen of conscience to speak out and speak up.  As some point out that in itself can be dangerous. But two quotes should serve as reminders to all of us if we choose to be spectators, one by Albert Einstein and the other by Edmund Burke.

“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

If we call ourselves good, moral, just, how can we do nothing? A saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace, states “help your brother whether he is the oppressor or the oppressed” It was asked that while we understand how to help someone who is oppressed and how can we help and oppressor? The response was that you stop the oppressor from oppressing.

Perhaps it is a tall order to think that we can speak sense into many of these young men and women who only know violence. But is it that far-fetched? Many have tried in the past and have been successful.

We need only to learn from such actions and implement them in our neighborhoods. Maybe I am naïve but I think there are persons well suited in our country that can step up and speak truth to evil. It will require intestinal fortitude to
go on such a mission but the alternative is frightening.

As a country we can’t simply rest on our laurels and be proud of our achievements without feeling some sense
of pain at the fact that gun violence is taking the lives
of several in our communities.

We have to go deep and get to the root cause of violence among our country’s youth. We have to understand why would one human being treat another human being with such disrespect and disdain that taking the life of that person means nothing. Is it demonic possession as some persons are seemingly suggesting? Then we have to rid ourselves of the demons that abound.

We have to get back to an appreciation of the dignity of our fellow human being regardless of their skin color, class, background, gender or whatever differing attributes they may have in comparison to us.  We have to get back to a realization that we are all creatures of the Creator, fashioned by the Creator, given life by the Creator, and us choosing to take another life is basically as though we are taking our own life.

Suleiman Bulbulia is a Justice of the Peace; Secretary of the Barbados Muslim Association; Muslim Chaplain at the U.W.I, Cave Hill Campus and Chair, Barbados Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition. Email: suleimanbulbulia@hotmail.com