Okay.
I'm a tad disturbed by a video I've seen flooding my SocMed timelines.
The video shows a black, elderly (probably in his 60s or maybe even more) Christian preacher being arrested, and a copy of the Bible he was holding grabbed from his hands just before being handcuffed and arrested.
His words, "Don't take my Bible away. Don't take my Bible away." The reply? "You should have thought about that before being racist."
Racist? When did publicly preaching religion become a racist act? What were they thinking? I mean, forget taking serrated ninja knives off of drugged-up 12-year-olds, let's go for OAPs brandishing Bibles.
Thing is, I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, religious. I am pretty ambivalent about all belief systems, as long as they don't infringe on my rights as a human being of rational thought. This man was not infringing a single one of my rights or freedoms. I could choose to listen to him, or ignore him.
I grew up in a CoE boarding school, I know the Bible back to front - more than most practising Christians. There was nothing new he could tell me. I have lived the bulk of my life in an Islamic country, and a fair bit of it in a country with a prominent Hindutva narrative. Equality HAS to mean equal treatment. I know this better than most. Sikhism is the faith I was born into & taught all my life. I identify as a Sikh. Very proudly, I might add. I see all perspectives far clearly than most. If you choose to debate me on this, bring a box of tissues and smelling salts. I will savage you, I promise.
Having said that, if I were to pin my moral values to any kind of belief system, it would be Sikhism. I believe the the Sikh faith in its purity and intent is a great blueprint for mankind. Sikhism tells it outright. Sikhism is a confluence of thought, deeply rooted in Dharma. What Sikhism does say outright, the vastly misunderstood concept of Dharma does allegorically, leading, of course, to many mutations and bigoted interpretations. Dharma is mostly confused with Hinduism. It is nothing of the sort. Dharma is the core, the root, the essence of all theology - it's expansiveness is proof of why we must love, why we must tolerate, why we must educate. Why we must coalesce. And why it cannot be forced.
What does this have to do with the humiliating public arrest of a frail and elderly gentleman in the streets of London? Well - everything.
If you have a message about salvation, kindness, love, compassion - I have all the time in the world for you. The minute you start inflicting your superficial sense of values on me, the moment you compel me to cower to you chosen deity, is the moment you alienate me. This man was doing nothing of the sort. From all the evidence I have, this man was doing Baba Nanak's work, in his own way. While that may have been the man's intent or message, he posed no threat to me. Or anyone.
If there is evidence to the contrary, I will gladly rescind this post.
The said video has gone viral all over the world, but I have yet to see a statement from the police with ANY proof of how and why this man was a threat, why a 60+ year old man needed to be shackled in chains, and the book he regards as holy gospel snatched away from his hands in such a callous a manner, with hands that hadn't probably hadn't been washed.
In the video, I see not a jot of respect or restraint by officers who should know better. While I don't care about what many would consider sacrilege - I would question the double standard here.
I ask a simple question: Would ANY other religious text be handled in that way? Would you show the same disrespect to the Koran or the Guru Granth Sahib or the Bhagvad Gita?
And I answer - NO you would not.
If anything, THAT is discrimination. Discrimination is due to fear, fear leads hatred, hatred leads to suffering. That is the path to the dark side.
We are policed by consent when I last checked. No one asked for Stromtroopers.
I'm a tad disturbed by a video I've seen flooding my SocMed timelines.
The video shows a black, elderly (probably in his 60s or maybe even more) Christian preacher being arrested, and a copy of the Bible he was holding grabbed from his hands just before being handcuffed and arrested.
His words, "Don't take my Bible away. Don't take my Bible away." The reply? "You should have thought about that before being racist."
Racist? When did publicly preaching religion become a racist act? What were they thinking? I mean, forget taking serrated ninja knives off of drugged-up 12-year-olds, let's go for OAPs brandishing Bibles.
Thing is, I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, religious. I am pretty ambivalent about all belief systems, as long as they don't infringe on my rights as a human being of rational thought. This man was not infringing a single one of my rights or freedoms. I could choose to listen to him, or ignore him.
I grew up in a CoE boarding school, I know the Bible back to front - more than most practising Christians. There was nothing new he could tell me. I have lived the bulk of my life in an Islamic country, and a fair bit of it in a country with a prominent Hindutva narrative. Equality HAS to mean equal treatment. I know this better than most. Sikhism is the faith I was born into & taught all my life. I identify as a Sikh. Very proudly, I might add. I see all perspectives far clearly than most. If you choose to debate me on this, bring a box of tissues and smelling salts. I will savage you, I promise.
Having said that, if I were to pin my moral values to any kind of belief system, it would be Sikhism. I believe the the Sikh faith in its purity and intent is a great blueprint for mankind. Sikhism tells it outright. Sikhism is a confluence of thought, deeply rooted in Dharma. What Sikhism does say outright, the vastly misunderstood concept of Dharma does allegorically, leading, of course, to many mutations and bigoted interpretations. Dharma is mostly confused with Hinduism. It is nothing of the sort. Dharma is the core, the root, the essence of all theology - it's expansiveness is proof of why we must love, why we must tolerate, why we must educate. Why we must coalesce. And why it cannot be forced.
What does this have to do with the humiliating public arrest of a frail and elderly gentleman in the streets of London? Well - everything.
If you have a message about salvation, kindness, love, compassion - I have all the time in the world for you. The minute you start inflicting your superficial sense of values on me, the moment you compel me to cower to you chosen deity, is the moment you alienate me. This man was doing nothing of the sort. From all the evidence I have, this man was doing Baba Nanak's work, in his own way. While that may have been the man's intent or message, he posed no threat to me. Or anyone.
If there is evidence to the contrary, I will gladly rescind this post.
The said video has gone viral all over the world, but I have yet to see a statement from the police with ANY proof of how and why this man was a threat, why a 60+ year old man needed to be shackled in chains, and the book he regards as holy gospel snatched away from his hands in such a callous a manner, with hands that hadn't probably hadn't been washed.
In the video, I see not a jot of respect or restraint by officers who should know better. While I don't care about what many would consider sacrilege - I would question the double standard here.
I ask a simple question: Would ANY other religious text be handled in that way? Would you show the same disrespect to the Koran or the Guru Granth Sahib or the Bhagvad Gita?
And I answer - NO you would not.
If anything, THAT is discrimination. Discrimination is due to fear, fear leads hatred, hatred leads to suffering. That is the path to the dark side.
We are policed by consent when I last checked. No one asked for Stromtroopers.
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