Aylan Kurdi is now famous.
It’s sad when one’s death is why one gets famous and it’s unfathomable when that ‘one’ is a child. Aylan’s photo at the beach, not playing in the sand under the sun but lying lifeless, drenched in death, undoubtedly proved to be one of the most morbid images of current times. It broke the world’s collective heart and struck hard on humanity’s collective conscience.
Europe sat up and took notice as well as refugees, finally, for one thing. And that was a great big victory because it felt as if all that cussing at the gora sahib eventually paid off.
Countless video messages and articles by big media names took the internet by storm as they bashed their own western governments and people for not showing empathy and proper manners for dealing with the situation in Syria. All it took was one drowned and dead Syrian child but it worked. So yeah, great.
However, I have a problem. I don’t think this is enough to deal with this situation.
Don’t get me wrong. I completely admirePiers Morganfor when he lashes out at Britain for why and how and when it should roll out the red carpet for all the refugees who wish to enter the kingdom. I have mad respect for Angela Merkel as well who, despite her fears with regards to Islam, and very condescendingly, has accepted and continues to accept thousands of Syrian refugees. I’m a huge fan of the Uruguayan President José "Pepe" Mujica because of how he sheltered about a 100 refugees in his home. And thank you Bono for deciding to speak on this issue, calling out to stop using the word ‘migrant’ to address these victims of war. There are many others who’ve played out to the humanity of their people and declared that this crisis is a global problem, not regional.
My problem arises from the fact that most of my Muslim friends share the opinion that though it’s nice that Europe is helping but then it’s Europe’s duty because of political sh*t that happened then and then and then that happened and so…the West must bear responsibility.
What I hear when all this is being said to me is – we hate the infidels because they ruined our lands and so in times of need, we obviously run to their lands because we know we’ll be safe there. Say what? I’m sorry but the logic of that is totally lost on me. That sounds like the stubborn damsel in distress of most romance novels or movies who hates the hero with a vengeance because he flirted more with her BFF than he did with her when they first met, and although she keeps blaming him for every minor and major disaster in both their lives, she’s ever so happy to see him when the actual bad guy has tied her to a chair and is demanding improper things of her. And in that moment, when that ruggedly handsome bad-boy hero crashes in through the ceiling to smash the villains head in, ‘Oh, Darling, I’ve always loved you!’ sounds like the most natural thing in the world that we’d all been waiting for.
Just because Piers Morgan or other conscientious persons like him question the morality of their people and western governments, it doesn’t relieve the one and only – the glorious Ummah – of its duty towards the distraught Muslims.
According to the Ilmfeed.com breakdown of the number of Syrian refugees taken in by countries in the Middle East, the countries who have helped the situation in Syria are the ones that are being ripped apart by similar fires of political unrest as Syria itself. Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq are either war-torn, politically unstable or limited in resources but have stepped forth to help their brethren in faith as well as humanity and housed 4 million approximately.
Pakistan alone, though not part of the Middle East but part of the Ummah, had taken in about 1.6 million refugees, pouring in from Afghanistan and other countries, by the end of 2013 (according to UNHCR).
My question is – what are the rich Muslim states doing? The ones that aren’t war-torn, that have the resources, that claim to be the keepers of the faith and protectors of Islam, the ones that love to be torch-bearers for the Ummah and have economies largely run by foreign workforce coming from the countries in some sort of turmoil as mentioned above?
Gulf countries — Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain — have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.
These countries constitute the Arab world's largest military budgets and its highest (read: enviable) standards of living. The region has the capacity and resources to house and help these refugees. I mean have you seen the sparkling towers of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh? Why can’t they build less gleaming and towering refugee shelters? If the Kings, sheikhs and amirs can rent entire hotels and beaches for comfy foreign trips, why can’t that money be put to better, humanitarian use?
Saudi Arabia alone has plenty of experience and manpower required for managing large numbers of arrivals. How do I know? Hajj. The annual surge of Hajj pilgrims to Mecca is in millions!They earn amazing revenue from that obligatory duty. Shouldn’t it be spent on the same Muslim brothers that help raise that revenue? Shouldn’t the Muslim world as a whole demand that, too?
The Gulf States aren't mere innocent bystanders in whatever hell has broken loose in the Middle East as well. There’s no denying that elements within Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the U.A.E. and Kuwait have invested in the Syrian conflict by conspicuously funding and arming Islamist extremists (the ISIS and ilk) for their own interests; one being fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
And did you know that none of these countries are signatories of the United Nations' 1951 Refugee Convention? That convention defined what a refugee is, their rights, and the duties of states to safeguard them. Since, the aforementioned countries aren’t signatories, they are under no obligation (except for maybe a moral one, which of course is as good as none to them) to help the Syrian refugees or any refugees for that matter.
It’s really nice to point fingers at David Cameron or President Obama alongside the rest of the western world for not taking in refugees, not taking in enough refuges, for taking refugees with the intent of deporting them later after a certain period of time, but why do these fingers not wag just as furiously at the rich Gulf States?
There was much woe at how the European nations were allowing refugees into their countries. One had to reach a European country to enter and the ways to reach those lands are of course perilous so pffft be upon the infidels! Well, darlings, did you know how a Syrian can reach the rich Muslim neighbors of Saudi and company? For a Syrian to enter these countries, they would have to apply for a visa. That grant obviously is a rarity under the current circumstances. According to the BBC, the only Arab countries where a Syrian can travel without a visa are Algeria, Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen — hardly choice or practical destinations. However, if by some stroke of luck, a Syrian is granted entry, the visa is temporary.There is no promise of a bright future as the job is temp, the housing is temp, the life there for the foreigners is temp, and you just forget about ever being a citizen there.Whereas in Europe or the West, they have an actual chance for building a new life.
Robert Fisk, The Independent’s Middle East correspondent, very aptly noted:
“Europe and the West - what was once called Christendom - are supposed to be the bad guys in the Middle East. It is we who bomb, corrupt and invade the Muslims of the Middle East. It is we who support the vicious dictators of the Middle East (unless they are disobedient to our wishes). It is we who suck out the fossil treasures of the Middle East, its oil and its natural gas. We are, are we not, the infidels? And true, Syria's refugees, in their millions, have settled into the squalor of camps on the edges of Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. But the hundreds of thousands of poor and huddled masses who wish to flee further from their tormentors are not sailing in leaking boats to where you might expect them to go - to the "Ummah", to Islam's beating heart, to the land where the Prophet lived and where he received the word of God. No, the destitute of the Middle East are not heading for Saudi Arabia, the wealthy kingdoms of the Gulf, to pray for help from the builders of great mosques and the Keepers of Holy Places.”
How shameful is this realization?
Fisk further went on to glorify his people:
“It's not because they think we're a soft touch. It's not because they want to scrounge on our generosity. I suspect it's because they know enough about Europe and our history and about us - not our tin-pot politicians - to know that we are good people, that we are kind people. I think they know that, deep beneath our carapace of cynicism and materialism and our lack of religious faith, the idea of humanism is alive in Europe and that we can be decent, good, thoughtful, honest people.”
We’re taught Islam comes before anything else; being Muslim is more significant than being anybody else; that the Ummah is like one body where if one part aches, the other feels the sting and cannot sleep. We take great pride in flaunting this religious snobbery and we expect the non-Muslim world to accept it too and bow down to it. We often see Muslims demanding rights, asserting their beliefs or asserting to be recognized as part of non-Muslim societies, and rightly so because those societies cherish concepts like freedom of speech and religion. Then, how come these same sentiments fall flat when it comes to our own Ummah?
The only reason the Muslim world is being torn apart today is because we were incompetent, acutely sectarian, racist, opportunistic and quick to shift blame rather than taking responsibility and setting things right. Even if one doesn’t agree with Fisk’s portrayal of how good and honest his people are, the plain fact that these refugees are fleeing to the infidel West rather than the rich Ummah brethren like Emirates and Saudi Arabia says a lot.
If the Muslim Ummah was any good today, the Muslims wouldn’t have to seek shelter elsewhere to be safe and prosperous.
In the words of Abdullah Kurdi, Aylan Kurdi’s father, “I want Arab governments – not European countries – to see what happened to my children and because of them, to help people. I don’t want anything else.”