Everyday we read of horrendous actions done by our politicians and the corrupt rulers but what we have not realized is that we all have been corrupted to the core. I generally don’t watch morning shows but today a show caught my attention. It dealt with the honour of the working class women, not the educated class, but the uneducated maids in the houses. We all have one coming in to help us daily with our chores, some become close, like family members, and we try to deal with them to the best of our ability, but some of us treat them worse than slaves.
Islam clearly has laid down the rules to treat your servants but we keep hearing cases of small girls being abused, raped and charged with theft if they complain and are locked up in cells for crimes they never committed. There is no law in Pakistan for the average person, what about these poor people? The kind or warped and distorted society in which we live needs continuous scrutiny of self and soul. These poor women depend on us, not only for the salary that we pay them, but also for the extra that Allah has blessed us with, our spare furniture and other things, but more then all this they deserve our respect. They are not beggars; they give a service and we pay them for it.
Treating badly has become a norm in our society, just to prove that we are better than some, we are blatantly rude and give no regard, and this is practiced on all levels in our work environment as well. Let us try to see ourselves clearly and ‘treat others as we would like to be treated’. If we keep this as our moto I am sure we can all live in a better more humane society.
Lala Rukh Paracha,
Lahore, January 27.