Where is our humanity? What is it that makes mankind hostile to the unfamiliar? Why does our diversity trigger hate rather than embrace it? It is true that the values we uphold are those that are taught and nurtured by our immediate society, therefore man isn’t inherently evil but only learns to hate.
On the 5th of January, four young black Americans, Jordan Hill, Tesfaye Cooper, Brittany Covington and Tanishia Covington, were charged with hate crime, robbery and assault, after kidnapping, humiliating and torturing a white boy. These four youngsters went a step further by sharing their bestiality online via facebook chanting, “fuck white people, fuck Donald Trump.” In their exuberance or perhaps outright ignorance they simply became what they thought they were fighting against, and at that very instance they became the oppressor, oiling the machine that recycles hate. If only they knew better!
Just when the world was mourning the massacre of school children and other Muslims in the central city of Meiktila, in Myanmar, Ashin Wirathu, a leading Buddhist monk, preached a highly vituperative sermon saying, “if we are weak our land will become Muslim.” This was the same monk who had said on another occasion that, “You can be full of kindness and love but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog (Muslims).”
The Yazidi, a religious minority in Iraq and Syria have seen their women go through hell in the hands of ISIS. These women and girls are raped at will and are used as slaves after their husbands, fathers and brothers have been shot dead or beheaded. They are subjected to such inhumane treatment simply because they do not practice the religion of the majority.
Where is our humanity? What is it that makes mankind hostile to the unfamiliar? Why does our diversity trigger hate rather than embrace it? It is true that the values we uphold are those that are taught and nurtured by our immediate society, therefore man isn’t inherently evil but only learns to hate. To purge our society of hate, we must, as a matter of urgency resist divisive rhetoric and consciously teach people to love and forgive.
I am deeply influenced by the pacifist and humanist views of the Kenyan theologian who made bold to say, “I am because we are, and because we are, therefore I am.” We all cannot sleep and face the same direction, and we must therefore compromise when necessary and refuse to be driven by ego. We must find the courage to forgive those who wronged us yesterday, irrespective of what evil they might have done. Forgiveness, however foolish, is the only tool left to mankind to effectively break the cycle of hate.
Think of the young British soilder, Eric Lomax, who got captured in 1943 by Japanese soilders and was tortured for months. He was locked up in a 5ft cage filled with red ants, mosquitoes and his own filth. Yet 50 years later when he finally meets his abductor, he makes peace and echoes the following words, “Some time, the hate has to stop.”
Imagine the pain a Colombian senator and presidential aspirant, Ingrid Betancourt, went through in the hands of FARC, the revolutionary armed Forces of Colombia who kidnapped and tortured her for six years, yet she is today fighting for peace and amnesty for her abductors. Asked why and how she was able to forgive her abductors, she said “My suffering never undermines my faith in human nature, it only confirms my belief in man’s endless thirst for happiness”.
Let us stop the hate and spread love.
Ayodele Adio is a co-host on a Lagos radio programme.
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