Home and Homeless, Round the World

Home and Homeless, Round the World

There are mass graves hidden in a thousand fields. There are bodies and abandoned shoes on a thousand broken streets from Congo to Qana -- and from the caves and cafes of Quetta to Kentucky plane crash sites.

Tired of horror, I want to escape these disasters to my childhood, a simpler time when oranges seemed sweeter, the air cleaner, and the world was more mysterious and beautiful. But instead of returning over 30 years, I find I can only look back one year to the end of summer, 2005.

A full year has passed since then. The planet has turned one full turn since the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. Yes, Earth has moved, but Humanity has not moved beyond its petty distractions. And still the people of the Gulf coast remain scattered. The starving people of Darfur and the suffering people of Lebanon remain scattered. The people of Palestine remain scattered.

Humanity is moving in its usual circles, under an ever-more threatening sky. Will another revolving storm surprise us unawares, or another stormy revolution catch us in its violent embrace?

Time has come again for the new ISNA convention and the theme involves “Maintaining Balance.” Always a challenge. It is difficult to maintain balance while we are spinning so quickly, almost out of control.

In this global capitalist culture, we are encouraged not to be sincere in our speech but to be sophisticated in our spin. So it is important to remember-- the silent center of the whirling world is Truth. It is not sophistry in the court of public opinion. It is not ideology. The inner axis of the Earth is true, pure being, dancing on the edge of everything— but not spinning out of control. It is harmonious consciousness. It is Spirit.

The Musician plays his lonely tune, the truth of his spirit, just like the shepherd boy plays on the hillsides round the world. But these days, traditional arts are modernized. The single string vibrates, naked in the air; but then is clothed in wild artificial sounds and aggressive jungle beats. Pull out all the stops; don’t leave anything to chance. Better be Bollywood. To me, this is the culture of modernity and its constant innovations.

Let us pray that all our leaders maintain “balance” in their silence as well as spin. And yet, some silence is wrong. Balance should not mean you refuse to take a stand. In most cases, you must choose. When you ignore a problem, you choose inaction. You choose the problem instead of the solution.

I am thinking about Darfur, in the Sudan, where up to 300,000 Muslims have died in conflict and millions of their family members dispersed with the wind. Why do we ignore them while we pay attention to others? Is it because they are black and poor and perhaps not related to us? Are those reasons?

Among Muslims, there has been much discussion about whether this is a civil war or a genocide, how to characterize the conflict culturally, and whether foreign powers are hiding their true interests behind humanitarian concerns. We are naturally hesitant to follow the prevailing Western media depictions of this crisis. And yet—how can we stand idly by? How can we choose inaction?

I have created a website about this issue, called “Muslims for Darfur.” This is http://geocities.com/freedarfur/ which links to a variety of opinion about this disaster. It links to the Save Darfur Coalition at www.savedarfur.org and it links to critical discussion of the Coalition. The site also provides ideas for taking action, both now and during Ramadan, brochures for donations and sample khotbas for Masajid.

The Save Darfur Coalition has 400,000 people on its email list and coalition member Amnesty International has over 1 million members. Numbers matter. There is some chance that this number might effectively pressure the UN, the Arab League, the United States, the Chinese and Russian oil companies that invest in Sudan, and finally the Sudanese government itself, to move being mere political opportunism to something more humane and humanitarian. In a moral marketplace, this is an expression of democracy.

And if we disagree about UN troops keeping the peace in Darfur, or another aspect of this crisis, we are free to say so. Feel free on my website! But let our efforts be towards compassionate action and not endless discussion. Am I wrong?

On a muddy green field today I watched the Bangladeshi Day parade dissolve into the mist of rain. A few dignitaries stood with umbrellas held over them. Bright food and clothing stalls moved their wares out of the downpour. But it was a very peaceful scene. Though at the edge of Queens, with the skyline of New York behind (even the UN visible) it could have been in a small town in Bangladesh. These New Yorkers had come together to reconstruct their country, their family and their childhood, with sights and sounds. They felt safe in the rain, standing together. If only all of humanity felt that peaceful—in all of its cultural and personal diversity—standing together in the arriving storm.