On January 15, 2017, at Zayed University, UAE, I had the privilege of meeting Her Excellency Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi, the president of Zayed University and the UAE Minister of State for Tolerance. We discussed her unique role in the ministry and its importance for society.
As Sheikha Lubna asserts, “the UAE is one of the greatest examples of tolerance.” The UAE’s tolerance is reflected in the weave of society—both nationals and foreign residents in that “everything reflects tolerance.” She previously held four ministerial portfolios and was the UAE’s first woman minister with the portfolio of Economy. Talking about her new job as Minister of State for Tolerance, she explained that the UAE had service ministries, such as social welfare; ministries with international roles, such as foreign affairs; policy-making ministries; and two new and “odd” ministries—“Happiness” and “Tolerance.” “But these reflect the values that are integral to all of us. Tolerance is acceptance—accepting and rejoicing differences. We have to be interactive with the community. It is a challenging job, but an exciting ministry. Hopefully, we will see great results,” she said. Yes, seeing the constructive ministry plans, I am truly expecting to see great results too. All the best, Sheikha Lubna, and I appreciate you for your dedication.
His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, vice president of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, made the announcement in a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, June 8, 2016, in that the country would continue to promote the principles of tolerance set by His Highness Sheikh Zayed, the founding father. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed said, “Tolerance is a key value of our ancestors and our founding fathers. The UAE has succeeded in spreading it throughout the Arab region and the world.”
He said that the holy month of Ramadan is “a great opportunity to spread the spirit of tolerance and show the real image of moderation, and respect for others.” He added, “Tolerance is the basis for building societies and promoting values of peaceful coexistence. Today, we need to be more tolerant and united to face the changes happening around us.”
According to the report of Emirates News Agency, the program would involve collaborating with federal and local entities under five main themes: strengthening the government’s role as an “incubator” of tolerance, consolidating the family’s role in nation building, promoting tolerance among youth and steering them away from extremism, enriching scientific and cultural content, and integrating international efforts to promote tolerance.
A landmark global initiative for tolerance was launched on October 8, 2016, in the UAE by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, to build up the UAE as a capital for tolerance and promote openness in the region.
The Mohammed Bin Rashid Tolerance Award is also introduced to honor global personalities who promote tolerance. The award includes five categories, three of which will be dedicated to human intellect, literary creativity, and aesthetic arts, and the other two will be related to organizing innovative contests in youth projects and modern media.
Sheikh Mohammed has also launched the International Institute for Tolerance, which is first of its kind in the region, to provide necessary consultations and experiences to consolidate the values of tolerance among peoples across the world.
The institute is launched with intense objectives: it will produce and publish tolerance-related research, work with other cultural institutions in the Arab region, and teach the new emerging generations about the values of tolerance. It will conduct social studies to delve into the root causes of intolerance, isolation, and sectarianism; it will also organize a series of programs that aim to nurture distinguished young people and provide them with appropriate and healthy environments to deepen their awareness on some issues related to tolerance and help them bring their ideas to fruition.
These steps are to sow the seeds of tolerance in the region and condemn extremism among peoples, and I am sure that very soon our nation will be glorified with their profound approaches.
The date November 16, is the International Day for Tolerance. In 2016, on this occasion, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, prime minister of the UAE, tweeted, “What makes us proud is not the height of our buildings, but rather the openness and tolerance of our nation.” Celebrating the day at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, Sheikha Lubna bint Khalid Al Qasimi, the UAE’s Minister of State for Tolerance, described the occasion as a “renaissance, a moment of celebrations, which reflects cohesion and a feeling of being together.” She also said that unity, tolerance, and coexistence are the hallmarks of the nation; and while November 16, is the International Day for Tolerance, “in the UAE, every single day is a tolerance day.”
I feel sick at heart knowing the hates swelling in people for others because of petty reasons, or else questioning their sense of belonging. A middle-aged white man in Kanas City shot and killed an Indian-American engineer after shouting, “Get out of my country!” How can a person kill someone after questioning his belongingness to a nation? One thing I would like to suggest is that for the ease of people to manage and justify things properly, we are separated by different states and countries; it is not about a particular region from where we belong. We all belong to the same world, which we should try to make a better place to live, not only for us but also for others.
The news featured in the Financial Times on March 4, 2017, about an Indian-American victim of hate crime tells much about suffering.
The fatal attack in Olathe, Kansas in the United States reverberates in the tidy Virginian suburb of office parks and strip malls, about 35 miles northwest of the White House. Adam Purinton, 51, allegedly shot two Indian-American Garmin engineers who were enjoying an after-work drink, believing they were Iranians, according to police. Mr. Purtino is on trial and accused of killing Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, and wounding both his friend, Alok Madasani, 32, and Ian Grillot, 24, who tried to tackle the gunman. Sunayana Dumala, one week after her husband’s killing, asked on Facebook, “The question that is in every immigrant’s mind: Do we belong here?” It is really very painful seeing the intense hate in people instead of love and peace for others. Need to stop!
With much grief, here, I write about the complications people are facing in India, as perhaps no issue today is more nationally divisive than that of cow slaughter. The majority of the community wants to have the cow declared the national animal and a countrywide ban on the killing of all cows imposed. In Hinduism, the cow is thought to be sacred, or ought to be deeply respected. According to Hindu belief, the cow is a maternal figure; hence, Hindus are strictly against the slaughtering of cows and call them as gaurakshak.
According to the Times of India, just eight of India’s 29 states permit the slaughter of cows. Although on January 27, 2017, India’s top court rejected a petition seeking a nationwide ban on cow slaughter, still people face violence regarding the same. Some states have in recent years pushed for tougher penalties, including 10-year jail terms for those convicted of cow slaughter or possession or consumption of beef. The banning of beef is going to be troublesome for poor people as goat and other meats are far more expensive than cow meat.
The Times of India, reports that on March 29, 2017, Raman Singh, the chief minister of Chhattisgarh (a state in India) stated that anyone found killing cows in Chhattisgarh would be hanged. Do you understand the extremism in the order? The state of Gujarat, on the other hand, has adopted the toughest law against cow slaughter in the country; the crime is punishable by 14 years of jail and carries a provisional fine of up to $7,757 and not less than $1,550.
A diverse country, India is home to many expats in the Gulf. I myself used to have a wonderful experience visiting there, but issues like people clamoring for intolerance have really upset me a lot. On June 13, 2017, I was reading the Times of India, and a news title got my attention: “Intolerance on the rise, defend the spirit of Constitution.” After reading further, I learned that 65 former bureaucrats in India, who have worked with central and state governments for decades, wrote an open letter stating that they decided to speak out in view of “a sense of deep disquiet at what has been happening in India” and had no political affiliation. They issued a direct appeal to public authorities and constitutional bodies to take corrective action to defend the spirit of the Constitution.
The former officers lamented a “growing climate of religious intolerance that is aimed primarily at Muslims,” tracing it to the prime minister’s controversial remarks about “burial grounds and cremation grounds” and power supply during religious festivals in different communities. The letter also pointed out that banning slaughterhouses targets the livelihoods of minorities besides breeding communal violence.
I know it is hard to be patient; I can only wish to lessen intolerance not only in India but all over the world.
There is no shortage of hate stories and victims of hate crime in the world, but going through the hardship and still having the courage to forgive is something that happens very rarely. On October 30, 2015, Jama, a Muslim of Somali descent, who came to Minnesota from Kenya in 2000 and is a US citizen, was attacked by Jodie BurchardRisch, 44, of Ramsey, for speaking Swahili (the first language of the Swahili people) to her family.
According to a criminal complaint, Burchard-Risch was dining at Minnesota Applebee’s in Coon Rapids when she overheard Jama. Burchard yelled at Jama to either speak English or go back to her country and then refused to leave when a restaurant employee tried to step into the matter. Without any provocation, Burchard-Risch threw a drink at Jama, grabbed a glass beer mug, and smashed it in the woman’s face before fleeing. The attack left Jama with a deep bloody gash on her lip that required 17 stitches, as well as cuts to her nose and right eye.
Jama came face-to-face with her attacker in court and offered the woman her forgiveness. On December 20, 2016, at the Anoka County Court, Jodie was sentenced to 180 days in jail followed by five years of probation, along with alcohol monitoring and counseling.
At times holding back tears, Jama said she still carries the trauma of the attack with her, but she bears Burchard-Risch no ill will. “My religion, Islam, teaches me to forgive so I can get on with my life. In front of everybody here, I do forgive you, and I hope that you choose love over hate . . . I just want you to understand at the end of this that we are all the same,” Jama told Burchard-Risch. I am proud of you, Jama, for showing such an act of kindness and forgiveness, which is not so easy, especially as you suffered a lot and are still going through the same.
On April 3, 2017, while reading the Financial Times newspaper, my eyes caught this heading: “Racism towards Africans in India.” Although I visited India many, many times and felt a good and warm welcoming environment over there, reading this news about a statement given by a student from Nigeria who had just finished a three-year course from an educational institution there shocked me. Mr. Orji’s time in India had been characterized by persistent low-level racial discrimination and intimidation. Maxwell Orji said he had been laughed at, spat on, and verbally abused on the streets of Greater Noida, which is close to New Delhi. Actually, the situation became harsher after the death of Manish Khari, a local teenager whose family had accused their Nigerian neighbors of supplying him with drugs. During a candle march, a protest against the youth’s death, the crowd was so angry that when they encountered four African students with no known links to Khari’s death that they attacked them so badly that all the students required hospital treatment.
According to the Association of African Students in India, the country has about 25,000 African students, about a fifth of whom live in Greater Noida, a new city 30 kilometers away from New Delhi. Racism is one of the most severe diseases of human society in this age. Racism is for what! The fact of the matter is that superiority is not by birth or color or blood but by righteousness. We are all human beings and should always maintain and strive for peace.
Human trafficking is the fastest-growing crime in the world. Once I was reading the Financial Times newspaper, I came to know something about the word which made me more curious to search the topic. The easiest way to explore any field these days is through Google, so I started Googling and got to its official site which says that it is a $150 billion industry, with millions of people estimated to be bought and sold every year.
However, the reality is that it is impossible to know exactly how many people fall victim to this crime across the world. Human trafficking and modern slavery networks are highly organized, powered by technologies, and completely clandestine.
Therefore, if we are ever to defeat these crimes, we need to shed some light on how and where they are taking place. What is more, we need to generate systemic disruption on a global scale to not only disrupt trafficking networks but also predict and prevent them.
We need to harness the power of such networks, being more innovative and creative in our solutions, and build resistance to human trafficking and modern slavery throughout the world.
To end modern slavery and human trafficking, we can all work together. Just download the STOP APP. The STOP APP is the first of its kind in combining community empowerment, big data management, and anti-trafficking expertise to disrupt, combat, and prevent this global issue. This groundbreaking app can be downloaded on smartphones around the world, and it will allow individuals to report what they have seen and what they know about human trafficking, whether it is in their communities or elsewhere. If you see or hear anything that you believe to be linked to these crimes, capture the incident and report it with the help of the app. The STOP APP empowers every person with a smartphone in their hand and equips them to take action. Together, we can shed some light on modern slavery and human trafficking and stop them.
CNN is taking vital steps to amplify the voices of the victims of modern-day slavery, by highlighting success stories and helping unravel the tangle of criminal enterprises trading human life.
I truly believe that your good deeds can inspire others to also be good. Here is a true story that I picked from CNN based on the same philosophy. It was December 2, 2009, when Mohammad Sohail, a store owner at Shirley, New York, got a $50 bill with a thank-you letter for saving a shoplifter from a life of crime. The story began in May 2009, when Sohail was closing his shop, Shirley Express, at night, and the CCTV showed that a man with a baseball bat came to his store demanding money. Sohail somehow managed to