The Best remedy for Racial Prejudice or Color Bar.
On reflection, one comes to appreciate that this is a great blessing vouchsafed to mankind through the Arabian Prophet, Muhammad (pbuh). It has been this differentiation between man and man that has , more than anything else, ruined mankind. In some places, man was declared to be polluted and it was argued that since he was an untouchable he could not enjoy the same rights as the Brahmans. Then, according to some, man was considered to be good only for destruction, for he had the misfortune to be born in America, Australia, or Palestine in an age when the foreign immigrants badly wanted his eviction from the land. In places, man was hunted, enslaved and forced to work like an animal merely for the offense of being born in Africa and the color of his skin ,black. In other words, these distinctions of nationality, country, race, color and language have, from time immemorial, been highly detrimental to mankind. These differentiations have caused wars. They have served as the basis of aggression by one country against the other. They have provoked a people to plunder another people. Generationsof human beings have been subjected to ruthless genocide for the satisfaction of these prejudices . The Holy Prophet (pbuh) treated this malady so effectually that the enemies of Islam now admit that never were the problems of color distinction, racial prejudice and national bias so successfully solved as in the religion of Islam. When the famous leader of the African- born nationals of America, Malcolm X, who at one time led an extremist Black Nationalist Movement against the Whites, undertook Hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah) after embracing Islam, he saw people of all races, colors and nationalities speaking different languages and converging at one central place from the East and the West and from the North and the South. They all wore the same garment, the Ihram, all chanted Labbaik, in the same language; all mingled to perform circumambulation, and they all formed one compact congregation under the of one leader to offer worship. Malcolm X observed this and exclaimed that it was the only correct answer to the questions of race and color and that the measures hitherto adopted by his compatriots were wrong. Malcolm X was murdered, but his autobiography survives to bear witness to the profound impact Hajj had made on him. Hajj is but one of the articles of worship in the Islamic faith. Whoever surveys the Islamic religion as a whole with open eyes will not find even the smallest point to which he can refer and say that here Islam has tilted the balance in favor of a particular nation, tribe, race or class. The entire code of Islam testifies to the fact that it is applicable to the whole of humanity. It affirms that all human beings who acknowledge the principles of Islam and enter the fold of the universal brotherhood of Islam are equal. nay, the conduct of Islam towards the non- Muslim presents a happy contrast to the treatment of the Blacks by the Whites, and highlights, by contrast, the conduct of the imperialists toward the slave peoples as well as the behavior of the Communists governments towards their non-Communist subjects or toward their own dissident party members. Let us now turn to the rules for human welfare which the Holy Prophet (pbuh) propagated through the teachings of Islam and the seizure of power to enable him not only to guarantee human well-being but to unite all human beings in one Ummah.
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