That is a quite a feat considering we’re talking about Donald Trump here. A man known for speaking his mind and making unpopular and offensive statements like one on
Mexicans recently.
I recently met a modern, intelligent and well educated man from the Middle East. Over lunch we talked about ISIS, terrorism and Islam.
The one thing that bothered him the most was double standards in the media. How the media labels any muslim who kills people a terrorist, but when it’s a non-muslim it’s a “gunman” or a “attacker”.
Why the double standards?
That is a valid question. It is an unfair label and the truth is that all labels are unfair. In fact labelling an entire group of people based on their race or religion is wrong.
There is much
discussion in psychology these days about how our tendency to label or generalize things come from our human nature or survival instincts. From experience as human beings, we have been burnt by fire so we train ourselves to remember that fire is dangerous. From experience we believe that certain animals in the wild attack human beings so we label them all dangerous and a threat.
We then carry this behaviour to evaluating humans.
History has proven that labeling an entire group of people like this is dangerous. Look no further from World War 2. During World War 2, the Germans were responsible for
killing 6 million Jews. When the guards at these concentration camps were interviewed though you might expect to see a person with an evil nature. How else could a human being do that to another human being?
But the truth is when you watch or
read these interviews, these concentration camp guards sound like the most normal people. Some were victims of circumstances and others were driven to do what they did because of the propaganda they were fed. The deep belief planted in them that all Jews irrespective of age, gender or nationality were “
inferior” and not considered human.
At that very same time something similar was happening in the East. In the
Rape of Nanking, the Japanese killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians. The reason they could do that? Because they believed that the Chinese were “
sub-human and no better than pigs.”
Similarly in today’s world we are faced with people labeling an entire group of people.
We have people who claim:
That
Jews are trying to (or already) control the world.
That
Muslims are terroristsThat the
Rohingya are not Burmese even though they were born and live in Myanmar.
That
Africans cause crime in countries they settle in.
Or even closer to home in Malaysia where it’s claimed one race is constantly trying to steal the rights of another.
These stereotypes are often touted by a few very vocal individuals but they do not represent the minority. I have many muslim friends who are peace-loving and not terrorists. And I know if I wanted to I can find more than a few Jews who can tell me their life mission is not to control the world.
Perhaps it is hard-wired in some part of our nature but we cannot allow this to happen. The day we spread any thought of this to another person in our community, we effectively judge an ENTIRE group of people for the sins that were committed by a few.
The day we judge an entire group of people, we take another step closer to allowing ourselves to treat them differently or worse still, in the case of the Nazi Holocaust, to exterminate them.
A part of humanity dies every time we make statements like that.
When I asked my Middle-Eastern friend what he thought about the Paris attacks he said something along the lines of “I don’t have anything to say but that the world is not safe anywhere now”.
I pointed out to him that while he was very obviously appalled by the suffering of Muslims in the Middle-East, he seemed indifferent about the people who lost their lives in Paris. It was only then that he realized that he was not just a receiver, but a giver of double standards or stereotypes.
As human beings, a violent crime against any other human being is a crime regardless of race or religion. It doesn’t matter if it’s French citizens being shot in a theater in Paris or a Palestinian family getting their home blown up by an Israeli bomb.
It is all wrong.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space