DIVERSITY

The differences between people need not act as barriers that wound, harm and drive us apart. Rather, these very differences among cultures and languages   should be valued as manifestations of the richness of our shared morals

OUR ISLAM thought us

“O mankind! We created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes that you might get to know one another. Surely the noblest of you in the sight of Allah is he who is the most righteous. Allah is All-Knowledgeable, All-Aware.” (49:13)

Unfortunately

the ethnic community too often shuts its eyes or buries its heads while clinging anxiously to show off their existence - as if there were no more important things in the world than their ethnic!

The great weakness of the turn to ethnicity is that it misreads or ignores the realities of our religion. The central problems of our society have nothing to do  with ethnic groupings, but our existence in the west, our moral education, political and economic participation.

Toward problems of this kind and magnitude, what answers can ethnicity offer?

Going forward

"unity without uniformity and diversity without fragmentation"

that shifts focus from unity based on a mere tolerance of cultural, linguistic, social, political, ideological and/or psychological differences towards a more complex unity based on an understanding that difference enriches human interactions.

 to be contin....