By Syed Rizwan Bukhari
Of late, a video circulated on social media wherein a student was seen hugging a teacher – out of affection. It was followed by strong public backlash and demands for accountability and morality in educational institutes. In as sensitive a socio-cultural landscape as Kashmir’s, public reaction intensified to such a degree that preachers gave long speeches against both the student’s and the teacher’s behavior. Something stretched too long!
The student appeared in the ensuing video, face covered, clearly showing her worsening mental health. It felt as if she had committed a crime that could never be forgiven. The outpouring of trolling comments and slings and arrows thrown by the Internet warriors (the old and the young alike), keeping not in mind the age of the student, have dealt a heavy blow on her psyche.
Islam urges us to be soft in our approach when we are about to give people some advice. And when it comes to minors, who have hardly understood life, death, and the hereafter, it’s an obligation on us to treat them like we treat our kiths and kins.
It’s a wonder what narrative of Islam we are following that instead of helping people, we are disgracing them. Shaming them. Excluding them. Abusing them. And damning them.
The abuse and segregation have many facets apart from the seemingly Internet warriors’ version of Islam. It includes other coaching institutes’ ulterior motives to capitalize on the situation and shame the institute (Physics Walla) that the teacher belongs to.
It includes an unhealthy relish in chaos, turning every small incident into a spectacle. Making a mountain out of a molehill. It encompasses the logical byproducts of unemployment: endless time to interfere in matters only to worsen them.
Such incidents aren’t to be flat-out swept under the rug, nor are they normalized. The need of the hour is to think before we act, issue fatwas, and exclude people from the fold of society. It doesn’t add up and definitely doesn’t solve anything.
We need to analyze such incidents and bring the best of us. For the sake of the student, in this case. And in the future as well. God has given us the capacity to think; let us utilize it. Lest a time might come in the future that we should tear each other apart for a matter that could have been easily understood and
resolved.
Help people. Or at least don’t bring disgrace to them.
Hailing from Sopore, author is an entrepreneur and a social activist.
