Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Set me free
A film about the mass rapes of Bosnian Muslim women during the ethnic conflict in 1992 has won the top prize at the Berlin film festival. According to some estimates, some 20,000 women were raped by Serb militant forces in an attempt to shame the victims to death.
What's even worse is that such atrocities will only receive world wide attention when movies and documentaries are made. The 'art' of publicizing genocide has really become an exact 'science' of sorts. No more does it make a difference on how brutal the acts were or the sheer numbers that disappeared.
Take the Holocaust for example. Yes, it was truly horrible that millions of people were slaughtered like cattle but how many such acts had taken place before or since. Ever hear of the Armenian massacre of 1918 when 1.5 milion people vanished? Or are we going to claim that because the Holocaust had a casualty ratio that was 4 times higher, that somehow it justifies the world ignoring Armenia's cries.
Or how about the man-made famine of Ukraine during which millions died of starvation? Or the thirty million in China?
Perhaps the answer lies in our educational system. We grow up reading books by Elie Weisel, Nobel Prize winner and a holocaust survivor, history courses that repeatedly cover World War II and its atrocities. So no wonder that after years of reading and hearing about World War II (and thus the holocaust), a generation rises that is fully aware of one tragedy while completely ignorant about the others.
How often would you read books in school on the India/Pakistan partition that had as many moving stories as any other conflict?
The Jewish survivors of the holocaust were not only literate but highly educated; books were written to no end of their experiences, movies such as Shindlers List and The Pianist further drove home the point, and countless documentaries were filmed.
We claim the world doesn't understand the Palestinian suffering or the hardships of people in Chechnya. But what have we done to tell the stories? We all became engineers and doctors. Writing became a pasttime and very soon a generation emerged that was incapable of expressing themselves.
We often complain about the world not paying enough attention to other disasters. It's because we haven't yet learnt the art of teaching it to them. Where are our poets, our writers, our artists.........the Mohammad Iqbals and the Ghazalis, people who could inspire a revolution through a few strokes of their pen.
What's even worse is that such atrocities will only receive world wide attention when movies and documentaries are made. The 'art' of publicizing genocide has really become an exact 'science' of sorts. No more does it make a difference on how brutal the acts were or the sheer numbers that disappeared.
Take the Holocaust for example. Yes, it was truly horrible that millions of people were slaughtered like cattle but how many such acts had taken place before or since. Ever hear of the Armenian massacre of 1918 when 1.5 milion people vanished? Or are we going to claim that because the Holocaust had a casualty ratio that was 4 times higher, that somehow it justifies the world ignoring Armenia's cries.
Or how about the man-made famine of Ukraine during which millions died of starvation? Or the thirty million in China?
Perhaps the answer lies in our educational system. We grow up reading books by Elie Weisel, Nobel Prize winner and a holocaust survivor, history courses that repeatedly cover World War II and its atrocities. So no wonder that after years of reading and hearing about World War II (and thus the holocaust), a generation rises that is fully aware of one tragedy while completely ignorant about the others.
How often would you read books in school on the India/Pakistan partition that had as many moving stories as any other conflict?
The Jewish survivors of the holocaust were not only literate but highly educated; books were written to no end of their experiences, movies such as Shindlers List and The Pianist further drove home the point, and countless documentaries were filmed.
We claim the world doesn't understand the Palestinian suffering or the hardships of people in Chechnya. But what have we done to tell the stories? We all became engineers and doctors. Writing became a pasttime and very soon a generation emerged that was incapable of expressing themselves.
We often complain about the world not paying enough attention to other disasters. It's because we haven't yet learnt the art of teaching it to them. Where are our poets, our writers, our artists.........the Mohammad Iqbals and the Ghazalis, people who could inspire a revolution through a few strokes of their pen.
The insightfulness of slaves is not trustworthy enough, for only the eye of free people is capable of seeing clearly.I am still a slave, searching for someone to set me free.Mohammad Iqbal
Faraz Ahmed 5:24 p.m.
3 Comments:
I agree. It's actually smthg i came to really notice last year...a friend and I went into a bookstore once in search of a book for her research project, and just outta curiosity went into the 'Islam' section. The amount of anti-islam books just disgusted us. And yet, there were none at ALL written by any muslims. How often do we complain about being misrepresented, and yet how many of us are actuallying DOING anything about it?
Sadly, no parents want their kids to go into arts bcus, well, it just doesnt 'feed mouths'.
:s
btw, nice quote
:)
Sadly, no parents want their kids to go into arts bcus, well, it just doesnt 'feed mouths'.
:s
btw, nice quote
:)
That and some people, like myself, aren't meant for arts ...
Imagine that convo:
Kid: Dad, I want to go into arts.
Dad: What!?! Are you out of your mind! How will you feed your family and buy a massive house with a fancy looking car......what will people think!!
Thats funny because I was similar too in high school Murtada except I didn't get 100s on my history essays. But I did better than the english ones.
Kid: Dad, I want to go into arts.
Dad: What!?! Are you out of your mind! How will you feed your family and buy a massive house with a fancy looking car......what will people think!!
Thats funny because I was similar too in high school Murtada except I didn't get 100s on my history essays. But I did better than the english ones.
