In Solidarity I Stand

When I ask you to stand in solidarity with me, what do I mean? Do I mean you must accept my beliefs/values? No. Do I ask you to acknowledge them? Yes. Do I ask you to follow my way of life? No. Do I ask you to value my life? Yes.

I’m sure most people are aware of the horrific events that dawned upon Orlando this week. As many of us saw in the early hours of the morning on Sunday, others saw their last moments of life brutally snatched by Omar Mateen.

This was a hate crime. A hate crime against the LGBT community. Whether it was a terrorist attack or not, let us not deflect from the fact that it was a hate crime.

What Do You Follow?

Everyone has filled out some application asking them to state their religious beliefs or abstain from doing so. Of course, this is for reasons of diversity, ensuring that there is a ‘cross-section of society’ (whatever THAT means) within an organisation. But why do we care so much about religion? If I were to approach 10 people in the city centre, I’d probably find 2 or 3 people from the same religion. I probably don’t know about half of the religions that exist in the world yet, when it comes to mainstream religions e.g. Christianity, Sikhism, Islam, Hinduism etc we are so concerned with labels because everyone has to ‘belong’ to some group of beliefs, even if that is no belief.

But it doesn’t stop there! Because once you’ve attached a label to yourself, you’re expected to conform to the standard, expected to follow every single inch of the religion in the same way everyone else does. Of course I can only talk from my own experience as a muslim, but there have been many many times when I’ve heard people telling other people what they should or shouldn’t be doing. Before I get my head bitten off here, I understand that we should GUIDE people however there is a very fine line between guiding and imposing and that is what so many people fail to realise.