Ukraine: The Moral Failure

Unless you have been staying in a physical, silky cocoon for the last weeks, or you have been lost in the African Sahara for some reason; you should be well aware that Russia has launched a military attack on Ukraine. And even though the whole Europeans-slaughtering-each-other thing, — or everyone to be accurate — is not new, some folks have apparently been skipping their history classes, so I thought maybe it falls upon me, — the uncivilized, brown-skinned, Muslim — to remind the torchbearers of civilization of their history full of enslaving, overthrowing, invading, torturing, and exploiting their fellow human beings, in case they suffer from colonial amnesia.

I will be lying if I say that the unedited, live statements of white people showing the whole world how to be shamefully racist, or that the blatant double standards and hypocrisy of the international community shocked me at all. I will be lying if I say that I, a Muslim girl, dared to believe that my life is equal to white people’s. The world has already made that clear enough, we learned this at a very young age, we learned that sympathy is not color-blind as they claim to be, that not all children deserve education, shelter, and food; that “human rights” really are just a euphemism for “whites’ rights” … We learned that trains are not first-come-first-served and that signs that say “whites only” didn’t really go anywhere. We learned the hard way that all those useless international organizations with fancy and intimidating names, could not care less about our tragedies.

We learned that our hearts — as big as they are — cannot possibly contain all the suffering; and that our homes — as warm as they are — cannot physically welcome everyone. We learned what it means to have our beautiful Arabic names exchanged for slurs, how to exist but not live, how to be reduced to numbers, nonchalantly pronounced by a journalist, after an airstrike.

We have learned how to speak in your languages, how to forcefully assimilate into your societies, how to compromise our values and water down our religion for your changing sensibilities, how to hate the Melanin in our skins, how to not mix politics with sports unless it involves Europeans, how to individually be able to represent 2 billion people; how to earnestly ask for forgiveness for what we have not done, how it feels to be collectively demonized, infantilized, dehumanized, scapegoated, dispossessed, displaced, starved, humiliated and bombed into oblivion.

We learned how to condemn terrorism even in reality TV shows and make-up tutorials, how to speak in an apologetic tone, how to say sorry in 75 different languages, how to carefully choose a good enough outfit from the suitcase that barely survived the bombing and the long walks across borders for our immigration interviews, in hopes that we can convince someone that this country, as cold as it is, is still better than our unlivable warzones. We had to learn how it feels to be forgotten and how to see our dreams being crumpled into wasted speech papers on finely polished wooden podiums.

We are tired of being killed because we are not democratic enough, not feminist enough, not gay enough, not queer enough, not liberal enough, not naked enough… We are tired of your fancy speeches about equality, democracy, and human rights as you continue to sow chaos in our lands. We are tired of being treated as a pile of brown, foreign-speaking aliens, instead of fellow humans with names, and stories.

I am deeply sorry that it took you the lives of blue-eyed, blond Europeans to finally understand that being a “refugee” is not exclusive to Arabs and Muslims; and that EVERYONE deserves the right to live with dignity.

You can continue to play your little heroic roles.

You can continue to masquerade as the knights in shining armor.

You can continue to save the world in your Hollywood blockbuster movies.

You can continue to be the trembling hive of hypocrisy that you are.

But the mask has fallen down, and we have already seen your true ugly face.

“The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis” -Dan Brown