Holy s***. I Just shot him’, yelled a white lady police officer in Minneapolis suburb in US, after shooting Daunte Wright, a 20-year old black man, using her handgun on 11th April 2021, just for some traffic violation (ToI, 13 April 2021). The shooting comes amid a national reckoning over police misconduct and killing of black people by the police.
Of late, there appears to be an upsurge in the incidents of crime symbolising racial discrimination as a spate of violence in this regard has been reported by Indian as well as international media. The globally condemned heinous murder of George Floyd, a 46-year old black American on 25th May 2020, allegedly by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, in a shameful display of racial discrimination; the killing of Ahmaud Marquez Arbery, an unarmed African-American man, on 23rd February, 2020 by three white residents near Brunswick in Glynn County, Georgia while jogging; the murder of six women of Asian descent in mid March 2021 in a shooting spree by a white in Atlanta in some spas, are the glaring examples of the all-pervading racial intolerance in US, the so-called champion of the cause of human rights. Words like mestizos, creole, mullato, yaller, etc., prevalent in US, themselves bear testimony to the existence of racial discrimination at a large scale.
This is not the case in the US only. Even in our country India, which boasts of its tolerant character, a spate of racial violence is reported. Hardly a year back, the BBC News reported horrible stories of racial discrimination in India itself. Some of them are:
- Mahesh Rathore, a 13 year old Dalit boy was allegedly attacked in Gujarat for wearing “mojris” – leather shoes traditionally worn as a royal footwear by upper caste.
- Three Dalit boys were stripped, beaten and paraded naked in Maharashtra for swimming in the pond said to belong to upper caste.
- Prashant Solanki, a Dalit man in his late 20s was threatened by upper caste villagers for riding horse in his wedding because riding a horse was an upper caste privilege.
- Zoramthanga, the Chief Minister of Mizoram, sought PM’s intervention over racial attack on Northeast people for allegedly being denied entry into a grocery shop because of their north-eastern features . (PTI, March 30, 2020)
- And very recently i.e. in mid March 2021, Asif, a 14-year old boy was brutally thrashed by some Shringi Yadav, whose only crime was that, being a Muslim, he quenched his thirst with a water tap in a temple in Dasna, Ghaziabad.
These reported cases of racial discrimination are just a curtain-raiser that gives a glimpse of the enormity of savagely inhuman crimes being perpetrated almost globally and, ironically, in a country like the US, which boasts of championing the cause of human rights and human values.
The practice of racial discrimination has very disturbing historical perspective. This savage practice has its genesis in the proverb “might is right” which ruled the roost in dark ages, middle ages and still persisting in the so-called ‘educated’, ‘humane’ and ‘civilised’ world in different countenance rightly termed as “Covert Racism” by Rodney D. Coates, professor of Sociology and Gerontology at Miami University, Ohio, USA and Director of University’s Black World Studies programme.
RACE – NO SCIENTIFIC BASE
Though precisely undefined so far, what most definitions of the word ‘race’ have in common is an attempt to categorise people primarily by their physical differences. This generally refers to a group of people who have in common some visible physical traits, such as skin colour, hair texture, facial features, and eye formation.
However, in the late 20th century, modern researchers have summarily rejected the concept of race as having no biological validity or scientific basis. But, despite constitutional and legal measures aimed at protecting rights of racial minorities in the US, says Audrey Smedley, Professor of Anthropology in Virginia Commonwealth University and contributor to Britannica, the private beliefs of many Americans remain racist and persist well in the 21st century. But this is not an exclusive case of US only. The menace of racism is still prevalent globally in some form or the other.
UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS (UDHR) OF 1948
However, the hapless people trampled and wriggling under the tyrannical shoes of racism heaved, to some extent, a sigh of relief with UDHR by UN on 10th of December 1948 focusing on rights of individuals. This UDHR spoke of rights to life, equality, liberty, dignity, and prohibition of slavery, freedom of thought, opinion, religion and conscience, etc.
It was, no doubt, a welcome step despite its inherent shortcomings and various loose ends particularly in respect of its implementation in various countries of different cultures. If on one hand the UDHR was widely hailed, it was equally assailed by other nations. The first stumbling block was its implementation.
The Supreme Court of the US passed a verdict, as late as in 2004, stating that ‘the Declaration does not of its own force impose obligations as a matter of international law’. Courts of other countries also expressed the same view.
Further, the American Anthropological Association criticised the UDHR as ‘defining the universal rights from a Western paradigm which would be unfair to countries outside of that scope’. They further argued that the West’s history of colonialism and evangelism made them a problematic moral representative for the rest of the world. This was also called “a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition”, which could not be implemented by Muslims without conflict with Shari’ah.
Thus, the UDHR reduced to a mere clerical exercise without any spine to implement it. Although, some countries de jure adopted some clauses of UDHR in their constitutions yet de facto the menace continues to exist.
THE UDHR OF 7TH CENTURY CE
Before having a peep into the illustrious UDHR of 7th Century C.E., let us have a glimpse of human rights violations and racial discrimination rather subjugation and persecution which persisted in full force till late 18th century.
‘Human beings were hunted down like animals in Australia and the land was cleared of the aborigines for the white man. Similarly, the aboriginal population of America was systematically destroyed and the Red Indians, who somehow survived this genocide, were confined to specified areas called Reservations. They also penetrated into Africa and hunted down human beings like wild animals. After the occupation of America and the West Indies, for three hundred and fifty years, traffic in slave trade continued.
‘The African coasts where the captured black-skinned Africans were brought from the interior of Africa and put on the ships sailing out from those ports, came to be known as the Slave Coast. During only one century (from 1680 to 1786) the total number of free people who were captured and enslaved only for British Colonies counts, according to the estimate of British authors, to 20 million human beings. Over the period of only one year (1790) 75,000 human beings were captured and sent as slave labours in the Colonies.
‘It has also been estimated that the total number of people who were captured for slavery by the various European nations during the heyday of the slave trade comes to at least one hundred million. All these instances go to prove that they have no respect for human life as such and if they have, it is only on the basis of their nationality, colour or race’. (Human Rights in Islam by Maulana Maududi)
In such a barbaric age, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the 7th Century C.E. proclaimed by no other than Prophet Muhammad ﷺ Himself, when the world could not even dream of any such human rights, is nothing but a miracle which speaks volumes of the undeniable Prophethood of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ . Some important clauses of this declaration are given below:
1.A Human Being is respectable and honourable. “We have conferred the progeny of Adam (i.e. Human beings) with Honour and dignity” (Qur’ān – 17:70)
- O people, We have indeed created you from a male and a female and made you as nations and tribes so that you may recognise each other (and not that you may despise each other). Surely the most honourable of you in the sight of Allah is the one excelled in piety. (Qur’ān – 49:13)
3.If anyone kills a person – except it is for murder or spreading mischief on earth (which would be executed through due process of law by Sharia court) – it would be tantamount to killing the whole human race and if anyone saves a life it is, as if, he saved the whole human race. (Qur’ān – 5:32)
4.O’ believers, stand out firmly for Allah as witnesses to justice and fair dealing and let not the hatred of others swerve you from doing justice. Be just that is next to piety. (Qur’ān – 5:8)
5.There is no compulsion in the matter of religion. (Quran – 2:256)
While recapitulating the teaching of Islam, Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in His illustrious last sermon, inter alia, declared, “Today Allah has abolished the concept of superiority on the basis of family heritage. All human beings were created from Adam and Adam was created from dust…. No Arab is superior to a non-Arab nor a non-Arab is superior to an Arab. No black is superior to a white nor a white is superior to a black. If there is any measure of superiority it is piety only.” These were not mere words but properly implemented in practice in the nascent Islamic society.
Prophet Mohammad ﷺ, born of an elite tribe of Quraish, adopted Zaid, a black slave, as His son; appointed Bilal, a black slave, son of a slave, to the most honoured position of a Muezzin (Caller for prayer); called Salman, a non-Arab slave of Persian descent, a member of His family and to wipe out the menace of racial discrimination completely, married His own cousin Zainab, a socially high-born girl from the elite tribe of Quraish, to a black slave son of a slave Zaid bin Harith, His adopted son.
What is needed to extirpate this savage practice of any sort of discrimination among human beings is not mere legislation but change of mindset which is possible only with belief in one God and the conscious realisation of being accountable to God on the Day of Judgement for every deed. Any other effort is bound to end in smoke.