Economics, Politics, and Religion: Social Justice |
The purpose of this blog is to discuss topics in Economics, Politics, and Religion from a social justice approach. I am a strong believer in ethics; and I truly believe that no anlytical methodology is strong without an ethical perspective that, at least, attempts to assign people their respective rights. However, there will be posts that don't analyze all topics through ethics; but all posts will mantain a tangent to one of the three subjects. |
It has brought me great pain to learn that the community I lived in Pakistan actively excluded ethnic minorities and refugees from our neighborhood. The saddest part is that I belonged to an upper-middle class community that took pride in our behavior to the people who worked for us (the refugees and minorities). However, I was always taught that our way of living was for us and therefore, we could not have “these” people come live with us. That said, being exclusive didn’t mean racist.
It must be noted that racism is not the same thing as bigotry. Racism is an institution. It has a top-down flow; where the bigotry of people with social, political, and economic power gets entrenched in the “formal” and “informal” institutions of the society. Therefore, the outcomes of this bigotry have very pervasive and widening effects on those effected by the bigotry of the “powerful.”
There are some very amazing parallels between how minorities in Pakistan and Israel are treated. While Pakistan doesn’t actively occupy another land or establish “communities” in its occupied territories, the manner within we treat the refugees and ethnic minorities is very similar and disgusting.
Just like my Pakistani friends, my Jewish friends miss no opportunity to point how pluralistic our communities are. For example, my Jewish friends will mention about how many Arabs live in Israel and for that reason, Israel is just a wonderful and accepting place. Bullshit aside, a person with a little knowledge would know that the HDI index of Arabs living inside Israel is far lower than the Jews. Forgetting the Palestinians, the Arabs in Israel live in an Apartheid community.
This attached article is a good read to understand the dynamics of Jewish/Arab inside Israel.
