The Connecticut Shooting

The Connecticut school shooting and the cold-blooded murder of 20 children have reminded us of the dark realities of the world in which we live. Innocent lives were lost due to the alleged anger, insanity and crazy behavior of an individual. But he is not alone in our world
The culture of violence pervades our world everywhere. On an average 1,600 people were murdered every day per 2000 statistics.  That number is on the rise ever since. An estimated 800,000 people were murdered in 2011 around the globe. Two-fifths of them were young people between the ages of 10 and 29 who were killed by other young people. These figures do not include people killed in terror-related acts, drone-killing or a sustained and organized killing done in the name of securing national interests. In all of these cases, there were specific gunmen involved in the murder of the people. But there is another type of killing that takes place in our world daily. Some 25,000 people die every day, almost 9 million per year, as a result of hunger, while we waste some 40 percent of the food that we buy to consume.
Wrongful death is a wrongful death, whether through gun violence or through artificially created hunger. We cannot blame just an individual for these killings. In a global world, each one of us is responsible for the acts of violence killing hundreds of people daily.
We are the ones who do allow our governments to use violence against the enemies in the name of national security.
We are the ones who promote the idea of a just war to eliminate those who do not fit into our thought paradigms.
We are the ones who manufacture guns and weapons of human destruction and glorify them.
We are the ones who promote movies and documentaries depicting uncontrolled violence in the name of entertainment.
We are the ones who extol the virtues of war to please God.
We are the ones who glorify those past rulers who took pride in building piles of human bodies.
We are the ones who teach our children ideologies that promote hatred and anger against others.
We are the ones who allow domestic violence prevails in our family culture.
We are the ones who allow the killing in the name of honor.
We are the ones who promote the killing of others who are different than us or who differ from us or who refuse to acknowledge our superiority.
We are the ones who create an artificial scarcity of the most essential resources.
We are the ones who create an artificial hunger to maintain a price structure that suits some.
We are the ones who deny basic food for others to align ourselves with a capitalist economy.
We are the ones who promote the culture of haves and have nots in the name of progress.
This is what our man-made philosophies and ideologies have given us in the last 5,000 years. They have told us that might is right and the one who would possess the mightiest weapons would be the most right and powerful. We live this axiom every day in all aspects of our life.
In contrast to that is the divine guidance that declares humanity as one with dignity to all. It promotes the idea of the sanctity of human life and it takes a stand against the race to pile up weapons to kill others. It talks of the brotherhood and sisterhood of all human beings. It invites people, to peace, the essence of life. It tells us to live the peace within ourselves and to practice it in our daily life especially towards those who are the others.
That divine guidance is the essence of human life. This was the mission that messengers lived for. This was the message that they invited all to believe. Yet, under our own whatever instincts we have twisted the divine guidance and turned that into a sectarian call not different than the violent ideologies that pervade around us.
It is time that we bring God back in our lives as individuals and as a society. It is time that we focus on those divine ideas that invite us to peace, non-violence and dignity and respect for all.
The Connecticut shooting should remind us that gun control would not be enough, and tougher laws would not be sufficient. What is needed is a valuable framework taught in our families, communities, and schools that promote a culture of peace, a culture of the sanctity of human life and the respect for each and every individual regardless of his or her background.