I live with what one would regard as a “white” girl as a wife. My little girl Rakel has brown eyes and golden hair, my mother was one of those long legged blond beauties that Denmark and Scandinavia is so famed for. My father was, by Bangladeshi standards, quite light in his skin.
So, as far as “race” would go, I belong to the “white” community. But there are a few old people who stares at me, coldly because I have a little brownish skin, and this reminds me what it is to be a coloured man in a white community.
The thing is, it has gotten worse after the terror attack in France. Now people actually stare at me more, where it was less before.
This is what I truly fight, I try to fight a world where you are not judged by your skin. The irony of it all is the fact, that my friends were the ones that were attacked and threatened in the terror attack. Especially here in Denmark, but through the Vilks committee also the Charlie Hebdo newspaper.
So I stand to lose on both sides, I lose when the jihadis move into the fray, and I lose when the racist are moving as well. But I keep on fighting the fight non the less, because deep down, I believe that there is a path in-between. In-between jihadis and racism. In between one stupid ideology and the other.
I truly, deep in my battered and scarred heart believe in democracy and humanism. I believe in the individuality of every person. That each os us is precious. I believe that man has the ability to rise above the material world and actually fight their inbread tendency to go for the easy solution. That they truly see nature and spirit as that of a loving man, and not of a man of hatred.
Man is narrow-minded, and has a tendency to go with the flow, choosing the easy solution and not the complex. As white against coloured or believers against nonbelievers. It is an easy fix, but it brings little happiness, it only brings a barren wasteland of conformity.
This is the fix I have tried to combat. I have tried to make a path where Jews are not persecuted, where black men as well as white men live in harmony. It is not about Islam, it is about the part of Islam that takes all the worst parts of Islam and put them to foul use. The arrogance and the selfagrandishment.
Now, is there a path? Yes, there is, I have laid it out. It is a path of harmony and acceptance, it is a path where man still is man, and we are not dragged down in this awful fight against a terrible foe.
The worst fight is not the fight where we put up barriers against the onslaught of the islamists. In this fight there will be heroes and young men winning all our hearts. No the worst fight is our own fight to remain human. To still accept people we do not know, to still be humble and cherish the little ones, the smell of spring and meet people without hatred.
As we face inhumanity, we shall remain human, otherwise we will lose what is most precious to ourselves.
We need to fight, but we need to do it without loosing our own humanity.
G-d bless the will to remain human.
Charlie Chaplin said in another time with a vigour, I hope we can copy a little.