For Dr Ibrahim Jaffe sufism is a very important aspect of his life yet this pious and practicing muslim is often disliked based on the beliefs which he holds. This is unfortunately a common theme amongst people of faith and there are so many people around the world who live in fear because of things that they believe.
It is essential that we become a more educated world so that we can live alongside others who have different faith to us, in a respectful and most importantly in a diverse community. It is time that we educated everyone better on the importance of respecting spirituality and here is why.
Intentions Not Beliefs
There are so many people who have linked the intentions of criminals and wrongdoers with their faith, but quite frankly this is very unfair. Someone’s faith should be allowed to breathe, and we should treat any criminal just the same as we treat any other criminal. It is also time that we learned more about the faith that people hold, because that way we will be in a much better position to understand what they do actually believe and why. It is often confusion which leads us to make wrongful assumptions about people.
Each to Their Own
The human world is not filled with the same people with the same backgrounds and the same beliefs, we accept that people are from different nations and backgrounds and so we should most certainly ensure that we accept them based on the faith that they have. It is not for us to say what people should believe and everyone has the right to believe in the god or gods which they wish to believe in.
Learning
Just because you grow up believing in a certain idea or credence doesn’t mean that you cannot learn from others and perhaps change your thought process. This is of course not to say that you will reject your long held beliefs, but rather that you can add something extra to them, some learnings from another believe structure or religion which will add some more depths to your own particular beliefs. Buddhism for example is not a religion which I believe in but there are so many amazing teachings which come from that religion which I very often apply to my daily Christian life.
Dangerous
The final point to make here is that there is a real danger in not respecting the faith of other people. The danger is that if it continues then we are not going to live in a diverse world but rather a divided world and that is something which nobody wants. If we continue on a path whereby nobody respects the faith of others, we may go too far down it to come back.
No matter what the belief is, we all have a responsibility to respect it, failure to do so will land us in far more problems as a race.
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