Hate is HATE

By Hatim Harith Al Abdissalaam

Growing up I had a dream that this world would be a safe place for us to live in and prosper. I could never understand why adults hated each other. I couldn’t digest the concept of hate and what it really means to hate another human being. Children are born innocent and their hearts are free of hate. My friends and I searched for the reasons behind hate and what hate would lead to.

We then came across the first story of hate in the history of mankind. We were taught in school about the sad story of Cain and Abel the first sons of Prophet Adam, PBUH, where Cain killed his own brother out of envy and hate.
Then we were taught the story of Iblees (Satan) who was a devoted worshipper of God alongside the angels, then God created Adam PBUH and asked the angels and Iblees to prostrate to Adam PBUH. Iblees could no longer hold it in and had to state his hatred for Adam and knew exactly that he was disobeying Almighty God and this action will surely come with severe consequences, but despite that he chose to continue hating and devoted his entire life to continue hating the offspring’s of Adam PBUH and striving to lead them all astray.

The story of hate was ignited by these two incidents that changed the relationship of man forever. Hate comes in many forms. Most of the time, some acts of hate are buried deep in the hearts of people and are not revealed, which is inherently dangerous as one can never protect oneself from such hate.

Other forms of hate are justified hate, where you tend to hate someone evil because he wronged you in one way or the other. The worst form of hate is when you hate innocent people for no reason or out of your own ignorance and this hate leads you to verbally abuse them or even in severe cases you attempt to actually physically harm them.

And the last type of hate is when you know the truth but you turn a blind eye and just continue hating, which is an act of evil. Let us not forget that those who hate in the name of God that Almighty God is innocent of such acts of hate. All world religions and ideologies call towards the same message: love and respect your fellow humans.

We live in a world that is considered to be a small village, and we need to have total conviction that we are all different in one way or the other, as God Almighty intentionally created us different out of His own wisdom, “O people, surely we have created you of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes so that you would know and recognize one another, surely the most honorable of you in the sight of Allah is the righteous one “(Quran 49:13).
These differences within us are a blessing from God and we need to turn them into opportunities to learn from one another and love each other.

Hate will only cause destruction, violence and grief. I am yet to meet a person who think otherwise and I am yet to come across someone who hates living in peace. We can all continue grieving on the loss of innocent souls every single day or we can all stand firm against all forms of hate, whether they are hate based on religion, politics, gender, race or nationality.

Hate is hate no matter what fancy names we call it. It has no religion or nationality.