Gushing like a young maiden in love, here comes spring rekindling the earth with its sparkling energy and vitality. An explosion of new life awakens dormant nature to glory in its verdant trees, fresh blossoms and bright sunlight. Do you feel it? Love is in the air. A flutter of flirtation abounds as animals and insects come out from hiding. Resident birds sweetly sing their joyous songs like a chorus in full swing. Do you hear it? Flowers provide happiness as researchers assert. They lift the morale, bring an instant mental lift, energise positive emotions, relieve feelings of sadness and depression and increase feelings of kindness and compassion. Do you believe it? Music and lyrics of love permeate the atmosphere, “in the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” Do they? Have all these feelings been paralysed in us? Have we become numb to spring's ecstasy? Science claims that spring's sun rays are the best remedy as they help your body release serotonin in the brain allowing us to feel happier. Are you in the mood for a stroll under the spring sunshine, absorbing the luscious wonders of the season's exquisite beauty and promise of enchantment? How many of us would answer in the negative? For over a decade, the word “spring” has been associated with the deceitful Arab Spring, a heinous joke played by the West on the East… at least on the Arabs. Even faith, pure and innocent, has become yet another pretext for man to kill his fellow man. According to Freud, hatred is a game; an ego state that wishes to destroy the source of its unhappiness, linked to self-preservation. According to Aristotle, hate is neither anger nor rage, but a desire to annihilate an object and is incurable by time. Both definitions apply to the Arab Spring, to all the acts of violence, persecution and genocide our world has suffered. On a bright Friday morning in a faraway town, down under, named Christchurch, New Zealand, we witnessed a demonstration of this hate. Blinded by bigotry and cruelty a crazed 28-year-old Australian man, Brendan Tarrant, filled with rage stormed two mosques and shot incessantly at innocent Muslims kneeling to pray to Allah. His reason: they are Muslims, migrants, invaders, they are different. Since the 11th century conflicts between Christians, Muslims and Jews have raged to this day. If you are not like me, you are my enemy. I must destroy you, spring or no spring, all year long, year after year. Kill, kill, kill, how can we even notice spring? Such atrocities in the name of one's faith, is criminal. Such extremists are not human, whether Christian, Muslim or Jew. They have no religion, faith, honour or conscience. They have no heart. Are we surprised, shocked, terrorised? We have seen it all. Worse than that we have seen Muslims killing Muslims, hurling them off rooftops, slaughtering them, burning them till nothing remains but their ashes. They call themselves Islamic State, Taliban Hamas, Hizbullah, but whatever their names they are criminals, heartless sub-humans. They have killed in Brussels, Paris, London, Madrid, New York, California and on and on, not to mention Iraq, Syria, YemenLibya and Egypt. Why should we be shocked by an Australian killing 50 Muslims kneeling to pray when we have already seen Muslims killing Muslims kneeling to pray during their Ramadan evening prayers or beginning to break their holy fast? These fringe religious extremists have manifested the rarity or lack of human mercy or compassion. They have desensitised our beating hearts, for we have mourned and grieved, lamented and despaired. “When you live next to the cemetery, you cannot weep for everyone,” goes the old saying, yet we did wipe a tear and gazed at the heavens for an answer. Why have we come to this? Despite the enlightenment of civilisations, our globe remains in the dark. What about our achievements of the last 2,000 years? Unequivocally, they have afforded us an advanced degree of technical sophistication and cultural refinement. The emancipation of the heart seems to lag behind. Experts believe our latent instincts are etched in our brain, since our primal days when we hunted and killed for the survival of our species. These same instincts are still at work today. Since Cain killed Abel and declared he was not his brother's keeper, we have been practising his doctrine. We kill for greed, revenge, hatred, bigotry envy, ignorance. Man is the cruelest of all animals. Brothers kill brothers. Neighbours kill neighbours. Genocide is no relic of the past. It is alive and well. The Hitlers of yesterday have simply assumed different names. The world has demonised Islam for the acts of a few. As was mentioned in the movie Kingdom of Heaven (2005) about the wars of the Crusades, director Ridley Scott argues: “I am trying to get across the fact that not everyone in the West is a good guy and not all Muslims are bad.” Thank you. Technology once a friend seems more like the enemy of mankind, providing the tools to erase the heart and soul of mankind, with its artificial intelligence. Will a replacement be produced who can still mourn, who can still weep, who can still pray? Can the season add some endorphins to our deadened hearts, so we can feel again and rejoice in the songs of spring, sad as they may be. 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“The human race has improved everything, except the human race.” Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
