Reading the news this morning, I am wondering what are meaningful parameters for human development. The most powerful country in the world, one that is supposed to fight for the equality and liberty of all human beings, is openly using methods that were employed by the Inquisition in 14th century Spain. The critical circumstances demanded Americas sidestepping of human dignity. Is dignity attached to each human being or does it come as a pool for the human species? Making one of us suffer to possibly save others reduces our lives to a mere calculation. Mathematics that, in the hands of a child that has not yet learned to count to three, have proven incredibly dangerous. Sadly, this infant's logic has become an inspiration for our constitutions.
When Saddam Hussein was hanged, as little sympathy as I had for the man, I wanted to cry. In the midst of killing and bloodshed, the most important official act and long hailed symbolic ‘new beginning’ of our country was built on the suffering of a human being. As we aspire to an angry child’s definition of human dignity, we create empty nursery rhymes in our constitutions. These keep us busy, but hinder our development. It is time to openly discuss what human dignity means to us in the Arab World and what we are prepared to do in order to protect it.
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