Friday, January 27, 2012

Treat Each Other Well

Earlier this week, I was walking through a douar, or small village, near my town. One of the men who lives there in the town had started walking with me, and was telling me a little about the history of the area. At one point I looked over to the other side of the road. I saw a boy, perhaps about 9 years old, appearing to push a much younger boy, who was about 4 years old. The younger boy was crying. The older boy let him go. The younger boy continued crying, and started throwing rocks at the older boy, who didn't look that concerned, but picked up a rock anyway.

I thought, "That's it. I don't care what this guy walking with me thinks, or what any of these kids think." I walked over to the boys, got them to stop throwing rocks at each other, and physically removed the rocks from their hands.

It reminded me of a writing exercise I had some students do a couple of weeks ago at the dar chebab (Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, for "youth center"), where I do most of my volunteering as a Youth Development PCV here in Morocco. Sometimes students ask me to give them a topic, so they can write about it, and so I can then correct the grammar and spelling mistakes in what they have written. On this one day a couple of weeks ago, when students asked me to give them a topic, I gave them the first idea which occurred to me. I suggested to them, "Write about why we must treat each other well." Each of the three of them wrote about various reasons. But all three of them wrote that we must treat each other well "because we are all sons of Adam." I was struck not only by how all three of them gave that reason, but also I wondered at how they didn't refer to any Biblical figures after Adam.

I noticed how none of them mentioned Jesus. Later I thought about how I've often heard people living in the USA say to me, "Jesus is in the Koran." While some people add that Muslims believe that he isn't the Son of God, I never remember others informing me about how Muslims believe that Jesus didn't die on the cross. In my mind, those seem to be significant differences, which, I believe, account for a lot. Additionally, if Jesus, who spoke so much, and so extensively, about treating others well, is in the Koran, then why, when these students were asked to write about why we must treat each other well, did not even one of these students mention Jesus?

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