Voice of British Muslim Women

Sarah Ward 

The shot that was heard around the world.  I can envision it even now.  I learned about it in school annually.  One of those pivotal aspects of growing up ‘British’. A young man enjoying his life when he was cruelly assassinated – his life snatched brutally away- we were told.  This act propelled a multitude of nations into a long and bloody war. Years of suffering where bright young men marched forward to their deaths in fields of mud and gloom.  Never again we were told. Never again. We commemorated every 11th November as we stood in our silence, the world stopping to ponder the futility of lives lost in conflict.  Bands of brothers, whole towns losing their future, women left as widows or unmarried. The impact on the social fabric of our nation could never be underestimated.  My mind, as a young child, was inculcated with the horror and revulsion of pointless deaths. Never again we were taught.

And now, more than 100 years after those events, I sit and question why the world is silent. Have we all gone deaf?  Because there are some shots which evidently don’t ring around the world.  They fall silently while we change the channel or scroll up to the latest products.  The shots that kill a father as he helps a disabled son evacuate from an area, as instructed.  The shots which kill young men crossing roads waving white flags to shield them from death.  The shots murdering a mother crawling into the street to fetch the body of her dismembered child.  Only now they are not shots, they are bombs.  It’s not the lonely echo of a single bullet, it’s now the hourly barrage of thunderous explosives annihilating all before it.  Not just a man in a motor car but babies in hospitals left decaying and rotting, a 6 year old sitting amongst the bodies of her dead relatives starving to death as her rescuers are blasted to smithereens before her eyes.

And I ask the world – can you not hear it? Do you close your ears and your eyes to the slaughter? Never again we said but never again is happening now.  This conflict goes above race, religion and nationality.  The passport or the place of worship is not relevant here.  Either we are human, and we see the humanity in all living people – or we are deaf and blind.  We can’t be both.  We cannot stand and remember the fallen while we are silent to the ongoing massacres.  Words cannot express the horror of life in Gaza now.  The fear everyone, but especially children, face on a daily basis.  To live in starvation; in a tent, without family, without healthcare, without food, without a toilet – the stench of death and disease filling your nostrils every second of the day.  Does any child deserve this? Is any child culpable for the actions of adults? Children are the future of humanity and to live your young life in these conditions is a trauma I myself cannot bear to think of, let alone imagine living through.

So here, unusually, I include no religious quotes. No sayings of the wise and the virtuous.  Because, if you are deaf to the sounds of these shots, if you stood and remembered that one shot that rang a century ago what words will you hear? What voices will enable you to listen? What images will enable you to see that humanity is losing the battle of life? No religion advocates communal slaughter. No faith encourages the killing of innocents. No justification exists.  However, at times when the world is at it’s darkest and the clouds of destruction block the light of basic humanity, prayer is the only recourse we have.  But not prayer on one day, for one minute at an appointed hour.  Prayer every day, repeatedly, prayer from the deepest recesses of the heart.  Maybe prayer can echo across the world, its power reaching corners humanity has turned away from.  For in this time when all around seem deaf and blind, what else do we have to offer? Let your prayer be heard around the world.