“Anybody who believes in God and the Last Day should not harm his neighbour, and anybody who believes in God and the Last Day should entertain his guest generously and anybody who believes in God and the Last Day should talk what is good or keep quiet.” The Prophet Muhammad, (Peace Be Upon Him) As Collected By Bukhari
A 16 year old boy has admitted kicking a woman to death in a Lancashire park. Sophie Lancaster, 20, and boyfriend Robert Maltby, 21, were in Stubby Lee Park in Bacup, when they were attacked on 11 August 2007.Miss Lancaster died two weeks after the incident. She was in a coma after suffering head injuries and never regained consciousness. Mr Maltby, an art student, also fell into a coma, but recovered and has since left hospital.
This story was reported by the BBC on the 10th March. It is a story which sends a shiver down ones spine and represents an act of terror which is on the rise. Community based violence and crime is rising rapidly across the UK and West Yorkshire is no different, and they represent a senseless violence which is destroying neighbourhoods.
The Home Office recently reported, that 29% of young people said they had committed at least one act of antisocial behaviour in the previous year, and thus Young Offender Intuitions occupancy figures come as no surprise, with well over 10 000 people being in such rectification facilities, with the irony being the re-offending rate from these very institutions is running at 84%.
Now if one is to analyse this situation, many causes could be identified, including low educational attainment, poor socio-economic conditions, gang culture etc. All of which are essentially complex factors requiring considerable resources to challenge. However, could there be a more micro-solution that could influence change from the very grass roots? Could there be a solution which empowered communities and generated the conditions needed for such behaviour to be negligible? Could there be something that every single individual could do which would enable a degree of utopian harmony to grace the streets of the most notorious of neighbourhoods?
Now before you think this train of thought is actually a product of a brain injury itself, think for a moment, about the neighbourhood in which you live. And ask your self this? Do you know your neighbour or even the person living three doors away? Unfortunately the Urban life that many of us lead today means that we don’t.
We live in warehouse apartments on Oak Lane, Bradford, and have never spoken to the person sharing the wall with us living next door, we are living in suburban Bingley with an awe inspiring 100ft turn lawn and have no idea who lives at the picked fence at the end of it. Welcome to the 21st Century as this is how most of us live. And the concern of me, myself and I, means episode’s such as the aforementioned story, horrific as they are, spend not more than a moment in our consciousness, that is until we are the victims.
The implications of this are, we have no knowledge of whom we live with, have no concern for their concerns and have no involvement in their happiness and woes, consequently if they are afflicted by an social evil, we simply continue to ‘mind our own business’. And this attitude is what breeds distance between people, and eventually a lack of regard for them, their feelings and their lives generally.
Now without becoming all sociological, how about if we took some good old friendly advice and began to honour the rights of our neighbours?
The Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) Said, ‘when you prepare the broth, add water to that and give that (as a present) to your neighbour’. As Recorded In Sahih Muslim.
Now maybe you don’t do broth, but the principle I am sure is one you can appreciate. How about if we all just took five minutes from our time and visited our neighbour with a nice freshly basked Madeia cake, or in Bradford, maybe a nice example of the, Dish of the Nation, Chicken Tikka Masala?
Now this is not intended to be a Dr Martin Luther King; ‘I have a dream’ moment, but just a practical thought on improving relations in communities, with a view to breeding an awareness of one another, which God Willing, has an impact on the hearts and minds of people. As ultimately we are all neighbours to someone.
As you maybe able to ascertain by the opening quote of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him), honouring Neighbours is deemed as an important element in social relations and development. The Neighbour in Islam is someone that is deserving of your honour and respect as goodness breeds goodness, and therefore harmony in the home breeds harmony in the brain, and ultimately breeds harmony in life itself.
The point is, maybe we all just need to take a step back, and remember like we have neighbours, we are actually neighbours to other people. And if we actually treated our neighbours like we expect to be treated ourselves we maybe able to instigate a change which ripples from our next door neighbour, to our street, to our neighbourhood, to our community, to our city, to our nation.
This is ever more likely to happen if we take an Islamic perspective to the neighbour, as in Islam, we recognise the neighbour to be as far as forty homes each way. Now clearly this type of definition would make the grand vision shared here easier, however even if you work with the more Eurocentric position, of just John next door, we can still make some headway.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but there was still a vision for Rome. Rome had principles and they were honoured, Socrates was willing to die for them, all that is being suggested here is, our neighbourhoods have some rights for peace, security and harmony, and maybe they could be honoured without the loss of life, but simply with a nice big cake with a cherry on top!
This is no Jerry McGuire Memo after a bad slice of Pizza, just a few thoughts on moving toward safer neighbourhoods, based on inspiration from reading the words of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him). And contrary to popular opinion in the current times of his disposition, it seems befitting to finish with some of his own words, which not only reflect why it is God said in the Quran, that he was ‘Mercy To The Worlds’ (Quran Chapter 21, Verse 107), but represent some useful advice to all of us “Whoever believes in God and the Last Day should not hurt (trouble) his neighbour. (Collected in Bukhari)
