Humans. 

Some believe, who decide to follow the evolutionary path, that humans are descendants of apes and consider themselves, well, nothing short of being in the ‘animal species’. 

Personally and no offence to those who do, but I take the opposite path..that humans are on a higher level than animals, equipped with logic and intellect and the ability to act humanely. 

Recently however, certain experiences at work have shown me that people, and in particular Arabs, are lowering themselves to the status of animals. Why and how you ask? Well let me enlighten you...

I work in a children's retail store, in a suburb highly populated by Middle-Eastern people. That’s fine, cool, top notch. But this is what annoys me and I dare you to envision this in your head:  

A woman walks in (more like runs in), long jilbab flowing behind her, pushing a trolley/pram and screaming loudly at the three hundred kids surrounding her. Now although even the sight makes me cringe, since I will tell you from now, this is nothing near how a woman should present herself in society, let alone a Muslim woman, who should pride herself on modesty and humility; I walk up to her and smile saying “hello how are you today?”

Said woman, who is obviously an Arab-Muslim, doesn’t even bother to acknowledge my existence, instead turning around to browse the wall bay, simultaneously screaming at her children who have no sense of discipline and wreak havoc across the store within minutes. 

Now I understand, you might just be having a bad day, things are accumulating and your agitated, the kids are being naughty…but woman. If you can’t control your emotions to the extent that you walk into a store looking no less than a barbarian, who can’t smile and present herself properly….Well then you should seriously rethink walking out of the house until you learn to discipline your anger first and foremost, then your children.  

Now, I don’t know if any of you have ever witnessed a sight similar to what I just described. But it is something that occurs on nearly a daily basis at my work - the behaviour of these woman and children has sometimes been so bad that I, on multiple occassions, felt the need to apologise to my manager (who is Non-muslim) on behalf of them, making sure to tell her that this is nothing close to how a Muslim should behave.

I might sound harsh or judgemental but this really peeves me - what happened people, to the true essence of adab (manners), modesty and humility that our prophet diligently worked to model for us? Everyone knows that smiling is sunnah, yet people can’t even spare a second to smile at the face of their sister in deen (religion). What happened to the children, who instead of respecting their elders, rebel against every word said to them?

Now of course not every Arab that walks through that door is bad. Some mashaAllah, do demonstrate the true manners and politeness which Islam endorses and that makes me happy. And it’s not only Arabs that I’ve dealt with who were rude….but it is because majority of the time this disgusting behaviour, from my experience, is seen with Muslim Arabs. And that is what is truly disheartening. 

This is a reminder to myself, first and foremost. Please sisters, especially those who wear the scarf and live in a westernised country like me…realise that when you walk out of your house you’re wearing and representing your religion. If I’m going to be specific, more than half of Australia’s population is racist. Now do you want to propel racial intolerance or work towards making your country a more accepting and understanding country, like how we should be in turn, accepting of other cultures and religions? 

Every word, every action that you do, someone could be possibly watching and can easily misinterpret it, if it is an action or word of distaste.

So my muslim 3arab (Arabs)…pull up! Represent and shine bright the true essence of Islam. 

A few hadiths (saying of the prophet (pbuh) to contemplate: 

Abu Darda (RA) reported that Rasulullah (SAW) said, “Nothing is weightier on the Scale of Deeds than one’s good manners.” (Al-Bukhari) 

'Imran bin Husain (May Allah be pleased with them) reported:

Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said, "Shyness does not bring anything except good." [Al-Bukhari and Muslim].  

And in another:  

In a narration of Muslim: Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said, "All of shyness is good."