What is Global Justice, and how can it be achieved?

This Poem won 4th place in the annual Student Speaker challenge at the University of Lethbridge,
Alberta, Canada.

The thesis of the argument is that the current reliance and development of nationalism as a model for
human interaction is flawed in that nationalism promotes the exclusion and dehumanization of the
“Other.” A better model proposed is that of religion because of the plurality, inclusiveness and
humanizing effects that are the root of most non-political religious experience.

The poem was deemed to inaccessible to be successfully understood and delivered in a 15 minute time
frame and so did not go on to the final round. No other competitor had spoken at the Challenge through
poetry since it’s inception, and the effort was well appreciated by the listeners and judges.

The poem is written by Taylor Webb, it may be copied, distributed or reproduced in any way freely, but
plagiarism regulations of individual institutions must still be followed.
 Alhamdul-illah

Assalaam Alaikum, Peace be upon you

Not the Peace of non-war, but of a crystal glass, whole, resting, full of potential
fragile.

Injustice is not a natural disaster

This is good news, because as such we can be the masters!
But it is also quite tragic,
Because we know it is because of us and not some black magic.

But I still believe we can stem this tide

Because we can –each one of us- change inside

Global justice can be found

Quite close to the ground
It turns out your heart
is the best place to start
Because:
What good is s system if no one can rise to the challenge?

You see, we have science

but still youth defience
Because those ideas don’t extend
to a broken soul you must mend
We have policies of hate,
nations built to discriminate
Whose moralities are based
on nothing deeper than race
Because someone born here
should experience no fear
but anyone else...
Well those “people” (if you must call them that) can figure it out themselves.

See, it all boils down

to something less than profound

So stop, make a plan

But realize the guy who should do this of will do that is a man
He’s not a fact or a system or number or thing
He’s a brother, not an “Other” and when you see this I know
He’ll love your plan, and you’ll both grow
Together.
 But this love of eachother
Is born of the removal of the concept of the “Other”
And that modern boogie man
is the root of the nationalist plan
Because when I am Canadian
All I’m saying is “I’m not like them”

After all, what makes me a national outside the law?

I mean within it’s just birth, some kind of draw
But in reality
Canadian is something you have to try to be
When I go around in jeans, a shirt and a smile
I could claim to be a local without denial
But when I dress like this, to be more devout
Suddenly “Where you from? What’s that hat all about?”

Being of a nation is based not on what you want to be

But on where you were born and that you don’t look like me-
Different

So can’t you see this negativity?

An identity based or relativity?
“They’re not me, and I like me, so they must be
Different, Bad, Less
Stopped”

Now let’s look at dehumanization

The way it’s done is to remove all dignity
it’s achieved through the removal of sympathy
Take your clothes, your name, your identity
And then give –not remove- nationality
So we can see the nature of that reality

Nationality is an agent of dehumanization

See, when Imams lie

It’s nation they apply
to prey on the weak
and get them to seek
some twisted old rule
like an eye-for-an-eye, but much, much more cruel

Father for son, and bullet for stone

Mothers and daughters left all alone
 As their tears fall to the ground
their cries leave their mouths but without a sound
because their tears fell in Tahrir
Where no humans are found

Now, we don’t start with hate and distain for mankind

It’s far into life that we build walls in our mind

So when does that woman stop being real?

Is it when she’s distant she loses appeal?

It’s proved by waves breaking on a keel

Distance doesn’t matter, so long as you’re real
But when you call into question a national cause
You’ll wait, cry and bleed and get no applause
When you throw rocks at men with standard-issue British guns
And you’re fighting for your life, and those of your sons
The biggest worry they have is not for your family
But rather for the spread of the disease they call calamity

Nationalism is an agent of Human rights abuses

National boundaries don’t even exist

They’re made up, they only exist in our minds

They don’t keep people out, they keep us closed in

and since they exist in the mind that’s where problems begin

So I propose to you all to keep being you,

but define yourselves positively even if that’s something new
Have a self that’s made purely of what you are and can be
Because global justice starts with your identity
and choosing who you are is what it is to be free.

Constraining our children in negative identities should be a crime

But can we strip away this powerful tool
simply by ending it’s teaching in school?

No

The individual, it’s well known cannot stand

against the grain of the nature of Man
We need support and a helping hand
and at least one person to be our Facebook Fan
 So turn back t a system where what I am
comes from me and my community
Anyone is allowed to be just like me
but if they’re different that’s fine, they’ve chosen to be!

See, we can’t work together thinking of what we’re not

And ask Quebec if it’s ok that we’re a big melting pot
We need to build ourselves from within, that’s all
And so we need to end the nationalist call
Because so long as there are those who define themselves by what others are not allowed to be, there
will be hate, ignorance, xenophobia
And out plans
Will not work.

But what sort of community

allows me to build me
and still be part of a unified “we?”

When you look at the foundation of a place

History tells of war and humanity’s disgrace
But they say “Oh, what a time, the first, the pure, the best of us!”

A faith, on the other hand, is at it’s best

when in unison the followers had peace –justice- in their hearts
And what achievements form East to West
were built in peace? Which model is best?

Communities in God that see nation as a crime

Can bring Mankind back into it’s prime

When I joined the ummah, my new community

and I looked around, what did I see?
People from Sudan, Malaysia and France
a thousand nationalities in one sombre stance
Then with our heads to the Earth it all washed away
There are no cracks in the Earth for 5 moments each day.

We can stand independent as Christian and Jew and Buddhist and Sikh
But a nation depends on not being others,
and a future dependant on that it quite bleak.

So a counter-intuitive appeal goes out

Asking you all to be more devout
It may be an unlikely proposition for you to accept
 and for some reason here I find the most contempt
for declaring my faith and building my self
for saying Iman is intellectual wealth.

But let’s look again at what religion can give

When it’s a whole glass, and not just a siv.
Listen to the worst of the worst of Imams today
and the bottom of the barrel of those led astray
More often than not what they’re claiming to do
is exactly same thing as you!

They’re searching for Justice! --or saying they are

Because it’s the biggest motivator by far!
They know that the youth feel a burn in their hearts.
They want to help out but know not where to start.

We must turn from a system that for conformity will go bust

And instead look to a model who’s goal at least is to be just.

Now I’ll be the first to say

the path is a precarious way
there’s danger and darkenss and possibly tears
But in the name of Justice we can overcome those fears.

So far scientific though has brought us this

but scientific thought has also missed.

See, right now we’re faced often with calamity

Floods and famines and drugs and war
But if we take back Kalam, then we’ve just got –itty

Bitty

Problems

That we can solve ourselves.

So it will be tough, there’s quite a jihad

But if we stick through and overcome the bad
We’ll see a world we never knew we had!

Because the strength of our identity

will align with our community
and not interfere with any other entity
and we won’t need a common enemy
 Except hate, ignorance, xenophobia
And then our plans will work!

Right now the Earth is a broken glass

dangerous, fragile, fracticious
What we need is the peace of a whole glass
Functioning, soft, at rest
and without these cracks and scars
we call theris and ours

Alhamdul-illahi Salaam i Hakun

Praise be to God, the Peaceful, the Just.