By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
London, August 2011: During the recent troubles in various cities and towns across England amazing things were seen. On of those cases is when Sikhs were guarding a Mosque in Southall so Muslims could pray their Taraweeh prayers in peace.
The same things happened in Birmingham where Sikhs went to guard Mosques, their Gudwaras, Hindu Temples. as well as Christian Churches. from rioters and looters.
The riots brought in many places remarkable human bondings about, such as also in Birmingham in the case of the three young men that were murdered trying to protect their neighborhoods when a Sikh went to lead a prayer vigil for them.
Those are the things which make thins country great even though there is racism and xenophobia about in some places. Often, this, however, is due to ignorance and arrogance. We may be different in religion, creed, and race, but we are all human beings.
Whether many of those rioters can be regarded as human beings, though, is something that must be questioned in some cases but, as some people summed it up, a great deal has to do with bad parenting and also and especially with consumerism and the want for instant gratification.
This is something we must reexamine in the strongest way and pronto.
Parents struggle, as someone said, to bring food onto the table and work all hours but it is not just for food and the necessities that they work those long hours leaving their kids alone often. They work to be able to keep up with the Joneses and the pressure to have all the latest things, they and their kids.
Having said about working though, the fact also is that there have been many of the rioters whose parents or parent, for it is often only one there, the mother, have never done a day's work in their life and always lived on the dole, on welfare, demanding more and more from the state.
We are entitled to it, you hear again and again and those cuts, they say, make it difficult and so we have to go out and thieve. Really?
But it was not just kids of the poor families. Amongst the rioters were children of millionaires, and many others that definitely are not of disadvantaged background. Maybe bad parenting is simply the main reason for this for bad parenting also comes in when the child gets all the money thrown at him but gets no guidance in any way.
On the other hand, though, those that rioted were but a minority of young people of this country and even the hooded yobs, per se, of whichever color and creed, are but a minority. It is here a little as with Gypsies and such when all get tarred with the same brush because of a small number being criminals and hooligans.
Everything has to be seen in perspective and while there are a disproportionate number of black youth are in trouble and are causing trouble it is not the system that has created them; it is bad parenting and absent fathers.
As to the Sikhs, here we can see what their Faith can do and how the warriors and guardians of the Hindu faith, basically, took it upon themselves to be the protectors of all faiths in the UK during this time of trouble. The Big Society in absolute action and I just hope that we all take some notice of this.
© 2011
