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Disclaimer: This article is primarily written for myself any of the advice or solutions given are first and foremost things that I am working on implementing within my life. You can think of it as me talking in a mirror to myself reflecting on society. Within our society we have a system established that literally abuses the vast majority of us. These systems lie all across the board ranging from racism, police abuse, education and access to education, insurance policies, resource distribution, pollution, climate change, water quality, water distribution, our tax system, our current government practices, and even our internal reactions to those around us. What I mentioned does not even begin to scratch the surface. When was the last time you walked through a "ghetto" neighborhood and felt at ease, when was the last time you saw a homeless person and acknowledged their existence as a fellow human being, when was the last time you empathized with those less fortunate rather than blaming them for their circumstances, when was the last time you thought about where your tax dollars go, and when was the last time you had time to think about these things rather than worry about your simply surviving and providing for your family, and...the list goes on and on. In my opinion, the main issue here is that we do not care about one another. It is basically like we are all fighting over pennies, while others sit on their stacks of money passing a cigar around enjoying the spectacle. Finding amusement in our misery. One thing that they do better than us is look out for one another. There is constant lobbying and reform promoted by them to protect them and their vested interests. And part of what they do is work to turn the rest of us against ourselves. While reading the Qur’an, verse 73 of Surah Al- Anfal (Chapter 8) stood out to me and highlights the problems that we are seeing. And those who disbelieved are allies and protectors of one another. If you do not become allies and protectors of another—there will be oppression, persecution, confusion, and mischief on Earth. Everything I mentioned above falls into the category of oppression, persecution, confusion, and mischief. This is what we are seeing and the solution is right there. We need to start being allies of one another. We need to start being protectors of one another. We need to start caring about one another. And in order to do that, we must start by asking ourselves difficult questions. Why we hold the opinions we do? Why we act in certain ways? Why is that we do not care about one another? After asking why, we move on to addressing what. What is wrong with us? What does it mean to be an ally? What does it mean to be a protector? What would we want in an ally or protector? And finally how. How can we be one? Religion is at its best when it makes us ask hard questions of ourselves. It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking we have all the answers for everybody else.–Archibald Macleish  Photo Credit: Iqra Shaikh, Granada 2015 Permission required for photo use
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