Are we sliding back to a period of darkness?

Are we as a people sliding back to a period of ignorance and darkness? Our brutality is no less severe than that of the Jahiliyya era, one of the darkest periods in human history. How else can we explain the killing of a mother who went to school to enrol her child? Or a father who was showing compassion to his beloved child?

People kill other people in broad daylight and passers-by simply enjoy the show. No one has the sense to stop the cruelty, and no one shows any courage in stepping up and speaking out against the injustice.

This society is facing a great moral decay.

Back in the time of the Celts, people used to believe that chopping someone’s head would save their souls. However, that story is about 2,500 years old.

It is weird to find similarities with the Celts with present-day Bangladesh, a time of supposed progress and stability.

We claim to be developing as a nation, and our targets are big, our dreams even bigger. And our success is visible in all aspects, as our annual GDP growth is considered enviable by other nations.

According to Unesco, Bangladesh’s literacy rate is at the highest it’s ever been. We are doing great in terms of export, we’ve launched a satellite, we are developing our infrastructure, but is material advancement enough to quantify progress?

This progress is meaningless if our norms and values are not solidified. Sexual abuse, violence, and brutality have become common phenomena. News of rapes, killings, lynching, and road accidents, are common elements in our media.

Such news does nothing to shock us anymore.

We express our discontent for a few days and eventually we forget. Unfortunately, this pattern has become habitual for us. The youth is losing faith as society is conveying the wrong message about the sanctity of life.

There seems to be little for optimists to draw from our society.

Violence is usually the outcome of a mixture of social and psychological factors. In our country, political influence and impunity are the biggest reasons behind it. The people have lost faith in the law enforcement. But, with the recent spate of lynchings, the onus lies on the people just as much as it does on the law enforcement — if not more so.

Some experts believe that Bangladeshi people lack anything in the way of critical thinking. We do not judge situations, but we love judging people.

If anyone declares an individual to be a criminal, we tend to believe that without giving a second thought and jump on the situation. Likewise, when we see someone being beaten by an angry mob, we join them without even understanding why.

We never raise questions; we just go with the flow of blood.

We have no right to kill simply because of a lack of trust. Even if someone is guilty there are courts, law enforcement agencies, the rule of law that is necessary to take action. As a conscious citizen, we are supposed to hand over offenders to law enforcers, not take the law into our own hands.

In this regard, the government should attempt to restore some of the lost goodwill on the part of our law enforcement. Critical thinking and mental growth aptitudes should be introduced into our education curricula.

Aspiring to become a middle income nation is easy, but trying to become a civilized society is really hard.

If we do not recognize and fix these issues now, it’s entirely possible that our descendants would face a second coming of the Jahiliyya era.

Annur Islam Sifat is a freelance contributor.