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For God’s Sake, Stop the War

Ramazan this year coincides with the Great Lent, as observed by the Orthodox Christians that a majority of Ukrainians and Russians are.

JAWED NAQVI

WE are now into the month of Ramazan, a period of piety and self-reflection for Muslims, though one can’t tell that by the unravelling of the mayhem in Pakistan. It is reassuring, however, that the war drums in Yemen have gone silent. Someone has found the wisdom at last to suspend the daily horrors of death and deprivation inflicted on fellow humans in exchange for peace and prayers ushered in by the holy month — tentatively for two months but, with luck, for all time to come.

Ramazan this year coincides with the Great Lent, as observed by the Orthodox Christians that a majority of Ukrainians and Russians are. Other Christians also observe the period but the days are slightly different. The 40-day stretch marks a sombre meditation on the sacrifices of Jesus Christ, and it ends with Easter, celebrated to remind the faithful of his resurrection.

The fratricidal war in Yemen at least had the sham of an ideological rift between two sects of Muslims. The war in Ukraine doesn’t have the fig leaf. Not only have the guns not been silenced, the brutality is fanned daily by a host of vested interests. Clearly, the vendors of death in Ukraine are the same as those who fuelled the conflict in Yemen, only with the ring-view seats here, not unlike the Roman elite in the Coliseum that applauded a bloody duel.

The discovery of bodies in Bucha near Kiev is only a small peep into the brutality inflicted in the fratricide. Given Ukraine’s tragic loss of lives and destroyed homes, it’s useful to remember that the sanctity of life cannot be graded as Russian or Ukrainian, as more precious or less. Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Congo, Kashmir and Afghanistan should never have been the blind spots of morality they became.

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