Biasness

Identity automatically leads us to a biased thinking. Defensiveness is a product and a solution that helps us to justify our stance. We forget what actually is objective. The biasness is so subtle that we cannot recognize it even when we try to. A few days back, when the President of the United States of America, announced that Jerusalem should be part of Israel. I received several messages from my Muslims friends in different parts of the world about this announcement. Everyone seemed upset about this issue. I don't have any political preferences. However, I think I am a bit religiously inclined. Jerusalem is a special place for me as Jesus Christ was born there. As much as I respect the place of my Lord's birth. I do not want individuals fighting over it as well. I want it to be a place of sanctity and holiness. It is a special place for three major religions in the world.

Having said all that, my response to my friends was that the World is becoming a political place and people use religion as a way to oppress others and they should not take it personally. I added that majority always oppresses minority. I highlighted issues of religious persecution around the world.

Well, that did not go very well with my friends. Two of my friends quite frankly called  me biased and insensitive. I was offended and defensive about it. I tried my level best to explain my perspective. However, I ended up annoying them even more. Finally, one of my friends, he being very expressive about his ideology shared with me the issue as a result of his frustration due to being stuck in the traffic. The traffic was held as people protesting on the road against that  announcement. I without validating his concern according to him trashed it, by saying it is political and I'm not into politics. He felt that I was invalidating his concern and seemed insensitive towards the issue.

After this conversation with him I realized, How I should have at least validated his and other friends feelings of hurt and not condoned or compared it with other scenarios in the world. When I realized, my shortcomings, I apologized. Things became much more clear and crisp.  My friend stated this at the end of our conversation, "we both belong to different religions, so definitely, we got well-documented differences".

Sometimes understanding differences and our own identity helps us to be empathetic to others who are different.