19/03/2023
19/03/2023
No country in the world is devoid of discrimination among its citizens – whether it is class, religious, sectarian, ethnic, or otherwise. It may be societal segregation, related to the individuals themselves, or extend to the state itself, whereby a group of it is deprived of specific rights or benefits.
Discrimination may be from the majority against the minority, which is the dominant case, or from the ruling minority or the richest and most educated, against the majority who are less educated and poorer. The greater the backwardness of society, the greater the severity of segregation in it, with a few exceptions, as is the case in Britain, where there is class because of the property system and the system of titles, but it is not difficult to move from one class to another higher, and this is what is difficult to happen in many countries, such as India, for example.
Historically, great wealth and social success, and the change of sect, religion, or family name, had a significant impact on the individual’s transition from one class to another.
What some people do not know is that those who treat others with a class, often suffer from the same treatment from the higher class than them, who believe that they are superior to them in the first place or richer. No category is devoid of other divisions within it!
Even most of the ruling families complain sharply of class, and some of its components are superior to others!
What the minority feels in terms of discrimination in treatment, from the majority, in the majority of societies, is normal and expected, and must be dealt with naturally. For the majority, and this is what I found clearly in many, or in several countries, and how the son of a poor farmer became president of the republic, and the son of an accountant a billionaire, and how the unknown Kazakh officer turned into a king or Shah of Iran, so that the oldest houses called aristocracy sought to marry his family, which was made by chance more ‘Aristocratic’ from them, only because they have reached greater wealth or power.
Kuwait was earlier than others, in the region, in trying to erase the differences between the groups of society, when it chose to merge and melt the differences between them by distributing residential lands by lot, and this is what we saw at the beginning of the sixties of the last century in Al-Surra, Daiya and Al-Sha’ab, and after that, albeit more intensively in Bayan and Mishref, and to a lesser extent in Andalus and Ardhiya.
Later, it became clear to some of the beneficiaries of the fragmentation of society that the positive mixing of its components was not in their “electoral” interest. They sought, in a manner similar to ethnic cleansing, especially with the increase in the rate of random naturalization, to allow tribal and sectarian sorting to take its toll, by opening the door to selling or exchanging homes; living between one area and another, for the purpose of strengthening the electoral vote, in area “A”, by moving it from residential area “B”, where it has no value. Thus, with the knowledge and consent of the government the entire electoral districts of one tribal or sectarian color were established.
Voltaire famously said: “Achieve success in your life and that will spare you the pride of your ancestors’ history!” It seems that the failure of some in their lives as individuals prompted them to take pride in the history of their families or tribes.
Those who complain of discrimination must stop complaining and strive to do the best in life, and the rest of things will take their natural course.
A friend asked why I praised the biography of the late Abdulaziz Al-Saqer, and how the man was, socially and politically, with political and social opinions that contradicted mine and the positions of the group to which I supposedly belonged, or so the friend believed. I replied to him that any action must be taken within its time frame, and if I were in his position and had the same concerns as his about the “demographics” at the beginning of the fifties and nineties, I would not hesitate to do what he did, and therefore it is not fair for me to overlook the man’s right, and all the best of his actions and focus on his position and what he and others may deserve my thanks.
e-mail: [email protected]
By Ahmad alsarraf