Daily Times

We are a very depressive nation; this shows in our interpersonal relations – we simply don’t smile to each other! Having lived in the UK for quite some time what I noticed immediately among them was this wonderful habit of smiling to friends and to strangers alike. Ladies and gentlemen walking on the streets will not give you a frown look when and if your eyes meet. They will quickly offer you a smile and may even hold the door for you. My supervisor and his colleagues in the university where I was doing research use to hold the door for me though I was decades junior to them in teaching field.

A new research reveals that children from religious households are actually less generous than kids from a secular background.For this research 1170 children were looked at aged 5-12 years old, from USA, Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey and South Africa. The breakup of the percentage of religion these children represented were: Christian (24%), Muslim (43%) or not religious (28%).This is ironical because all religions in their pureness offer empathy and sympathy for others yet what is adopted by their followers is completely different. If we as Muslims look at ourselves, we will find many extremists and conservatives among us that will kill even before empathizing, understanding or even ignoring negativity outright.

Smiling to strangers in our society is looked at with suspicions. Many a times, when I try to practice the strategy of offering a smile to the passers-by whilst walking, I met with strange reactions. Many will plainly ignore my smile, others will start to point to their friends about what I just did assuming that I am a crazy man and some may offer a smile back as faintly as possible and with some added smirk. When I offer the smile to a passing-by girl, I will suddenly notice some man with overgrown shave looking at me who was busy staring at the girl himself as if I just molested her.

We live in a society where conservative people outnumber the liberals. However, I wonder if a conservative interpretation of religion or culture forbids us to smile or perform small kind deeds. The rising migration of rural population to urban areas and the availability of education to children with illiterate parents have made things even more complex. Now we have literate extremists and conservative people who can concoct extremely unique arguments to discourage any sort of enlightenment in our lives. One more habit of us is the lack of positive talk. Whenever two people will meet, the conversation will quickly turn to the deteriorating situation of the country and the institutions. Can’t we talk about a nice movie, soap or a match for a while? Why should it always be a negative conversation?

Lack of smiles are the major cause of extended altercations on minor or negligible issues. Whereas a smile quickly subsidizes a tense situation. We as a Muslim nation have forgotten that our prophet Muhammad PBUH has declared smile a charity. We like to brag how generous we are because we pay obligatory zakat yet we forget that the very reasons why zakat and such deeds exists in the first place – they exists to teach us to be just nice and caring towards each other. Yet we are busy in bashing and raping young maids or transgender, molesting young boys, damaging other’s properties, looting and plundering wealth etc.

It is not that we don’t smile at all, we do smile but that is strictly restricted to extremely close friends and family members. Colleagues hardly smile to each other and often Arabic salutation is considered enough as a gesture of good will during daily interactions.What is required is that we as a nation should adopt behaviors such as smiling, initiation in forgiving on minor disputes, learn to say sorry often and overall be relax and warm with each other. We must also learn to talk positively during our interactions. Perhaps a business organization may start an advertisement campaign to enlighten people about how less we smile and all those conducts that I just mentioned and encourage people to increase the use of them in daily lives. Enough sermons have been given on the virtues of kind deeds perhaps we can adopt them too for a change.