Al Maghrib - Text written the day following the outbreak of World War II lambasting the cruelties of war.
It is said that the human species has lived for centuries under the rule of the jungle, quarreling and struggling to survive following the example of animals who do battle and kill each other. But the human being, endowed with reason and great sensitivity, quickly left behind this primitive state and became civilized. It did not take long for him to create a new world based on laws and regulations which allowed him to subjugate the animal species to his will. He claimed to be the founder of civilization and lifted his lineage to levels never reached before.
Nevertheless, he was not content to use this arsenal of laws and regulations as a veil to conceal his original ambitions to exploit the animal species. Instead he has proven time and again after leaving life in the wild that he has not forgotten the rule of the jungle which gives license to the powerful to enslave or even to kill the weak.
What is humanity doing today? It is always at war. Like the times in the jungle, human beings fight and kill each other. But (now) it is not with clubs and swords; instead it is with powerful means of destruction and devastating toxic substances. It is at the least worrisome that human beings hide behind honeyed (self serving) words; one side says they fight in the name of freedom, the other battles for Allah knows what honor. However both sides in reality are but reminders of that jungle being that is ready to fight and draw blood to satisfy those instincts that dominate and determine its acts.
In our days the whole world appears to lined up in two pitched rows facing each other, much like the primitive bands of before. They are there to satisfy their taste for conquest and destruction. When man gives free reign to his animal instincts, he begins committing cruelties of war before he becomes a victim to these atrocities. And then he curses the circumstances that pushed him to commit this carnage. However when fortune smiles at him, he forgets the horrors of war and his share of its misery and he starts thinking again about some new carnage even more dreadful than what preceded it.
Such is the fate of city dwelling humanity. It looks suspiciously like the one that lived with animals in the jungle. The only difference that exists between the two species is that while the first conceals its urges behind words, the second is more straightforward and carries out only what it was prescribed, without the slightest resistance to divine will.
