Sometimes, when I’m in my history class and the teacher is explaining some of the weirdest things that people allowed to happen in the past, I’m like, what even —

In a recent class, an extremely vivid and horrifying vision hit me hard:

As the recess bell rang, Hamid gathered his history e-books and commanded the nanoflexers in his jacket to stretch the soreness out. He turned to his sister, Faliha, sitting beside him, her nose over the notes she was furiously scribbling by hand, instead of simply asking her personal AI assistant to type it out.
“I don’t believe this…”  
Without looking up, she replied, “Believe what?”
“This whole thing Ms. Taqizadeh told us about today.”
He shook his head. “The whole Drump and democracy thing.”
“The 2016 States’ president?”
“Yeah!”
Faliha snorted. “Trump, not Drump.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Same thing.” He paused, waiting for her to answer.
After a few moments, she said, “So what about him?”
At her straight and serious tone, a laugh bubbled out of him.
“Dude! He said that the kidney is in the heart!” He shook his head.
“Like, what even?! But still, after this proof that American democracy did not require the leader to be knowledgeable and capable of speaking the truth and be just, people kept electing new rulers using the same method! How did they even know that this new candidate is actually literate?”
Faliha stopped writing and looked up. Even though she appeared solemn, her eyes twinkled with laughter. “Looks like my brother finally got something right.”
“Hey!”
She shook her head.
“Yeah, they were dumb. Wanted to ‘elect,’ she said, making double-quotes with her fingers. “— leaders based on their charisma and how well they can fool you with their charming talks.”
“And, and you know they had this stupid electrical college thing to elect a president. So technically, they weren’t even the ones electing anyone. What a joke!”
“Electoral.”
“Huh?”
“Electoral college, baby brother. Not electrical.”
Hamid groaned.
She shrugged and stood up, manually gathering her e-books and real-paper notes. “But at least it’s not the same now. That’s a plus point. Now, shall we get a salad for lunch or the nutrition pills will do?”

*shudders* Scary, right?

But thank God that when in the year 2055, Faliha and Hamid will talk about ‘dumb, stupid people’ who stayed quiet, they won’t be including us, right? Right? Well, it depends, to be honest. If we’re really indifferent about things, we might make it to that list. I hope we don’t though. But it depends.

1- The demolished state of Lady Fatimah’s (s.a) grave

Take a deep breath and think about it. As you read this article right now, maybe while munching on some extra-cheesy nachos, the shrine of your second Infallible lies broken and deserted. It’s the Prophet’s (S) daughter we are talking about. Every single second, since its demolition in 1925, the faith of every one of the Prophet’s (s) has been faced with an open challenge.

The worst part? We care so little that we keep forgetting – too little to stand up to it.

2- “They’re preparing for Imam Mahdi!”

One of these days I was pondering over the Muslim-looking state of Saudi Arabia, and how anti-Muslim it actually was. I was about to say, “what do we want them to do next, spell it out for us?” when I remembered that dang! They actually did that already. One of the many enemy groups of Imam Mahdi (ajtfs) has thrown off its mask and unveiled its true self and we are munching on nachos.

Yeah, Mohammad Bin Salman, the de-facto ruler of KSA actually said that KSA can’t establish ties with Iran, because “they’re preparing for Imam Mahdi!”

Don’t believe me? Here’s the proof:

(Not to say that munching on nachos is wrong, but it’d be better if we wrote “Down with the Saudi regime” on the packet and passed it to people, no?)

3- The lame method of governance

Liberal democracy, yes. I don’t even know who came up with it. I mean, come on! We continuously see charming wealthy people come up on stage and make our mouth water with fancy, wondrous tales of change and beauty until we vote for them to lead us straight into heaven – and they lead us to our dooms instead. Truth? Gone. Justice? Gone. Fanatical, fooling talks? On. Full time.

It might have worked in the Stone Age, but during this rapidly evolving modern era, we need to dispose of it and equip ourselves with a better system of governance.

4- Sectarian disunity

No words needed here, except Ayatollah Khomeini’s.

“We Muslims are busy bickering whether to fold or unfold our arms during prayer while the enemy is devising ways of cutting them off.”

The more I think about it, the more I’m like boy, Faliha and Hamid are not just gonna hate us, they’re gonna try to find a way to resurrect us and then kill us again with their own hands.

5- Indifference to our own history

When it comes to history, we’re all yawning and waiting for the lesson to be over. Why don’t we learn of what really happened in the past? Why don’t we understand the previous cases of colonialism and learn from our mistakes? No, what we do is watch teens like us on movies say that historyisjustaboutdeadpeople and repeat it after them like the colonial minded parrots we’ve become.

Seriously? I can’t have my name there in the future’s list of ‘dumb, stupid people’. What about you?

Feature image via Howzeh Marvi

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