Ten Quotes
... 42:40 The Qur’an comprehends the complete code for the Muslims to live a good, chaste, abundant and rewarding life in obedience to the commandments of Allah, in this life and to gain salvation in the next. Maulana Muhammad Ali is suggesting that forgiveness is well and good but only with some punishment of retribution at the cost of the wrongdoer. The U.S. Justice System is responsible for maintaining law and order and administering justice. It aims to reduce crime and to deliver justice on behalf of victims. Every criminal charged stands trial and is placed before a jury who determines through evidence if a person is guilty or not. One a decision is reached the person is sentenced. The same form of justice needs to be put in place for victims of historical crimes. You can’t put a price on human suffering, but pain can be paid to the one who suffered. Quote # 4 “No amount of gold could provide adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of blacks in America; yet a price could be placed on unpaid wages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the labor of one human being by another. The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special compensatory measures which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with accepted practice of common law.” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. King’s discussion on a “Bill if Rights for the Disadvantaged” from his book Why We Can’t Wait, 1964 The Bill of rights enshrines the rights of all people in our country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom. Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law. Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms to promote the achievement of equality legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken. Dr. King fought for civil rights, equality and freedom for oppressed blacks. Dr. King realized that you can’t for people to change their attitudes or beliefs, you have to help them see the error of their beliefs. Dr. Kings argument was that no one who has not been the victim of the extreme oppression that blacks were victims of for hundreds of years, could understand why the civil rights movement was necessary at that time. Quote # 5 “The historical precedents used [by black reparations activists’ to justify reparations do not apply . The historical precedents generally invoked to justify the reparations claim are payments to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, Japanese-Americans and African-American victims of racial experiments in Tuskegee, or racial outrages in Rosewood and Oklahoma City. But in each case the recipients of reparations were the direct victims of the injustice to their immediate families.” David Horowitz, “Argument #5 of David Horowitz, “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks Is A Bad Idea”, FrontPageMagazine.com, 1/2001 David Horowitz argues that there is no single group clearly responsible for the crime of slavery and that in fact black African Americans were responsible for enslaving the ancestors of African Americans. There were 3,000 black slave-owners in the ante-bellum United States and because of this Horowitz asks “ are reparations to be paid by their descendants too?” He goes on to claim that blacks claim for reparations is premised on the false assumption that only whites have benefited from slavery. If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously It has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves. Horowitz’s article is so far removed and impractical. Quote # 6 “Present generations stand under two types of obligations of intergenerational justice: they are obliged not to violate the rights of future generations, and at least some presently living people might well be obliged to provide compensation to contemporaries for harm inflicted upon them as a result of the lasting impact of injustices committed against their predecessors.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2003 This quote suggest that America needs to grasp the past and seize a better future. To work towards remedies that would repair the past injustices and not make the same mistakes of the past, but rather fix the harm. The present and future generations has to rectify the divisions that already exist in our county. It has to eliminate racism and demagoguery. They won’t fully be able to make up for the horrors of slavery and segregation but it will be a step to right the wrong and atone in some way in hope of reconciliation. Quote # 7 “Democracy is the political system most in keeping with the nature and needs of humans; history has been an evolution of political forms towards democracy; once states have all reached democracy, all they have to do is avoid reverting, there is no ‘farther’ to go in terms of political organization.” John Lye’s statement on democracy. Ideology:A Brief Guide, pp. 1-2 Lye’s statement on democracy is an ideological statement because it suggests that we the people hold the supreme power. Ideology talks about how cultures are structured in ways that enable the group holding power to have the maximum control with the minimum of conflict. Certainly democracy has the same definition. Democracy allows the voice of the people, the majority to be heard. Usually the majority are those with high status in society. Democratic political systems work on behalf of the needs of people. This allows the dominant institutions in society to work through values, conceptions of the world, and symbol systems in order to legitimize the current order. This is done through widespread teaching. However any ideology is subject to contradictions, thus the people it could be hard to move toward a democratic system and keeping the people from reverting. Quote # 8 “Forgiveness of sin depends upon true repentance while a wrong done to a fellow-man requires rectification and restitution before forgiveness is possible,” Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, 1959. Restitution plays a growing role in human rights activism, and it testifies to the increased attention being paid to public morality and the augmented efforts to amend past injustices. However, one may spend and eternity trying to provoke ...