Cannot Ignore

Last year (2017) the Pew Research Center released a poll in which Americans were asked to rate different religious groups by the warmth of the feelings they inspired. This was a unique survey that used “feelings thermometer” on a scale of 1 to 100 to measure status of a religious group within the hearts of the people. The top position was given to Jews who scored above mainline Protestants and Catholics. The lowest ranking groups were Muslims and Atheists.

Muslims reaction to this survey could easily be imagined. As people with low morale, they will immediately call it either a conspiracy to degrade Muslims or a planned manipulation of results of the survey to put Muslims down. But, considering the reputation of the Pew Research Center and acceptance of their data worldwide, objectively should force Muslims to think why they rank so low.

Yes, there are inherent biases among Christians originating from churches Sunday schools and sermons from their pulpits where Islam is usually portrayed as a false religion, Muslims cultish and their Prophet a heretic, and also from the media that is often quick to label Muslims as terrorists and Islam a violent religion. These aside, the question is: Are Muslims not responsible for generating such a poor opinion about themselves and their religion? Here indeed lies the most significant reason why they are ranked so low – their heartless killing of innocent people, a narrow-minded religious extremism, their unruly and ruthless leaders who they are impotent to get rid of, and their cocooned religious scholars having no clue of the demands of the modern world.

2. In 2015, Britain recorded eight times as many hate crimes as the United States, which has five times as many people; that was 31 times the hate crimes reported in France and 88 times the total in Italy.

3. Modern parenting is causing stress, exhaustion and guilt:

The Upshot, an analysis and graphics company that produces state of the art papers on politics, policies and everyday life, has recently published and exhaustive article in the New York Times, December 25, 2018 issue. Drawing attention to the conclusion, based upon its research and analysis, that stress, exhaustion and guilt have marked the modern day parenting, some fo the startling key points are:

A. The article points out that the concept of intensive parenting originated probably during the 1980s when “helicopter parenting”, a movement to keep children safe from physical harm, spurred by high profile child-assaults and abductions, became popular despite the fact that such incidences were exceedingly rare. During the 1990s and 2000s, intensive parenting took firm roots because of a major shift in how parents led to see children. They were considered extremely vulnerable and moldable – shaped by their early childhood experiences – an idea bolstered by advances in child development research.

B. Mothers who work outside the home spend just as much time tending their children as stay-home mothers did in the 1970s.

C. The amount of money parents spend on their children, which used to peak when they were in high school, is now highest when they are under 6.

D. Parenting is more hands-off in many other countries for example Tokyo, children start riding the subway alone by first grade and in Paris they spend afternoons unaccompanied at playgrounds. On the contrary, American parents would rarely give that independence to their children.

E. Psychologists and allied professionals have raised alarms about children’s high level of stress and dependence upon their parents. Research has shown that children of hyper-involved parents have more anxiety related syndromes and are less satisfied with life and that when children play unsupervised, they build social skills, emotional maturity and executive function.