10/06/25 Choosing Silence

Choose outrage. Choose moral high ground from the comfort of your couch. Choose being against something when it is safe. When the bodies are buried and the headlines are gone.

Choose freedom that ends where your Wi-Fi does. Choose democracy that cries for one nation and forgets another. Choose peace that needs the right passport to matter. Choose the conscience that always arrives late and loud and useless. They said the world was built on values. But it was built on forgetting. No one remembers the silence that came first. Only the speeches that come after.

Choose the scholars who found courage only after the dust had settled. Choose the writers who wept on paper but whispered in public. Choose the thinkers who believed that staying neutral was noble, as if not taking a side ever saved a single child.

And while the West perfects its excuses, the Muslim world perfects its silence. Kings sit on gold and oil, pretending to mourn between ceremonies. Clerics quote verses about justice and swallow them mid-sermon. Generals in Rawalpindi polish medals that shine brighter than their resolve. Politicians count votes, not lives. And the rest of us count likes, views, retweets, as if digital grief could cleanse our conscience.

Someone once said that one day everyone would have always been against this. It was not prophecy. It was diagnosis. Because that is what we do best. We rewrite cowardice and call it wisdom. We rename delay and call it patience. We disguise silence and call it restraint.

When the last bomb falls, we will gather again. There will be panels and essays and documentaries. We will call ourselves witnesses, not accomplices. We will light candles, print posters, wear ribbons. We will say the word humanity as if it redeems us.

Choose your story.

Choose your timing.

Choose the comfort of regret.

Choose to have always been against this.

\/.