Student Eye: I’m your hope

Banner of Sami Yusuf's last song:
I am your hope

by: Muhammad Kurdistani

The recent music video of the famous Islamic singer Sami Yusuf, along with the ongoing events in the region urged me to write this piece in order to emphasize one important take away, or more accurately, message from what that is happening.

Sami Yusuf seems to have created this video as a reaction to the events in the region realizing the real dynamo behind the change process going on in the Middle East: the young people. And although the video shows some young western looking people, it is not far reached to say that the video is aimed towards the Middle East giving the timing of the video.

In Tunisia, Egypt, and in the rest of the Middle East the demonstrations are all done by young people. It was a young person who burned himself to show his rage and dissatisfaction of the situation in his country and through that sparked the revolution in Tunisia. And it was another young one, who is believed to be the reason of the uprising through his activities on the social network Facebook. Not to forget of course that it is the young people who are falling everyday during the demonstrations and uprisings everywhere in the Middle East.

Whereas in the western world the baby boomers are retiring, the Middle East societies are literally exploding with young people. More than 35 percent of the population in the region is younger than 15. And round 20percent is between 15and 25, an age group called “youth”.

However what this generation has seen so far is wars, terrorism, displacement, discrimination, poverty, unemployment, and oppression. No freedom, no clear future, no development. This generation has been watching how the West has raised to its highest levels of development and prosperity (and maybe how it started to move down as many have started to claim). It has also been watching how the poor East has been able to climb to the top in a record timing and it is now competing with the West in many aspects. The Asian societies are today among the most developed countries and have achieved miracles on many basis. Even dictatorships in East Asia are anticipated to take over world leadership in the future. If China continues its pace of development it will be soon able to race head to head with the United States in many areas like education and healthcare.

The West and the East are moving up and we in the middle are struggling to achieve our basic needs, although we are in many aspects richer than East and the West. Our cultural and natural gifts along with the diversity and strategic location should form a recipe for success and prosperity, but in many cases the Middle Eastern have been regarding it as curses and not gifts. These giftshave been either reasons for war or ways to make their leaders richer and richer.

Only recently it seems that the people in the Middle East have been taken control over their destiny. This has happened when the young ones have realized that their “old” leaders have not been taken care of them but themselves. It has happened when they looked around and discovered that nobody but them can really do something about their current situation. They understood finally that it is them who really can make their dreams come true and achieve the bright future they want.

So they went out. With no guns, with no agenda but freedom and justice, and with one goal: to make things better.

However some “old” ones did not get the message right or they didn’t want to. They instead wanted to stop them from going out and express their opinions freely. Those who are in power started to shoot at them and put them in jail. Others started to accuse them of being politicized or worse, did make use of their dissatisfaction and rage to retaliate from those in power by claiming that they supported their movement and demands. Of course they are liars and are try to capitalize from the change happening for their own interests.

But those who went out to the street have a message that needs to be understood by all the others, whether in power or in opposition. Each single demonstrator, each single young demonstrator has the same message:

I’m out there not for the reasons that you think I’m nor the reason you want me to do so. I’m out there because I want a better life. If I live well, then my country will be fine. I’m out there because I want better education. If I am well educated, I can serve my country in better ways. I’m out there because I want freedom. Only with freedom I can contribute in building a strong society with equality and justice. I’m out there because I want a better future. If I have a better future, there will be hope for my country. Don’t shoot me, don’t forget me, listen to me…I’m your hope.

Enjoy listening to the wonderful song by Sami Yusuf, I’m your hope.