Islam and Hinduism - Different religions with common elements

There are 2 problems when writing about ancient religions – first they are ancient and second they are religions. Over millennia the mythology of ancient religions becomes more important than the core of the religion itself. Its followers adhere to these myths as if they were real and the followers of other religions target these very myths as the basis of their claim that their religion is nothing more than a bunch of lies. This problem takes on another dimension when the ancient religion is Hinduism and a Muslim tries to understand the truth behind the myths and find common truths between Hinduism and Islam. This is what I am attempting to do and hence opening the door to criticism from both Hindus and Muslims.

 I have always maintained that every major religion practiced on this planet had one Divine Source. If that was not the case Allah would not have said that He sent 124,000 prophets. They were sent to every civilization, every community starting from Adam and ending with Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). If this is the case then the source of every religion has to be Divine inspiration, and if this is so then not only the message but the components of all religions also have to be the same. Let’s just examine one aspect of Hinduism – the concept of multiple gods which are known as Devtaas. For practitioners of monotheistic religions especially Islam this is the very basis on which it is rejected as a false religion since our belief states that God is one and one only. But we need to go beyond the current belief system of Hinduism and examine what a Devtaa really is.

Devtaa simply means ‘the shining ones’ i.e. ‘of light’ and they basically control every aspect of our natural world such as fire, wind, rain, crops etc. According to Hinduism there are about 330 million of these devs. The ancient Aryans starting worshiping these devs because to appease them meant that the natural order of their world was maintained. Whether they should worship them or not is another debate, but what I’m interested to know is if devtaas really exist and does Islam recognize them? I came to the conclusion that Islam also recognizes devtaas. Devs are known in Islam as Malaaik or angels as we commonly refer to them in English.

Islam tells us that angels are made of ‘light’ which is precisely what dev means. In Islam too we are told that the angels have been assigned specific tasks by Allah in order to keep the universe in order. Muslims believe that angels are too numerable to be able to count them. The 330 million figure does not really mean that someone sat and made a list and counted all devtaas physically, its simply a number which emphasizes that they are too many to be counted by us.

The concept of Jins is also present in Hinduism, there they are called Asur. These Asur are the beings which are forever at war with the devtaas and spread malice, doubt, greed and general evil in this world. In Islam too the ‘shaitaan’ or evil jins are responsible for causing human beings to plunge into doubt and darkness, the chief shaitaan being ‘Iblis’ or the Devil as the west call him. If we know of angels and jins through Quran and our Prophet (PBUH), then how come the Hindus have been saying the same things for thousands of years before us? This would mean that the source of their knowledge would have to be the same i.e. Allah. Which means that some of His prophets must have been responsible for the establishment Sanatana Dharma (or Hinduism as we now call it).

Muslims and other followers of monotheistic religions can argue that the practice of worshipping these multiple devtaas is wrong and which is why they need to convert to their religions. Actually their religious texts also point to one God or Ishwar, but somehow the worship of devtaas became the established practice. But when a religion comes into being before writing itself, then chances are that the message will get contorted over the millennia. Which is why God kept sending his messengers to ensure constant updation.Next  time someone dismisses Hinduism as complete fiction they should remember that it isn’t. Religion itself has nothing to do with what its followers do to it.

 

Waiting To Grow Up

They say you are as old (or young ) as you feel. Some people feel that one should never allow the child in them to grow old because as long as your spirit is childlike you will be young at heart. There are others who say that one should act their age – so if you are 50 and behaving like a child there is something wrong with you. In other words, one should be a hypocrite who feels one way but acts to the contrary.

Like most people I too have struggled with this hypocrisy. I feel like a kid but must act like a mature grown-up. I have been trying to figure out what about me has changed ( apart from the physical aspect ) which is different from when I was a child and really nothing comes to mind. I seem to be lumbering  through the years but the spirit seems to be the same as it was when I had just started to discover this world many decades ago. I still love amusement parks, I still love to day dream just as I did when I was in school and most of all I am still full of anticipation. More than anything else childhood is about anticipation - waiting for life to unfold when we grow up. A child observes the grown-up world and wonders when they will be able to participate in it. Childhood is all about waiting for the future. Strangely enough I seem to be doing the same.

At my age people are usually done with the ‘living’ aspect of life. This is when retirement is a reality looming on the horizon and people start mentally preparing themselves for illnesses, sedentary life styles and winding down for the inevitable. I should be doing the same. That’s the sensible approach to life, but I can’t seem to shake this feeling that there are many more turn on this journey.

Probably this extended childhood is due to the fact that for my mother I am still her little girl, and for me she is still the grown up of the house. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t remember anything I tell her, I still seek her permission for even the smallest matters just as I did in my childhood. I don’t need her permission, nor does she really fully grasp the situation, but it makes me feel better.

Having a parent alive is perhaps the most important factor for a prolonged childhood. It doesn’t matter how old you are, as long as there is even one parent alive you are officially a child. By the same argument, it doesn’t matter how young they are, children who do not have any parents tend to grow-up at tender ages. They may be physically small but they carry inside them the maturity of years.

I know my childhood will not last much longer. Unlike a child who can’t wait to grow-up, childlike grown-ups can’t bear the thought of it because it means the loss of parents. We are Peter Pans who never want to grow-up. And herein lies the dilemma. On one hand I am still waiting to grow-up, while on the other I want it to continue as is.

 

Restoring Humpty Dumpty

My last post was pretty dismal and some of my friends were genuinely concerned about me. I assure you that there is nothing to be worried about and I am now out of that dark mood. My blog is not really about promoting my business or establishing myself as an ‘ expert’ in any given area – it is simply a means of catharsis. Sometimes I need to just simply put down in writing the connections I make on various subjects such as mythology and history because unless I do they keep swirling in my head and keep me preoccupied. Sometimes I write because I am frustrated at what’s happening in the social and political arena and as an ordinary citizen I put my concerns on my blog simply as a way of registering my protest. And sometimes I write because I need to rid myself of all the negative emotions that are welling up inside me so that I can be functional again.

My strategy of coping with negative feelings is a bit radical. Rather than just try and divert myself when I feel sad and depressed I take that darkness to the extreme. If I am unhappy then I take my unhappiness to the point of sheer misery and once I have worked it out of my system I can then move on to healing myself. As they say once you hit rock bottom there is no way else to go but up. All emotions, good or bad, should be experienced to their maximum otherwise they never truly go away. For good emotions that is not such a bad thing to happen but negative emotions remain with you like that lingering residual cough one gets after a particularly nasty bronchial infection – just when you think you are OK the cough attack comes on to remind you that you aren’t. So my last post was my attempt to hit rock bottom and I’m happy to report that I did and now I’m on my way up again.

After I read my post I realized that I was indulging in self-pity. Who was this whining person? Me? I wasn’t like that and if I was becoming this way then it was time to take corrective measures. So  I went on a little journey of introspection and knocked on doors within me which had been so far kept firmly shut. Most of these doors had bits of benign junk that I found easy to clean up but every time I did the junk kept coming back again, it just refused to go away for good. In the end I figured that the door with the biggest padlock and which I was avoiding for so long held the broom which could clean up all that was behind the other doors. I knew that once I opened that door I would have to pass a test to get that magic broom and that test would be daunting to say the least.

When I finally opened that door I found fragments of myself and the test was to put myself back together again like Humpty Dumpty. I tried for a long time but even though each piece was my own all of them were distorted so that they didn’t seem to quite come together in a neat fit. But what had distorted them so much? Why wasn’t I myself anymore? And then I remembered an old CD I had once left on my car’s dashboard out in the sun and which had become warped just like my own self was now warped. The culprit was an external force in both cases but the blame was mine because I was careless and did not take care of them. The CD was damaged by the sun’s heat and I was damaged by all the negative input I was allowing people to send my way. Slowly over a period of time these minor inputs had managed to chip away at a substantial part of my self-esteem. For someone who teaches other people about self-esteem this was not just shocking it was also shameful. I felt like a fraud – what right did I have to stand up in front of a group and talk to them about a subject in which I had myself failed? But then I realized that this was not really a failure it was a big lesson. I learnt that even if your strength is left untended for some time it will start to weaken. Atrophy is never far behind.

Once I realized this I could use my secret chants and potions to restore all my pieces and assemble myself once again.  Having passed this test I was then handed the magic  broom with which I proceeded to clean all the mess behind the other doors.

Moral of the story? It doesn’t matter how hard you try to improve yourself and it doesn’t matter how many self-development books you read, if you don’t work on improving your self-esteem nothing will work.  Also, while working on your areas of improvement do not neglect your strengths otherwise they too will become weak. And on more thing that I learnt from this experience was that the root of all our problems lies within us. Circumstances and people are neutral, how we respond to them gives them negative or positive labels. I am happy to report that since I started working on myself, even my mom’s situation seems to have improved. Her dementia is not better but now I keep her preoccupied with jokes and light conversations so that she doesn’t keep going around in circles and asking the same things again and again.

Life In A Loop

‘Ground Hog Day’ seems to come to mind whenever I try to describe my life.  Every morning I get up to relive the same day again and again, nothing changes, no surprises. When you are the only person living with a dementia patient there is not much room for anything else in your life. Their life and their reality becomes the dominant factor so that at times you are incapable of anything else but to get trapped in their world and it is a world that plays over and over again in a loop. My mother’s dementia worsens with time and now it seems that there are 4 or 5 questions she keeps asking all day over and over again and I have no choice but to keep answering them over and over again.  The fun and friendship I once shared with this woman is now gone forever – there is no conversation anymore just the same questions and the same answers. So instead I talk to myself.

Being an only child talking to myself is something I have done pretty much all my life but now it is my means of survival. One advantage of this self dialogue of course is that one does not have to hold anything back – you can be completely honest about your emotions and your fears with yourself. No need to keep up the mask of politeness or norms of acceptability. The disadvantage of course is that sometimes you ask yourself questions for which obviously you have no answer and then you try and reach out to someone who might. I find it hard to talk to people so I write instead, in the hope that someone may have an answer.

They say “good things happen to good people” if this is the case then am I a bad person to have been put through this situation? Some people tell me that this is a “trial from God” and good people are given this trial period as a test of faith. But both these statements seem to negate each other. I you believe the first one then bad things should not be happening and if you believe the second then if life is happy and good you are bad because you are not being tested. Somehow I am not able to reconcile these statements in my head. If someone else can please let me know.

There is another pet statement that most people make in order to make me feel better – that I will be rewarded with Heaven as a result of the care I am giving my mom.  Frankly after a while this statement makes you feel worse rather than good because you realize that nothing good will come from it at least while you are alive - and when you die? Who knows? This may sound heretic to many but when life becomes a living hell your faith in an undisclosed destination starts to falter. At least mine has. Besides implying that you take care of your parents because you would be rewarded makes this act so selfish and greedy. If there was no Heaven or Hell then would we still do the right thing? I think the test of humanity is to try to be good and do the right thing not because you expect a reward for your labours but because you cannot perceive any other course of action.

In the beginning I used to think that I am doing this out of love, but I had to face the harsh truth that it wasn’t love that was my motivator, it was responsibility. The love is there but this person is not the person I once loved – she only inhabits her body. Her personality is gone, she is only half a person – the physical is present but the spirit which made her unique is gone. You cannot love half a person completely. But there is a strong sense of responsibility which has taken over and all my actions, decisions, and will power now stems from this. I wasn’t a very responsible person so that comes as a bit of a shock for me.  I am too shallow and too selfish to really have a strong sense of responsibility. Being an only child I never really learnt to think for anyone else but myself. Perhaps this sense of responsibility is really a mask to hide my selfishness? I realize that once she is no more the house will be very very silent – no one to even ask these 4 or 5 questions. Perhaps that is why I endure this spin cycle of emotions every day.

I go through a daily cycle of resentment, guilt, frustration and remorse. I resent the state of limbo that my life is currently in and I feel guilty about having these thoughts. I feel frustrated that my life is on hold and then feel remorse at allowing these thoughts to come.  Each morning I get up with a resolve to be happy and each night I go to sleep completely spent and drained. Perhaps the one emotion I feel most often is that of loss. What happened to all the dreams I had? Where did all that promise fade away to? Sometimes I feel that my life is nothing more than a utility for my mom. I was sent so that she would not be alone in her old age and I’m of use only till she is here. This thought used to make me feel angry now I’ve kind of reconciled myself with it. The image of a flat lined cardiac monitor comes to mind when I think of my own life. No spikes at all just the same constant flat line. I grew up thinking I was destined to do something big something important so perhaps the hardest thing for me to accept has been that I will probably amount to nothing. There is no sudden bend in front of me which will take my life on another path. I am blessed that I was able to travel and have new experiences early on in my life and perhaps an attempt to recreate those days is futile but no one has ever really been able to control their wishes.

My most important question remains unanswered – why? Is there really an explanation for why this is happening? Or is life just random and we conjure explanations just to make ourselves feel better? Am I good or am I bad? Is this a lesson or a trial? Am I being blessed or is this my punishment? Is the present a consequence of actions in my present life or is it the karma of a previous one? I realize that I am going round and round in circles and perhaps I too am now trapped in a little world of my own like a person in a maze from which they cannot find their way out. 

Law of Attraction and Religion

Recently there has been a lot of focus on the Law of Attraction especially since the book ‘ The Secret’ was published. The basic tenet of this philosophy is simple – you manifest in your reality that what you think about most. In other words humans have the power to create the reality of their lives just by thinking about it. This usually causes great alarm to the religiously inclined, because what it means is that the power lies within humans rather than an external force i.e. God and that of course is heresy.

However Law of Attraction is not actually about thinking and manifesting, it is about thinking (stating a desire) and then allowing it in our lives and the bulk of our work is in the allowance not the thinking aspect of this law. But still the question remains, is it contrary to our religious beliefs? When I first started to study the Law of Attraction, like most people I too had many questions and concerns. Over time as I studied it more in-depth, I found that religion actually provided a medium for this law and rather than being at cross purposes, they complimented each other.

The first big question that emerges in everyone’s mind is if all we have to do is think then where does prayer come in? My counter question to that is why do we pray? It is of course to ask God for something – be it a material desire, salvation or just a state of protection. In fact whenever we pray we fulfill the first step of the Law of Attraction i.e. stating our desire – we let the Universe know what it is that we want.  The act of praying or asking God is of no use whatsoever unless you really and truly believe in God. It is our belief that gives strength to the prayer. When we pray in essence we hand over our requests to God knowing that He will somehow make them true for us.

This process of letting go or handing it over to the Universe is critical for desire manifestation according to the Law of Attraction. As I mentioned earlier the bulk of our work is to allow our desires to manifest. To the novice this may seem like the easiest thing in the world but to the initiated it is the most difficult aspect of LOA. You see the Universe does not respond to our words but to our emotions. In other words we don’t attract things in our lives by thinking about them rather we attract circumstances, things, events which closely match our predominant feeling. The most important aspect of allowance is to feel predominantly happy, optimistic or joyous. The longer we are able to maintain this state of joy, the quicker the manifestations will be. Vividly imagining as if your desires have already manifested and seeing yourself enjoying them also helps but on the flip side constantly thinking of when they will materialize actually delays the manifestations because the predominant feeling is that of waiting and the attention is on the absence of what you desire. Waiting and focusing on the lacking will generate more waiting and lack.

Now let’s get back to religion. You see the whole point of praying is to let go of things and let God take care of them. If our belief is truly strong then the act of praying should bring us relief from all negative emotions and make us content in the knowledge that our prayers are being answered. However, most people are never able to cross this line of faith. They constantly worry about when and if their prayers will be answered thus actually delaying the allowance and then wondering why God does not answer their prayers. He will if you move out of the way! If you don’t really trust Him then why go through the motions?

Every religion has a set of rituals designed to bring contentment, peace and joy.  Being a Muslim the act of Salaat 5 times a day for me is Allah’s way of ensuring that we not only take stress busting breaks but also that we completely forget our worries during that time and enter into a state of bliss. After all if your faith in God and your rituals do not make you happy then there is something very wrong in your personal belief system – I said personal belief system because religions cannot be wrong, people who follow them usually are.  

If you truly practice religion the way it was meant to be then you use the Law of Attraction to your advantage if not the Law of Attraction will keep working against you. Just look at the state of our country and the Ummah as well. We spend most of our time in blaming, being angry, hating, and being generally unhappy and what are we manifesting as a result? We are attracting and manifesting circumstances which make us angrier, more miserable and helpless. 

Of course even for those who are masters of the Law of Attraction sometimes seemingly random events occur in their lives or they are faced with unforeseen challenges. The avid LOA fan will tell you that at some level of your sub-conscious you attracted these things in your life. However my take is slightly different. I believe that God puts us in these situations so that not only does our resolve and character strengthen, but that our desires grow as well. Life would be pretty boring if we all had the same level of desires, usually a tragedy in our lives provides the spring board for noble and grand desires.  Therefore these events are what is sometimes described as ‘ contrast’ or situations where we can come to a decision as to what we want next in our lives.

It is easy to discard any idea without the slightest investigation, usually because when we are faced with two seemingly contradicting philosophies we become extremely uncomfortable emotionally. The easier route to take is just negate the one that is causing the turmoil. The more difficult and noble approach is to go through this discomfort, examine your own beliefs, find the truth behind both ideas and then build a bridge. 

Its All A Myth

All religious traditions have 3 things in common; they all help their followers find inner peace through a path of righteousness, each has its own rituals and they all contain their own specific mythologies. Objectively speaking no one really has a problem with the core essence of any religion i.e. the central message. Every religion teaches its followers to adopt the noblest of human characteristics – truth, serenity, justice, peace, sacrifice and simplicity. I have not come across a religion that teaches anything to the contrary.

Rituals are the identity badges of every religion. It is the rituals that people follow which enables us to differentiate between these traditions, hence they are unique for every religion. When followers of one religion criticize others they usually launch their attack on the basis of the rituals that a religion follows.

Mythologies are stories that are associated with a religion and can be loosely termed as the ‘history’ of that tradition. I would like to clarify here that contrary to popular belief a myth does not mean a lie – a myth is a traditional story usually involving supernatural characters. Many rituals are spawned from the mythology of that particular religion. A number of rituals are designed to help preserve these mythologies so that people never forget their origins. But mythologies are much more than just history passed down through the generations in a narrative form. They embody the wisdom of the ancestors passed in an easy to remember narrative.

Of all the ancient mythologies I find those of the Vedic tradition i.e. Hinduism the most interesting personally, simply because unlike the Greek and the Romans, Hinduism is considered to be the most ancient of all practiced religions and since I am from the sub-continent I find it easier to understand and study. What fascinates me about these myths is the attempt of the ancient people to pass on their knowledge of geography, medicine, history and the arts to their descendants through fascinating imagery.

Take for example the story of the sacred river Ganga. Ganga was the daughter of the king Hemavat ruler of Himalaya.  All his daughters were turned into rivers except Parvatti who became Shiva’s consort. Ganga was taken to the heavens to purify it after the Asuras had polluted it.  She was asked to come down and flow on earth by Bhagirtha. The sins of Bhagiratha’s ancestors had polluted the land and there was chaos and famine everywhere, after years of prayers and meditation he finally managed to bring Ganga down from the heavens. But if Ganga were to come straight down earth would not have been able to sustain its force hence Shiva intervened and Ganga first flowed onto his head and then made her way down to earth through his hair.

For non-Hindus this is fantasy at its peak, but look more closely and you will find a complete lesson on basic geography. In Sanskrit Hem means snow and hence Hemavat was snow king whose kingdom was Himalaya which means snow abode. All his daughters were fated to become rivers including Saraswati and Ganga, which as any school going kid now will tell you  makes perfect sense as we know that these rivers start in the Himalayas as snow, therefore in essence these rivers are the daughters of king of snow who rules over the snow abode. The river Ganga does not really start as a large river from a single point of origin, although the main river can be traced to Gomukh where the glacial melt water flows down into a stream which down course becomes the mighty river. However there are several streams and rivulets along the Himalaya which contribute their waters to Ganga. So to say that Ganga flows down from the locks of Shiva is a metaphor to describe the hundreds of streams which flow down to the river. A geography lesson narrated with imagery.

The sins of Bhagiratha’s ancestors had brought a terrible plight to his people who were dying of starvation due to famine. Again this is a way of not only making people understand that water is essential to life but that our reckless behaviour can have a long lasting effect on our future generations   a lesson we still haven’t learnt unfortunately). Clean water nourishes the land and provides a balance essential for its sustainability. As with all religions the ritual surrounding this myth has become more important than the real meaning of the story. Each year millions of people ritually ‘cleanse ‘ themselves by bathing in the waters of Ganga which itself is now fast becoming the most polluted river on the planet.  The ritual has become bigger than the lesson and this is not just in Hinduism, in every religion we see examples where rituals are being adhered to with fervour without a real understanding what they are meant to commemorate.  Muslims pray 5 times a day - the ritual is supposed to help focus their thoughts, relieve stress and surrender themselves to Allah but little of this really happens, while the body is postulating the mind is thinking of what one is going to be doing after the prayer is over, all worries, all problems all thoughts are still very much in play and surrender is the last thing on people’s mind.

There is no getting away from the fact that as long as we are alive we will be living in a diverse world. Religious diversity is a fact and those who either ignore this or try to eradicate it are living in a fool’s paradise. We have to understand that to believe in a religion and to respect it are two different things. I may be practicing one religion but that does not give me the right to negate or be derisive of others. If we take a little bit of time to understand the mythology of any religion we will be able to understand the wisdom behind it and no one can really argue with wisdom.

None of us can really deny the essence of any religion because they are the same. We can all respect other religions if we try and understand what their myths are really trying to say. And as for rituals - we can all agree to have the right to be different from each other. Perhaps then the world will become a more liveable, beautiful place. But this is only possible if we all take a step towards understanding and respecting each other rather than running in the opposite direction every time we come across a belief that is contrary to ours.

Nostalgia Attack

When you catch yourself spending more time indulging in nostalgia than dreaming of the future you know you are getting old. I guess I’m getting old. Childhood memories, snapshots of places and people long gone, seem to creep up out of nowhere. My parents were the Partition generation i.e. they were witness to the excitement as well as the ensuing misery as people migrated, got killed and separated from their loved ones. My mom lost everything - her father, her property, her childhood, her joy, so it is not strange that she would spend the rest of her life looking back, saddened by the turn of events and what could have been. As a reaction to her attachment to the past I lived my life with one hand on the delete button. A lot has happened in my life but I really don’t remember things with clarity, I have always looked ahead. So it is doubly strange that suddenly I have become nostalgic.

I belong to a generation that straddles two completely different eras. My early childhood was spent in a time when Karachi was still carrying the vivid impressions of the ‘Raj’, where things were built to last a 100 years and where change occurred infrequently. My adult life has been part of the IT revolution where each day brings a life changing innovation. Perhaps that is why even my earliest memories seem to be like old black and white photographs – slightly faded and tinged with sepia.

Karachi was such a different city back then. One of its most defining features was the tram service which ran right down the middle of the roads of Saddar and  M.A Jinnah road (or Bunder road as it was known then). I didn’t see the trams run for very long as their era was almost at an end by the time I was old enough to notice them. I remember people getting off and on these trams as they slowly made their way up and down and most vividly I remember the clanging of the brass bells as they warned people to get out of their path. The city was filled with the sound of bells and occasional horns rather than the pressure horns of the public transport which took its place. Where Gul Plaza now stands on M.A Jinnah road was the central depot of the trams or Tram Godhi as it was locally known. It was a humungous structure with corrugated metal sheets as roofing and though it was no more than a very big shed, it was still architecturally more pleasing to the eye than the ugly monstrosity that has taken its place.

The 60’s and 70’s saw an explosion of property development where beautiful building were torn down and replaced by eye sores which as time passed by became more than just sores – they became puss infected wounds which unfortunately we have no choice but to suffer each day. The area of Soldier Bazaar had grand stone bungalows, each of which had large gardens filled with ‘peepal’ and banyan trees. In fact these trees were all over Karachi and perhaps the best known characteristic of the city. As we started tearing down the structures we also cut off all the trees barring a few that remained on M.A Jinnah road, and the task of tearing down the remaining ones has been taken up by nature through gale force winds during the monsoon season. We are a nation which is addicted to shortcuts and quick profits, therefore no one ever bothered to plant new peepal or banyan trees since they take a very long time to grow. During the 90’s we started to wake up to the importance of  trees for the environment and massive plantation drives were undertaken. Karachi now had little space and no patience to allow these trees to take roots, so instead of these slow growing trees we saw hundreds of eucalyptus trees  being planted, hence changing the character of Karachi once and for all. The oases of shades in a concrete desert were no more.

Of course most people will wonder why I am not reminiscing about the peace, and tolerance of the city. I too miss those qualities of the city but then the city itself has gone through a physical metamorphosis or I daresay, mutation. And this new city has a personality befitting its new looks. A city that looks harsh and scarred has a personality which is hard and enjoys scarring others.