Interesting and Thought Provoking

The Collective Trauma of Witnessing and Experiencing Injustice

By Dr Ingrid Mattson, 12th October 2008

"...When people look at images of someone from their group -- a group that they consider to be 'their people,' that when people look at those images they experience that event as a psychological trauma. It leaves an impact in the brain. What's important is that in a world in which we are flooded with images - and traumatic images - we are being changed as human beings, by what we are seeing. And that the flood of negative images, the flood of traumatic images of people being blown up, of people being abused, of people being tortured, is traumatising us in a real way that has caused us as human beings to be unhealthy, and unstable, unless we have a way of dealing with this. Unless we have a way of taking this event and responding to it in a healthy way that forms a healthy brain and a healthy personality. Its why people who are highly compassionate in their close relationships feel compelled to in fact respond in often a very violent way and even transcend their own limits of ethics and morality, in order to protect those they perceive to be their group members, because of this experience of trauma. So we need to really understand what's happening with human beings in our age, in this age when you are flooded with these negative images in order to respond appropriately."

Read the rest of this transcript here: http://www.radicalmiddleway.co.uk/videos.php?id=23&t=1&art=133&a_id=23

You are welcome to forward this e-mail. For formal permission to republish, please contact info@radicalmiddleway.co.uk

Also on the Radical Middle Way website....

The Way of Futuwwa, Islamic Chivalry

http://www.radicalmiddleway.co.uk/videos.php?id=30&t=4&art=145&a_id=30

From Hadhramaut to Sylhet to Whitechapel

http://www.radicalmiddleway.co.uk/videos.php?id=31&t=4&art=132&a_id=31

Between Mercy and Mercy - man's relationship with God

http://www.radicalmiddleway.co.uk/videos.php?id=23&t=1&art=113&a_id=23

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Friday Thoughts 61

'We Shall Test You ...'

Shaikha Halima Krausen

January 2009

We shall test you with some fear and hunger and loss in goods or lives or fruits, but give good

news to the patient ones, who say, when afflicted with a calamity, "We belong to God, and to

Him is our return." They are those on whom there are blessings from their Creator and

Sustainer and mercy, and they are the ones who are guided. (Surah 2:155-157)

In the course of the first ten days of the New Year that have just gone by, many Muslims remembered the tragedy of Karbala. It is a controversial story. Muslims were killed by other Muslims. And not just any Muslims: victims were the Prophet's grandson Husayn and his family members and companions.

Muslims rather like to remember the bright pages of the history book, our glorious past, stories of miracles, victories, liberation. We like to focus on the Prophet's success in Madinah, the actions of the Rightly Guided Caliphs or the great Imams, the rapid spread of the sphere of Muslim influence, the powerful empires, the marvellous works of science, law, theology, philosophy, literature and poetry. But as always, history has two sides...

Read more pdf FA6_Friday_Thoughts_61.pdf

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