When Doctors and Teachers Start Discriminating

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 12 September 2024 This pertains to Doctor Refuses to Transfuse Blood of A Muslim Man To A Hindu Woman, Says He May Be In Trouble If He Does So! I fully agree with Mr Anburaj that ' the fools are everywhere. That doctor must be prevented from practising medicine.' It's all the more shocking because doctors are expected to remain unaffected by all these shenanigans and religious discrimination. Doctors and teachers (believed to be the noblest humans) are also viewed as individuals with a scientific temperament. Where's that scientific temperament? Agreed, we're all humans and we all have certain prejudices and religious biases. But those biases mustn't regulate our professional lives. In one of his earliest stories, William Somerset Maugham, described a doctor who hated a person but when that person required an emergency surgery, that doctor came to his rescue and saved his life. After saving the life of that person, doctor told his wife, "Being a human, I may dislike, or even hate, a person but being a doctor I can only try to save the life of even those I dislike." By the way, Maugham himself was a doctor who never practised. Even rabid preachers like Dr Zakir Naik and Dr Praveen Togadia once said that as doctors they couldn't think or dream of any religious discrimination. A doctor doesn't discriminate. Rather, he cannot and shouldn't. But today, religious hatred has crept too deep into the consciousness of all. Now even teachers are discriminating. Almost every day, you read in newspapers that a school teacher ordered Hindu students to insult a Muslim student or even beat him in the class. All these incidents involving teachers and doctors are proofs that religion has negatively influenced all. I've come across army doctors in Poona and elsewhere who nonchalantly abuse Muslims. Mind you, they're not young doctors. They're in their late 60s and 70s! If they can be so full of hatred at this age, why should young doctors and teachers remain unaffected? Won't they follow suit? In Netherlands, doctors are advised to refrain from using religious terminology and keep their faiths back home. Agreed, Netherlands is an atheistic countries, but all medicos in that country aren't atheists. Many have their religions. But they don't use religious terms, symbols and totems in public. But here in India, even a doctors' group on WhatsApp will freely use Allah, Jai Shri Ram, Jai Shri Krishna, Alhamdulillah and what not. Don't be so blatantly and flagrantly religious. You're a doctor. Behave in a non-religious manner and rise above all pettiness. It doesn't behove a doctor stooping so low as to differentiate between Hindu and Muslim blood. I'm appalled. Aren't you? ------ A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URL: https://www.newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/doctors-teachers-discriminating/d/133180 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism