Translation:
The footage of a brutal beating of employees of the Emirati company CCEP in Atyrau, Western Kazakhstan, which we will not publish for ethical reasons, has already spread far beyond Kazakhstan on the Internet and sparked discussions on social media.
Briefly, the case is as follows: on Friday, June 28, a CCEP administrator, a certain Eli Dawood, sent a photo of himself with a Kazakh colleague via WhatsApp, along with indecent remarks directed at her (we will not publish the photo either).
According to popular opinion, this was the cause of the brutal Arab riot. However, some important details are lost in this presentation of information.
The fact is that Eli Dawood was fired and deported from Atyrau almost immediately after Kazakh activists sent an ultimatum to the local prosecutor’s office. And perhaps the incident would have ended there, especially considering that the perpetrator even made a video apology for his indecent behavior.
However, according to local sources, the company’s visiting employees responded by promising to make life «sweet» for the local workers, causing such an explosion of indignation.
Overall, commentators familiar with the situation in foreign company settlements tend to believe that the real cause of such violence goes much deeper than the humiliating treatment of local girls by a few of their employees, some of whom, let’s say, give them reasons to do so.
Kazakhs complain that in such areas, foreign workers belong to a privileged caste, while local residents and workers are powerless slaves, which naturally affects a sensitive area like gender relations.
However, as other Kazakh commentators have also reasonably pointed out, in such a case, complaints about such a situation should be addressed to the Kazakh authorities themselves, thus giving the protests a socio-economic rather than a national-sexual character.
Moreover, such cruel violence against people who have not committed any acts that could justify it, especially considering that they are Muslims, some of whom were reciting the Shahada while being beaten, is absolutely unacceptable.
In general, unfortunately, this situation goes beyond purely local limits. Some observers pointed out that the beating of Arab workers in Kazakhstan took place against the backdrop of a new wave of anti-Syrian sentiment in Turkey and anti-Afghan sentiment in Pakistan.
All this allows Islamophobes to rejoice, pointing to such conflicts and claiming that the unity of the Islamic ummah is an Islamist myth, and that in reality Muslims are just as divided along national lines as non-believers.
Obviously, such processes are precisely the result of the decline of Islamic self-awareness and pan-Islamic projects and initiatives that make Muslims feel connected to a unified Ummah across ethnic boundaries. But how can we fight this trend until it is broken?
As we have seen, this problem cannot be solved with mere exhortations about the prohibition of tribal fanaticism and the unity of Muslims, because these arguments only work among people who already have a high level of Islamic consciousness, which many societies are far from today.
Of course, many would like Syrians in Turkey or Afghans in Pakistan to be perceived not as «migrants» and «refugees» who inconvenience the locals, but first and foremost as Muslim brothers and sisters.
And part of this task is to instill in the locals, if not such an attitude, at least an understanding that those who look down on refugees today could find themselves in their position tomorrow, just as it happened to Syrians who looked down on Iraqis arriving in their country.
On the other hand, Muslims coming from their homelands to countries with local populations and customs must understand that they too have a responsibility to maintain pan-Islamic unity (or how Muslims view Islam in relation to non-Muslims).
This should include respecting the sentiments and customs of the local population and refraining from actions that turn them against the Muslim newcomers.