The politics of statistics are used in the media to try to stir public concern and move to solutions. 

“They killed ten of ours!”

“Well they killed forty of ours!” 

Most obscene is when the figures get into the thousands. “They killed 4000 of ours!” “Well. They killed forty thousand of ours!” Thus an act becomes condemnable only in relation to the higher number of dead and we lose sight of the fact that one soul wrongfully killed is enough.

Yet, never mind for a moment how many of we Muslims are killed by others. God knows we have the dubious “honor” of being top of the league on that score. Let’s look instead at our record for killing our own.

Let me take you to a Muslim city, perhaps Cairo. You could probably name two dozen others. Do you remember a computer game in which the object was to run down as many people as possible? You got extra points for vulnerable people like the elderly and people with shopping. Well, I have seen that game made real on Muslim streets. I see elderly women, their shopping piled high on their heads, mothers, their children clinging to their skirts weaving through six lanes of traffic trying to cross the road. And the horror is the drivers don’t just fail to stop. They don’t even slowdown. By the mercy of Allah the pedestrians reach safety but the drivers don’t learn from the close shave. Locals in Muslim countries assure us soft foreigners that it is a game and both sides know the rules. 

Pedestrians know how to judge when to cross. Cars know exactly how to judge speed and still keep going. Organized chaos they call it. We pampered foreigners just can’t see the order in the chaos. I remember once, a driver in Egypt looked totally bewildered when I rapped on his window and shouted at him for nearly running me and my baby daughter down. “What’s your problem lady?” he seemed to say. Give me a couple of years in Cairo they would say and you’ll be weaving through the traffic, even climbing over car bonnets to cross the road if you have to.

“Do you want the alternative?” they ask, steely eyed. Absolute gridlock. This lack of proper crossings and use of or observation of traffic lights keeps the traffic flowing in organized chaos, they say. Anyone coming from gridlock London would agree with that as three cars at a time are released on a green light and the rest stay fuming behind while pedestrians dance freely across in safety.

But I am not convinced. Not just because I can’t drive and have always had to rely on leg power or public transport. I think the scenes on the Muslim streets show we’ve got it all wrong.

Our religion teaches that human lives are of equal value. Just because one drives a Mercedes alone everyday to a desk job doesn’t mean you can come within an inch of running down a hard-working man whose labor puts food on your table. Just because you’ve decided to ferry two children to school in your private car doesn’t mean you can endanger the lives of the mother crossing the road with her children. We have to get into our heads that her children are just as important. When you approach them in a car, you approach in the same way as if you saw your own two children trying to scurry across the street.

The design of traditional Muslim cities before the days of the car show us how the Muslim paradigm puts the human being at the center of design for living, not the roads or the corporations as is the case today. On visits to the old quarter of Muslim towns, we come upon a warren of narrow streets only wide enough for people to walk through. The artisans and traders were clustered in groups, the better to compare market prices and for efficient supply of their goods. Goods arrived outside this inner hub and were brought in by people. Nowadays lorries and trucks litter our streets, all doing their individual wasteful to-ing and fro-ing. The madness here in the UK is that we export goods like chicken and certain fruit and vegetables to Holland and they export the same produce right back to us. No wonder lorries are in abundance.

So we have vehicles clogging our towns, and driving the private car has become the pinnacle of success so that a driver now would no more part with his private car than give up his house. When a worker gets a better job, he feels the bus is now beneath him and adds to the congestion by investing in his own personal set of wheels. Mothers use four-wheel drive wagons to take children to a ten-minute walk away nursery school. All evidence is pointing to the contention that this level of traffic is unsustainable, and there are moves to put two legs back at the center of town planning. But it seems the Muslim world has yet to learn from these mistakes in municipal management.

I don’t know how many people were killed on the roads yesterday, but I know that in some Muslim countries there is carnage daily on the high roads. What I do know is that at least one person was killed yesterday by a careless driver. I don’t know her name but she is one of those about whom Allah has said “if you save a life, it would be as if you had saved all humanity.” That poor sister and those like her we failed to save yesterday, but we can perhaps save the lives of people today and tomorrow.

I imagine many of you reading this will personally know someone who was killed on the roads. I can think of at least three. To the governments I would say put in more crossings and traffic lights, and to the road users I would say, observe them. In the Islamic worldview, the life and limb of the most humble person is more precious than anyone’s economic struggle.

Sarah Louise Baker is a Muslim British novelist who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. She embraced Islam while working in Japan in 1990. Her novel, From Utah to Eternity, on Islamic conversion, was based partly on personal experience. She just finished a book about everyday experiences of wearing the hijab (the Islamic headscarf). You can reach her at baitulankaboot@yahoo.co.uk

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