The recent brutal incidents of violence in our valley have shocked everyone whose conscience is still active and responding

The Almighty has gifted human beings with many great bounties from His generous treasure. Conscience is one of the most beneficial gifts human beings are gifted with. It is the human feature that differentiates us from beasts and wild beings. Conscience in simple words is the moral sense of right and wrong. Conscience affects a person’s own behaviour and forms his or her attitude toward all actions. There is a famous saying, “Your conscience is your highest authority.”
Our conscience guides us to do good or bad deeds in this world. It is our inner mechanism that praises us when we do something good and condemns us when we commit errors.
The United Nations General Assembly observes the International Day of Conscience to recognise the significance of the human conscience, every year on April 5. An essential intellectual characteristic that sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is the conscience. Those people who do not obey their conscience which is the best teacher for a human being, are examples of those who can fall even lower than the most brutal beasts in this world.
The holy month of Ramadan is like a training period for us that prepares us to obey our guiding conscience in a better way. We are asked to fast during the month of Ramadan so that our conscience would become alive and active to make us feel the intensity of the issues and the problems the less fortunate people among us are facing.
However, the recent brutal incidents of violence in our valley have shocked everyone whose conscience is still active and responding. One fails to understand how low a human being can fall. A man killed a woman for some petty issue and chopped her body into pieces. Some days after this brutal and ruthless act of violence another young man killed his mother in a shameless manner. Many people suggested that we need to address the conscience of our young ones so that they would understand how properly they should behave with their elders particularly. The drug menace spread in our valley is rightly held responsible for making our youth irrational and ruthless. However, the most recent news about the monstrous father who slaughtered his daughter by slitting her throat was the most disturbing. One fails to understand how ruthless and irrational men can become and how freely they can ignore their conscience and behave like monsters.
The holy month of Ramadan teaches us to use our guiding conscience for being patient and responsible. However, the number of brutal incidents which happened particularly during or near this holy month is no less than a challenge for us and we have to find out where our society falters. With the help of this holy month, we have to revitalize the energies of our conscience so that we would be able to kindle the ray of hope everywhere and bring those souls towards the light who are struggling under the curse of darkness. This holy month provides a great chance to inspire our conscience to fight against hate, drug menace and all kinds of frustrations that lead human beings to commit such heinous crimes which we have witnessed recently in our Valley.
The author is a teacher and can be reached at [email protected]

Hilal Bukhari