And when your Lord said to the angels:

_“I shall place mankind, generations after generations, upon the earth,”_

The angels said:

_“Will You place therein those who will create mischief and shed blood, while we glorify You with praise and thanks?”_

Allah said:

_“I know that which you do not.”_

_-Qur'an 2:30_

Humanity.

Mankind.

Homo sapiens.

Sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.

Mischief dances in the veins of this species

So crystal that even the blind can see

That evil festers with ease

In the hearts and minds of beings

Quite alike to you and me.

We are diseased.

Evil.

Mischief.

Vice.

That is the color of our skin—

Not white, not black, not brown.

Are we always so unsightly?

Tell me—why?

What remorseless machinations,

What demons slumber in the hearts and minds

That conjure such disastrous manifestations?

No color of cruelty is without representation on this earthly canvas.

Each vice is given its due.

No depth of depravity is too far-fetched,

No travesty beyond man’s indulgence.

What a calamity we have brewed.

I open my eyes to look.

Look.

There is blood everywhere.

Misery sings a dreary tune.

Oh wonderful—there’s a dead man over there.

Not an hour passes

Without men directing the demise of other men.

A slash, a bash, a smash.

A cut, a bruise, a gash.

A shot fired—sometimes several.

Fatal wounds leak

Barrels spew senseless smoke,

Names become history.

Souls sublimate

Nameless corpses linger

Such fragility.

Such frailty.

Such mortality.

Man drags man by hair and shackles

Leading each other to the grim reaper’s doorstep.

“Not again,” the Grim Reaper sighs,

slapping his weary face.

“I’ve claimed more than enough souls for today. Come back tomorrow.”

Yet a hundred more souls

He will have no choice but to claim

Before the end of the day.

"Why?" the Grim Reaper wonders.

There are those who die without protest,

Their span of life seeing their full course.

There are those whose journeys are shortened

By disease,

By accident—

No malice,

No foul play.

"But why?"

He strokes his cleft chin with calloused fingers.

"Why do men find the need to bring others like them to my door?"

He has bags beneath his eyes.

He looks around for answers.

The answers flood in.

“Diversity,” says one group.

It is always us versus them.

Warfare—

The dealing of death is quite the bloody affair.

Any infinitesimal speck of difference, effectively exploited.

Reasons are fabricated to make borders appear reasonable—

Like divine commandment.

Country against country.

Borders.

Gang against gang.

Borders.

Ideology against ideology.

Borders.

Person against a disagreeing person.

Walls.

To be different is to create enemies.

But even the most identical twins are never entirely alike.

Diversity is inevitable.

“Survival,” another group answers.

The Grim Reaper lends them an attentive ear.

“Resources.

The fear of destitution and hunger for abundance.

We want what they have.

Whoever has it will survive.”

Forgetting that nature never outlawed sharing.

We rob.

We steal.

We pillage.

The traces taint the streets of every town and village,

Painting the earth red with bloody greed.

The Grim Reaper appears dazed.

He inquires no further,

He feels the reasons for gifting of death 

It overwhelms him

It is without count

Mathematically unbounded—

Rising and rising evermore,

Nearing infinity.

So he picks up his scythe,

Garbs himself in his cloak,

And sets off

For a busy day of work.

_Where the Angels justified?_