Bad-mouthing – an Afghan culture?

I have heard many people say they don’t want to hang around Afghans and I have always wondered why.

There was a time when I hardly had any Afghan friends and I thought there was one thing missing in my life and that was a lack of Afghan friends.

Almost all my friends today are Afghans. I don’t have major problems but I have realised why Afghans don’t like to be around other Afghans.

We all do what we want do but then we criticise and judge others for the choices they make.

The thing I don’t understand though is why we do that? The only person that is going to be affected by their choices good or bad is themselves. Why do we judge others? How much do we know about their life?

It is hard enough to maintain our cultural identity whilst living in a western country. Then we have to face persecution from our peers who we think understand us and are doing exactly the same thing. Therefore they are in no position to judge but that does not seem to stop them.

We always have to pretend around other Afghans, so can never be ourselves. Who would like to be in a situation where they can’t be themselves? I know I wouldn’t.

We are distancing our own people from ourselves by doing this. With each generation that passes there is a shift away from the path our parents want us to follow. Hence you would think that there is a change in the narrow mindedness that we seem to possess but this does not seem to be the case. This will not change until people look at their own actions before judging others.

We should be making people comfortable amongst us and that cannot be achieved until we lose the habit of bad mouthing others.

On the bright side, this habit is something we all have in common. We always fight over our differences so if we can’t change the habit at least put it to a good cause. Let’s unite over this bad habit and respect each other because we are all the same in one way or another!