By Dr. Adnan Bozan
In an age where man is supposed to be the child of freedom and knowledge, there are still those who insist on shoving you back into the cage of the tribe, reducing your entire dignity to the name of some long-dead ancestor, or to a tattered banner raised centuries ago. They still ask you: Which tribe do you belong to? As if a human being is measured by the inherited blood running through his veins, and not by the justice he sows in the earth, nor by the ideas he builds in the minds of others.
They ask you this question because they fear your awareness; they dread the moment you rise from their ruins and declare that you are no slave to a dead history, but a living citizen in a present that is being written now. For them, the tribe is not belonging—it is a closed prison, a renewed instrument of oppression, and an eternal pretext for domination and exclusion. They raise the names of tribes as though they were flags of nations, only to bury the nations themselves under the feet of narrow interests.
Political stupidity is not in someone asking about your roots, but in making those roots a shackle on your present and your future. When a person is reduced to his tribe, the mind becomes a tool of obedience, the heart a reservoir of hatred, and loyalty a certificate of slavery. Thus the nation is torn into sects and clans, each deluding itself that it is the origin while the rest are mere branches.
It is upon this foundation that systems of tyranny are built; for the despotic ruler finds no instrument more useful than the tribe to consolidate his power. He distributes privileges among the sheikhs, fuels divisions, and replaces loyalty to the nation with loyalty to blood. And when revolutions ignite, the first question becomes: Which tribe are you from?—not: What idea do you bring? nor: What justice do you uphold? nor: What future do you seek?
O foolish questioner, had you read the book of history well, you would have known that the tribes themselves shattered under the weight of great states, and that mighty nations only rose when they transcended tribalism toward the concept of inclusive citizenship. Yet you still insist on asking: Which tribe do you belong to? As if you were turning back the wheel of history, dragging us into quarrels over the water of a dried-up well, while the world opens the rivers of technology and knowledge.
True belonging is not to a name scribbled on some ancient banner, but to the values that build a just society. True belonging is to say: I am a free human being. I refuse to be reduced to blood, lineage, or sect. Belonging is to raise the flag of freedom above every banner, and to see in every human being a brother, no matter his name or his roots.
Still, the fools ask you: Which tribe are you from? Because they have not yet understood that the tribe cannot shield one from poverty, cannot heal the wounds of the nation, and cannot restrain the tyranny of despots. In an age of diseased politics, the tribe is nothing but a pretext to steal the present and poison the future.
And let me say it plainly: whoever asks you about your tribe seeks to cancel your mind; whoever digs into your lineage seeks to rob you of your rights; and whoever elevates the tribe above the homeland seeks to sell the homeland in the market of tribes.
O tribes, the time has come for you to become part of a greater human fabric, to melt into one homeland, rather than remain as warring islands in a sea of blood. And as for you fools who still ask: Which tribe do you belong to?—the answer is simple, and it is devastating:
I am from the tribe of freedom, from the clan of justice, from the lineage of humanity.