Since Friday’s string of bombings in Paris that have killed at least 130, some celebrities have come forth to express their thoughts on the tragedy. Muslim rapper Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def, also provided some intellectual comments on the ordeal.
He engaged in an emotional interview with Ferrari Sheppard from “A Country Called Earth,” where he phoned in from Germany to discuss his thoughts on governments not caring about their citizens, the attacks being a scare tactic, and why it’s important that we worry about cases such as Tamir Rice, and other injustices just as much as the killings in Paris.
“Everything from Tamir Rice, to the Paris shootings, to what’s happening to the students at the University of Missouri…it’s all connected. It’s all the same thing,” Bey said.
“This is the time to be talking about the dignity and nobility of being a human being,” he continued. “Not a machine, not a puppet of the state, or of your own desires, but for the sanctity and nobility of being a human being. Because this is what’s really at stake. They’re trying to turn us into machines, or just high-functioning mammals, animals, beasts, in a jungle that they create. The states, the politicians, the so-called doers of good, who claim to have the interest of the planet at heart, and it’s a lie.”
The rapper expressed that the state “hates the people” and that the Paris attacks were really about using people for the state’s benefit. He warned that events such as the Nov. 13 bombings signify that governments are out to “destroy out world.”
“We have trusted these people who say that they love us and say that they’re here for us in the name of the state, and the government, and democracy, and the presidency, the congress, senate, everything else — we have trusted them too much. They are sickening us, they’re destroying our world and they’re destroying the future for our children,” he emotionally stated.
Bey added that the Islamic terrorist group that assumed responsibility for the attacks, ISIS, do not represent the religion.
“A big giant f— off to ISIS,” he said. “You don’t represent nothing about Islam or nothing about the prophet. And another giant f— off to everybody who’s trying to say ‘see, this is Islam’s fault.'”
Bey, who recently released the song, “NO Colonial Fiction,” which has a photo of Rice on the cover, urged those who care about Paris to also care about other injustices.
“I need everybody who’s sad about Paris to be just as sad and angry about Tamir Rice and all of these innocent people dying over nothing! Dying over somebody’s greed, dying over they’re antiquated, backwards a— beliefs that they’re more human than somebody else. Cry out for them!” Bey tells listeners.
He also offered some words of advice for those wondering what to do in the midst of these catastrophic events.
“We have to start loving and caring about one another, because if we did, this sh— would not be going on,” he advises. “Everybody needs to read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Listen to the entire interview here.
