One year after the date George Orwell imagined would come to define the modern fear of surveillance.

Although Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in 1949, Orwell projected his readers into a future where privacy had become a relic, truth had become malleable, and the citizen lived under the permanent gaze of the State.

For many, 1984 became a warning.

For my generation, born immediately afterwards, the question is different.

Not how to fear surveillance.

But how to prevent it without becoming blind to genuine evil.

The twenty-first century presents a dilemma Orwell could scarcely have imagined. We possess technologies capable of observing almost every aspect of human life. Cameras populate our streets. Artificial intelligence analyses behaviour. Smartphones record our movements. Social media archives our conversations. Governments speak of national security; technology companies speak of personalisation; criminals exploit anonymity; parents fear what their children encounter online.

The temptation is to conclude that the solution is simple: observe everything.

Yet the Abrahamic traditions suggest something rather different.

They begin not with surveillance, but with dignity.

We All Begin with Adam

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said:

“Every son of Adam commits mistakes, and the best of those who commit mistakes are those who repent.”

This hadith is recorded in Sunan Ibn Majah (Hadith 4251) and Jami’ at-Tirmidhi (Hadith 2499)

The hadith begins with a profound assumption.

Not that some people are born virtuous while others are born corrupt.

Not that one race possesses greater moral worth than another.

Not that one nation has a monopoly on righteousness.

Rather, every human being shares the same origin, the same frailty and the same capacity for repentance.

The Qur’an repeatedly reminds humanity that it descends from a single pair:

“O mankind, fear your Lord, who created you from a single soul…” (Qur’an 4:1)

Elsewhere the Qur’an declares:

“O mankind, We created you from a male and a female and made you peoples and tribes so that you may know one another. Indeed, the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous among you.” (Qur’an 49:13)

The Prophet ﷺ reinforced this principle during his Farewell Sermon:

“No Arab has superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab; neither a white person over a black person, nor a black person over a white person, except through righteousness.”

Centuries before modern discussions of racism, ethnicity or identity politics, Islam grounded equality in a shared human ancestry.

The Hebrew Bible reaches a remarkably similar conclusion. Humanity is created by God through Adam and Eve (Genesis 1:27), and every person therefore possesses an inherent dignity that cannot be measured by race, wealth or status.

Equality is not a political invention.

It is a theological one.

THE RIGHT TO BE IMPERFECT

Modern society often behaves as though every mistake should become permanent.

Every foolish comment is archived.

Every youthful error is searchable.

Every failing risks becoming part of an individual’s digital identity forever.

In the “global town square”, every person can be “lynched” on “social media”.

Every minutiae of a person’s life pored over in detail, and often without evidence, or proof, a person can be “slated”, fuelling more and more speculation.

I am not a “Elon Musk believer” – but no person can deny this man is one of the most brilliant engineers of our times. What he has achieved – his grit, resilience, ability to go through setback after setback, the range and depth of his work, his overall work ethic, is genuinely admirable.

He has been in the middle of one controversy after another for things I don’t fully believe he “thought what he did”. They were done in the “spur of the moment” and without “fully realising” what the backlash would be.

He was “caught out”. Most people who criticise him won’t work 16-18 hours a day, won’t push the boundaries of engineering, won’t sacrifice their own lives to build something worthwhile. However, on Twitter, they have ample time to criticise what “they think he did”. 

Will she/he be able to put data centres to space? Most likely no. But ironically, on a platform owned by the man himself, they are happy to lynch him verbally.

Elon Musk has “reached the Hall of Fame” – and is in the same space as Steve Jobs, Newton,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)