A very disturbing factor has been emerging steadily throughout world societies, atleast here in Pakistan. Through out ages, men who are moral have always felt themselves superior to all others. They love to point out others' faults, rant and rave about its consequences, yet they fail to see taht sometimes, tehya re also guilty of the same. I ask, what kind of a molarity is this taht allows you to lie freely, break promises, cheat others, backbite, vent your anger on others, be intolerant and cruel of others' opinions, and do it all in the name of morality/righteousness? No religion teaches such bigotry. Infact, the gist of all religions are comprised in Muhammad's words,Hillel's Golden Rule,Christ's saying " Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you"....When someone asked Rabbi Hillel about the teachings of Torah, he quoted this rule and said taht the rest is commentary....So where do we see this golden rule being practised? Sadly, no where and very rarely by people who claim to have a monopoly on religion.
Karen Armstrong stopped being a nun beacuse she was fed up by the cruelty and rigid behavior of the convent nuns....She felt it to be aginst the teaches of Bible....This is the problem with the world today.People have less patience with other opinions. Muslims complain that just because of a few extremists, all of them are labelled as such. The west thinks them inferior and tries to impose their theories on poor countries/Governments. THe Taliban do the same,albeit in a spectacularly cruel way. They kill, maim, injure, silence and voices of diseent. I ask, is this Islam? Have they forgotten that God says specifically in the Holy Quran taht whoever takes one life, is like one who ahs killed whole humanity; that killing any innocent human (not only Muslim)is forbidden; that Jihad is permissible only in self-defense;that justice to others is the most valued human virtue in the eyes of God.
Leave aside the Taliban. Look at the common people everywhere. They will quote religion as long as it suits them and throw its teachings away when they dont want to put themselves through some inconvenience. They forget taht selfishness is not vaued in religion; if you hate something to be done to you, you should also not do the same thing to others. Why calim to be a good moral/religious person if you do all the things that God forbids you too and yet pray daily? God may forgive Huqooq-ullah (rights of God on men), but he will not forgive any slip in Huqooq-ul-Ibad (rights of men on other men), unless the injured amn forgives the perpetrator....so when will people stop this bigotry? this is destroying our moral fabric and eating us from within.....Of course there are good people, but they are increasingly tested in this ultimately selfish environment and are led to believ that destiny favors only the opputionists,selfish, cruel people. Herein lies the test; wanting the world will make you like those you abhor and wanting the blessing of God only will give you both the world and the hereafter....Whose gonna win?sadly, the bad ones seem to be winning for now
Can't agree more to this post. All the feelings expressed here - I agree more than 100%.
ReplyDeleteThough the feelings this conveys are in stark contrast to other posts of urs, which conveyed +vity, hope ... fantasy. This one, conveys none of them, but something more important - REALITY.
Bhagat Singh wrote, "power is the biggest justification in the world" :(. so true then, and now, and forever.
But power with secular zaalims is better than power with religious zaalims. With secular ones, u can at least question their ideology, their acts - there remains a possibility of discussion. But the moment religion comes in, it takes all scope of questioning, any scope of dis-agreement, IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE DIVINE, right from GOD, How the hell can somebody question GOD? :(
What they forget is, there are as many types of any religion as its (thinking) practitioners, every practitioner with his/her own interpretation. And when somebody questions zulms carried out in the name of religion, it is not the religion that one questions, but some interpretations of it, the zaalims interpretation of it ... But they (and many laymen too) take it as an assault on divinity, on God :(.
Hence, to laymen outside the religion (in whose name zulm is being carried out) - religion itself appear to be the culprit :(. Vohi ho raha hai.
So ... all zulms are equally bad, equally inexcusable ... but the ones in the name of religion are more equally bad than others (as Orwell would put it).
Yes...absolutely right u are....Religious tyranny is the most terrible of all and specially because it is always attempted to justify it. Cruelty has no justification. That's why this hypocrisy is forever condemned by God in the Quran. It is a human nature that we genuinely don't like hypocrites, but nowadays we have either religious justifications or politicians who justify hypocrisy in the name of diplomacy and politics.
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