Religion is the thread that weaves a community’s belief, faith and spirit together. But is it worth believing till its real meaning is understood?
People believe in different stories about different religions. Modernization has inundated actuality and has given liberty to people to have their own ‘versions’ of belief.
People’s different versions of Islam has created a highly visible blur. The most disastrously misleading have been people’s different interpretations of ‘Jihad’ – many have assumed it to mean war against non- believers of Islam, while many believe it quite simply to be the religious duty of Muslims to maintain their religion. The former interpretation has lead to the global threat of terrorism. November 26 in India, September 11 in America, bombings in Mogadishu, Somalia and countless other attacks that caused thousands of innocent deaths were results of the blind faith susceptible people place in how their so-called leaders interpret religion. People are so visionless that they would rather accept the word of their ‘leaders’ than exercise democracy.
The preachers are the core fundamental cause for terrorism around the world. The resolution requires the right kind of leadership to guide people into more open and enlightened thinking.
The amount of loss and pain that people go through post-attacks by extremists and the fear which they live in must weigh into the forming of religious attitudes. Social issues like women empowerment which are receding to the social side lines in countries like Iran, Israel, Syria where women are beaten, abused and even murdered in the name of ‘honor killings’ must be at the centre of religious debate.
Today the position of the marginalised is bleak in Islamic coubtries. Women found wearing the ‘wrong’ clothes can be fined or even arrested in Iran as dress code enforcers order them to wear ‘hijab’ which entirely absorbs their human rights and freedom into its black color. And the most flabbergasting part is Muslims relating these evil acts with their religion, claiming that wife beating is an Islamic punishment and is a method to reform women, prescribed by the supreme God, which cannot be challenged. The transsexuals face even worse conditions, are beaten, exposed to death, or threatened to be burnt alive because they are considered to be unacceptable in the Islamic religion. They are not given any sort of freedom to be, instead they are expected to undergo hormonal therapy to help them live as ‘normal beings’.
Believers of radical Islam, with their atrocities, want to create an environment which suppresses the fundamental human values and rights, working as a catalyst in the formation of a caliginous sphere of chained humankind.
