Fighing ISIS : What About Our Fight?

Once I remember asking credulously to one my soft-spoken colleague cum good friend, why Muslim women wore burqa, especially in circumstances like in plural India! My friend, who practiced Islam religion, but not alike hardliners or radicals, paused a little and started to reason. We were seated on a cheap cot in a hot humid afternoon of Tamil Nadu. Life outside was dull and alien, and we ventured into the forbidden topic on naive impulse, and immediately thereafter I regretted. The rock solid erroneous interpretation of 1400 years old scared scriptures has twisted his reasoning so much so that he compared women as succulent fruits, which should be hidden from wicked birds. He propagated this custom of wearing burqa as an effective measure to reduce the rate of rape in India, as the luscious juicy fruits would be hidden behind blackness, away from prying eyes of rapists. I understood that his conviction was obviously based on wide acceptance of the custom of wearing burqa by Muslim women. But I was in pain to swallow his weird reasoning, after knowing that he received 15 years of modern education and he belonged to top 10% of lucky Indians to get a decent Govt job and a comfortable lifestyle. I didn’t drag the discussion, but I became disenchanted thereafter.

And my disillusionment didn’t stop there, for over the next few years, I met and conversed with many seemingly educated chaps, with idiosyncrasy smothered their whole mind. They belonged to all religions, even from my own. I was termed atheist, doubter, non-believer and sometimes hater by my Hindu friends and relatives, when I debated them the relevance of Mangal Sutras wore by Hindu women, by Christian friends and colleagues, when I pointed out their manipulative conversion techniques and vanity superior complex, by a Buddhist friend, when I argued his belief in futile elaborate rituals, quite contrary to wishes of Buddha himself, by a white clad guru in ISKON, when I demanded his explanation for spending billions of rupees behind God Krishna, while thousands of beggars sat in alongside dirty road, even by a grey clad Maharaj of Ramkrishna Mission, when I enquired about the voluntary implementation of RTI in Mission to be transparent about the funds in face of severe criticism of some Maharaja’s Maharaj lifestyle. The common theme in every incident was that nobody tried to reason with me, everyone pushed and forced me to belief their explanation.

ISIS is not worrying compare to these. When I read history, I found several dreaded organisations that propagated terror in every phase of history of mankind. Every country faced genocide and blood of innocents dried on road. But it was people who stood against the terror, not with sword or guns, but with their synchronised minds and collective fraternity beyond religious prisons. ISIS too, can’t be defeated from outside bombings and continuous hatred towards Islam religion, because they murdered fellow Muslims quite more than other religions; their ideology was derived from the twisted version of a 1400 years old sacred scripture, which propagated world peace and eternal cohesiveness. So it is the responsibility of sensible and reasoned followers of Islam to fight against those murderers with the true spirit of Holy Quran and Prophet’s verses, for if they be silent, brandishing of Islam as an intolerant religion is a matter of time.

In human civilisation, religion has been playing the pivotal role bringing cohesiveness and clash simultaneously in a weird way. It has this overarching capability to mould even a sensible person into a monster and a monster into a good citizen. But today, some idiots are threatening to seize the space of internet by aggravating intolerance and violence to a whole new level.

I remember Yoda in Star Wars : ‘May the force be with you’.

Ciao.