In the Name of ...
It's difficult for the ordinary person not exposed to values unknown traditionally in democratic, North American or European society to understand quite how it is possible for a wide-spread, somewhat unified religious inheritance to become so unhinged from life's existential absolutes. It does not matter where a human being lives, we are human beings.
We share, as Shakespeare's Shylock so acutely poignantly put it, human needs and characteristics:
In this modern world we live in, we inhabit the early years of the 21st Century, an enlightened age, one where increasingly countries of the world are adapting to some form of democratic rule and ethics. Yet of course there are other countries of the world that remain mired in 16th Century social and religious habits and values. Where the value of human life is minimized, empathy and compassion absent; life brutish and short.
What is amazing is that a world religion of approximately 1.4-billion followers whose faithful cling to its belief, its precepts and its values as a religion of peace and harmony, has spawned a significant following within the larger body of those who have dedicated themselves to violent jihad under the conceived impression that this is how they may best serve their sacred beliefs in a high spiritual order.
And so, suicide bombers during the sacred month of Ramadan enter mosques full of worshippers, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iraq, and liquidate into oblivion men, women and children who hold their faith in Islam. Men wear the protective coverings of women's garments to shield them from suspicion and enter the sacred precincts with suicide vests. Men place explosives in the cavity of their turbans to blow themselves and dozens of innocents with them into smithereens.
Hundreds of innocent Muslims are injured horribly in one incident after another. In the name of the religion that they share with those whose having accepted their obligation to please Allah by indulging in violent jihad to make the world a better place, worshipping children who attend mosque with their fathers and their mothers suffer grave injuries, and death.
These atrocities, a hideous affront to humanity, are said to represent, by their followers, an esteemed and cherished entry by the perpetrators, the martyrs, the 'shaheed', to Paradise, where beautiful virgins await their presence, to help them celebrate their divine victory.
We share, as Shakespeare's Shylock so acutely poignantly put it, human needs and characteristics:
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,Shylock was deploring an age and a system and a society that set Jews apart, held them to be different, inferior, with values unlike those of the superior society they were surrounded by; Jews held to be imbued with with ulterior, crassly rapacious motives. He was bemoaning a misery that he must live with, despised and deprived of equal treatment given others, the lack of respect and honour that was meted out to him.
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same
food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter
and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If
you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the
rest, we will resemble you in that.
In this modern world we live in, we inhabit the early years of the 21st Century, an enlightened age, one where increasingly countries of the world are adapting to some form of democratic rule and ethics. Yet of course there are other countries of the world that remain mired in 16th Century social and religious habits and values. Where the value of human life is minimized, empathy and compassion absent; life brutish and short.
What is amazing is that a world religion of approximately 1.4-billion followers whose faithful cling to its belief, its precepts and its values as a religion of peace and harmony, has spawned a significant following within the larger body of those who have dedicated themselves to violent jihad under the conceived impression that this is how they may best serve their sacred beliefs in a high spiritual order.
And so, suicide bombers during the sacred month of Ramadan enter mosques full of worshippers, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iraq, and liquidate into oblivion men, women and children who hold their faith in Islam. Men wear the protective coverings of women's garments to shield them from suspicion and enter the sacred precincts with suicide vests. Men place explosives in the cavity of their turbans to blow themselves and dozens of innocents with them into smithereens.
Hundreds of innocent Muslims are injured horribly in one incident after another. In the name of the religion that they share with those whose having accepted their obligation to please Allah by indulging in violent jihad to make the world a better place, worshipping children who attend mosque with their fathers and their mothers suffer grave injuries, and death.
These atrocities, a hideous affront to humanity, are said to represent, by their followers, an esteemed and cherished entry by the perpetrators, the martyrs, the 'shaheed', to Paradise, where beautiful virgins await their presence, to help them celebrate their divine victory.
A child injured in a blast lies on a bed at a hospital in Peshawar Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES/Hasham Ahmed
Labels: Human Relations, Islam, Particularities
posted by Pieface @ 2:34 PM
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