Thursday night is guys night out here for me and my posse of friends. We usually go out to one of the local Tikka and Kebab places, and hash out all our theories and the week’s dismay over good food & old company. I feel these outings are somewhat quite cleansing for my soul and my gut, and gives the wifey’s some time on their own, not that they don’t get enough of that lazing all day (kidding). Last time though was quite intense because in the middle of the fourth tikka or was it the fourth kebab? The conversation turned religious and some very interesting views came out and across.
Off course i am the designated libertine of the group, with the rest leaning towards religion in several different ways and was quite amused to hear the views of what i consider some of my life long mates. Point to note here is that we hardly ever discuss religion, i mean 95% of us here are of one religion so what is there to discuss about it anyways? What was interesting though were a couple of my mates towing the stoic clerical line on non Muslims. According to them, our holy book basically says that all non Muslims will go to hell. Kinda funny when someone asks the question “well who made them be born in a non Muslim household”? And how the bloody hell is it a Christians fault if he is born Christian? Now off course i know what the book says about this, but I really fail to understand how totally educated people sitting around a table having tikkas can condemn someone to hell in 4 secs flat.
To me this set of a brain spark, and i have been thinking about this for the last few days, is this basically the root of all the problems and complexes we Muslims have? A lot of us see other people in this world/non Muslims as basically superior to us in every way, i.e education, prosperity and security and then just condemn them all to hell based on a few archaic verses from the Qur`an those also interpreted by our renown scholars the last bastions of good moral behavior and over all solid folks!!! i did keep on arguing which is what I basically do after a couple of kebabs on any subject and more and more vile stuff kept coming out, phrases like its such good luck we are Muslims and in the end all of them will burn really set me off. Is this some deep rooted psychological reasoning for our failure to blend in with the rest of the worlds races?
Switch the perspective a little, lets zoom out of my life and onto a nationwide view, the last 6 months have been full of religious strife. Consider just the news from the last month, with women being beheaded in Bannu for alleged immorality, and rock cavings of Bhudda almost destroyed by explosives in Jehanabad, Swat, we are hardly entering an era of tranquility. Not to mention the various nefarious activities going on in the middle of Islamabad and no I am not talking about the parliament house. We all sat glued and watched the tragic end to that sad affair but what did our great religious leaders do? Except give speeches to promote their ends and weep huge alligator tears when the operation was launched? Did anyone step up to the government and say, hold on… I am going to go in and resolve this, let me bring a peaceful end to this. Yes several alleged conferences and meetings were held by various Ulema but to what end I ask you?
To me huge areas of Pakistan are being swept away in this Talibinazation of our country. There is nothing wrong in following religion and ours is the most beautiful and peaceful, I will repeat peaceful one. However day by day it seems like a silent revolution is taking place and our society is being divided along the lines of religion. To the extent that we are willing to take any and all laws in our hands to make sure that our thirst for religious exaltation is met. This is not exactly the fault of Islam, but of the people preaching it I say. After all if we the educated can get confused about certain aspects then who is to blame the teeming masses led by our Firebrand scholars and Aalims. We are being brainwashed as a nation to become a supply chain for various Jihad’s around the world, and nothing is being done about it. There used to be a time when, if someone would step over the line with an individual of balance(I am bored of moderate) there would be 20 more around him to say, look my friend preach our religion but don’t twist it around to suit your end. God forbid if any of us today stood up to even the local imam and asked a scandalous question or two. Scandalous being anything divergent from their view. We would be promptly beaten to a pulp!!
We are as a nation running out of time in all manner of ways. This is not the world we used to know where people would follow their own religions and keep it a private matter. No today if one is religious it is almost mandatory to feel the need to condemn anyone who is slightly divergent, and then after breaking them down with these mental attacks to bring them into the fold. I shudder to think of how the minorities in this nation feel those who were guaranteed their safety and security by the Qaid on our formation. What a shame it is that the greatest religion on earth is being maligned by a few men and women to represent a picture of it, which is unacceptable to most of us with any common sense. I wonder how these people sleep at night, when they know they have shattered the confidence of so many, and have reduced them to foot soldiers in somebody else’s war. I wonder why they even condemn anyone to hell any more. For we have reduced this nation to a hell on earth. Enjoy it I say until it lasts!!
