Jiten:
Let me answer your last question first. You are a true friend, not a McCainisque friend. I have known you for a long time and know that you are truly a decent and sensible person. It also comes across from the tone of your posts on this forum. Yes, I do find some of your opinions somewhat puzzling and some others clearly wrong (such as your opinion on free markets, socialism, redistribution of wealth, etc.), but I know that it comes from a mind that is broad and generous. Most importantly, your sincere humanism shows through.
Before I respond to your comments, let me provide a brief overview of my philosophy vis-a-vis the current topic, Maulana Wahiduddin Khan and his attempt to moderate the "Jihadist" strand within Islam.
I believe in Islam and I respect all religions. I also believe that there are many things wrong with the accepted precepts and practices of every religion. I believe that every religion, including Islam and Hinduism, originally came from God but later got stained and/or embellished by accretions from man. In that sense, every religion in its current form is both God-made and man- made. Some of these changes were progressive reforms and moved a religion forward and some were regressive and put us back. The emergence of science as a paradigm of thinking, the European enlightenment, and interaction among different religious communities propelled much of the progressive reform movements while reactionary backlash to the same generated revivalist, and often regressive, religious movements. The latter appealed to the faithful's sense of identity, purported to reclaim their heritage, and re-dogmatized religious precepts and practices.
Also, when judged by current standards, it is possible to find many apparently reactionary precepts and practices in the original scriptures as well. However, these need to be understood in the socio-economic-cultural contexts of the time and place of their initial appearance. Then, they need to be re-contextualized for the world and times we currently live in, to extract the universal principles they embody, which the faithful then can follow in good conscience.
Based on the above observations, my reaction to Maulana Wahiduddin Khan's article (translated by Yoginder Sikand) was that it was an attempt to re-contextualize Islamic teachings to address the apalling phenomenon of "Jihadism" that afflicts the contemporary Muslim world and causes a lot of suffering to both Muslims and non-Muslims. I was seriously disturbed by the reaction to Maulana Wahiduddin Khan's article by some in this forum who seemed to focus on whether Islam was a "peaceful religion" or not, and what the "real" character of Islam was. They were completely oblivious to, and even contemptuous of, the intent of the Maulana, which was to marginalize the "Jihadist" fringe in Islam and empower those who believe in a more humane and inclusive Islam. Questions about legitimacy of the religion were neither relevant and nor helpful, and that discourse could continue outside the discussion of this particular article of this particular Maulana. It was the equivalent of telling Vidyasagar that he was not allowed to advocate remmarriage of widows, because Hinduism was "really" a misogynistic religion. My feeling is that the perceived "truth" or absence thereof of a religion, which will always be controversial, should matter less, when one is confronted with issue of rallying the people to a more humane and inclusive space within the religion. The latter is a progressive act regardless of whether the religion itself is "really" bad or not.
I also have to tell you that I am personally in favor of the discourse that challenges traditional religious beliefs. Although I am a believer in a religion, and in the basic legitimacy of every religion, I welcome the questioning of premises, precepts and practices of any and every religion. I like to be challenged about my beliefs and opinions, because that helps me crystallize and clarify them, and lets me see religion as nonbelievers see it. That was one of my reasons for joining this forum.
My experience with this forum has been mixed. I did find some talented and knowledgeable individuals who truly challenged my beliefs and preconceptions. They present logically cogent and thoughtful arguments for their positions. Though I disagree with them, I respect them for their intellectual caliber and for making me re-examine the way I think. Then there are others who appear to be closet bigots masquerading as secularists and seem to have found a home in this forum. Not surprisingly, they are also relatively poor thinkers and often present incoherent and inane arguments. Although I do not expect any Bertrand Russels or even Christopher Hitchenses among these presumed critics of religion, I do expect them to be able to string together a minimally sensible set of arguments, which they invariably fail to do. They don't make me think. They sometimes annoy and at other times amuse me.
I apply the following litmus test to distinguish between the two groups. What do they think of people who hold beliefs about religion different from theirs? Do you think they are just wrong or do they think they are evil as well? Do they love people regardless of their beliefs or harbor contempt or disdain for those who have the wrong beliefs? The above test can clearly separate principled secularists from closet bigots masquerading as secularists. The latter suffer from something that Dr. Avijit Roy once aptly characterized as the "ami kintu bapu nastik" syndrome.
Finally, I want to add that I myself also went through a spell of disbelief and rebellion in my younger days (it started when I was a physics student with you at
In the rest of the post, I will respond your specific comments.
Jiten said,
"No one knows the truth, and no one will ever know. It is just a faith, and a faith is something that we know nothing about."
I agree. I would revise it slightly to say that nobody can make a claim to the truth that will also be convincing to others, keeping in mind that we are talking about religious or philosophical truth, not scientific truth. A scientific truth is objective and its validity does not depend on its acceptance by people. Everybody (except utterly ignorant people or pure lunatics) does know and agree on the truths that have been established by science.
"In my judgment, none of the contemporary belief-systems has done anything spectacular for the well-being of the human society. Belief-system has induced backwardness, hatred and segregation."
By "contemporary," I will assume that you are talking about currently existing religions, not about when these religions started. By the latter criteria, all major religions are ancient.
As to the backwardness and hatred caused by religion, please note some of the observations I made earlier about precepts and practices of religion. Between the issues of backwardness and hatred, let me address the latter. I intend to discuss the problem of backwardness in later posts.
Let me posit that there are three kinds of conflicts human groups generally engage in. They are conflicts of interest (or conflicts over material resources), conflicts of identity and conflicts of values. Conflicts of interest is the most common that we observe, which ranges from attempts to occupy a neighbor's land to wars to conquer other peoples' countries. The conflict that generates most passion, of the "hateful" kind, has to do with the conflict of identities. Examples include racism, nationalism and religious communalism. Religious hatred is one particular expression of the conflict of identities. Like other identities, religious identity provides one more vehicle to a human being's need for hatred. It is also true that a part, arguably a much smaller part than identity, of religious hatred is engendered by a conflict of values. Religion shares this distinction (of causing a conflict of values) with political ideologies. We also have to realize that all these different dimensions and causes of conflict are also often intertwined. To say that religion causes these conflicts is like saying that race causes conflicts; both are partly true statements and at the same time partly false statements, depending on one's point of view.
"You just discovered the ultimate truth about religion, and that is, it has tremendous impact on human lives even though it could be a lousy religion. Unfortunately, you cannot pick and choose certain parts of a religion and reject the other parts. Either you believe in it or not. If you have to pick and choose certain parts only, then it's not a God-send one."
Two kinds of people generally say that you cannot pick and choose parts of a religion: religious fanatics and religion-bashers. The statement has some validity in the sense that a fragmented understanding of a religion takes away from its overall integrity, although that is not the purpose religious fanatics and religion-bashers have in mind when they recite that statement. In reality, people have always been believing in and practicing parts of religion. Most people have no knowledge, or awareness, of all parts of a religion, far less believe in and practice them. Those who attempt to do that are often disparagingly called fanatics or fundamentalists.
It might be useful to approach the issue from a different angle. All the actual and perceived problems caused by religion can be addressed without taking parts of religion and rejecting others. In fact, I found that studying a religion in its totality leads to a more accurate and more progressive understanding of the religion than using the fragmented approach.
"The danger of not confronting a lousy religion is that it will induce negative impacts on human lives, and there is no religion on earth, which has not inflicted negative impacts on human lives."
I believe everybody has the right and the obligation to confront whatever they think is wrong and worth confronting. Others will have a different opinion about the same thing and harbor a more friendly attitude toward it. Each group should have the right to express and act on its convictions, and under a democratic dispensation, will hopefully produce the best outcome for society.
As I have stated earlier, I am in favor of questioning and criticizing the premises, precepts and practices of every religion (whether they are actually or perceived to be lousy or not) or any other world view or belief system. About negative impacts, it is somewhat of a circular argument. Religions were either created by man (as you think and people who do not believe in religion think) or came through man (as people believing in religion think), and ultimately became a mixture of both (God-given and man-made). In any case, religions came for man and to serve human purposes.
Also, besides offering a set of values to live by, religion, like race and nationality, conferred a sense of identity to the faithful, and like all other identifiers, has been cause of much strife and suffering. But as value systems, religions also provided moral guidance and a basis for cohesion and organization of human lives. So, it is paradoxical to think that a construct, devised by either humans or by their presumed Creator, to serve humans, is spoken of in terms of having an existence of its own, and independent of human beings that follow it, and being capable of having all kinds of horrible impacts on human beings. That is one of the points I wanted to get across with that Kazi Nazrul Islam quote.
"As a result, all of them are equally lousy. Do you agree?"
On the contrary, I do not believe any religion is fundamentally lousy at its core. Of course, there are lousy versions of each religion.
"By the way, which friends you were talking about? I hope, I am not one of them. Any way, it's fun to hearing from you."
I answered this at the beiginning of this post.
Sorry to respond with a rather long-winded post. I normally prefer short cryptic responses but chose to elaborate my views in some detail in this post because I feel that an old dear friend like you deserved it, and would be willing to put up with it -:).
Best wishes.
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