Religion And Fanaticism

26/11 Mumbai was under siege, some 20 odd young menbrandishing AK 47 rifles went on a killing spree at a busy railway station, andfive stars hotels killing hundreds. This incident brings back memories of thenow infamous 9/11 where a handful of highly motivated, misguided souls tookcontrols of aircrafts and banged into the World Trade Center destroying itcompletely and killing thousands. These incidents again make us realize howsusceptible we are in the face of such terror activities, where a group ofhighly trained and motivated people inflict so much pain and agony to theinnocents. The very fact that the actors who perpetrate these acts are ready todie makes them more dangerous, because the very fear of death, the ultimatefear, itself is absent from their psyche and hence they can go to any extent toinflict terror in the minds of people, or they can go to any extent to get theauthorities to bend on their knees. The very pertinent example would be theHijack of Indian Airlines Flight IC 864 to Afghanistan. Their ( Of thehijackers, who were mainly terrorist from Pakistan owing allegiance to Taliban) demand from the then Indian Government was to get their 20 operativesreleased from various jails that they were put in and Indian Government had togive in to their pressures as lives of 265 innocent Indians were at stake. ThePilots of the United Airlines aircrafts very well knew that their lives will besnuffed in seconds when they saw the world trade center getting larger andlarger in front of their wind screens. Their psychology was so strong that withthe knowledge of their death in seconds they kept flying straight into World Trade Center.

Unfortunately majority of such terrorist activities areperpetrated by the religious fanatics of Islam. Such tendencies are not limitedto Islam alone but it is seen mostly in the abhramic religion ie IslamChristianity and Judaism. I urge my readers not to misunderstand me as I revereall religion as no religion in the world tells its followers to go and kill inthe name of religion. In its essence and origin, Islam is a religion of mercyand peace, of kindness and tolerance, and of knowledge and enlightenment; it isnot a religion of violence, fanaticism and ignorance.

What happens is that because of a miniscule group ofmisguided souls the entire religion and the followers of it suffers. The painthat a innocent Muslim goes through when their religion becomes the centerstage of any terrorist activity is very evident in the following articlewritten by a Muslim devout in Khalij Times. I reproduce that letter verbatimfor my readers.

“Khaleej Times: No Time to Hide for Muslims by Aijaz ZakaSyed (View from Dubai)

  Every time innocentsare targeted in the name of Islam around the world, one can't face one'snon-Muslim friends and colleagues.  Ifeel like burying myself in the ground. Growing up in a religious family, one never thought one would see theday when being a Muslim could be a source of shame.

A distraught friend who has devoted her life to speaking andfighting on behalf of Arabs and Muslims wrote in yesterday saying "I'vehad it with the Arabs and Muslims and Islamic militancy. Forgive me but I amthrowing in the towel."

I couldn't write back to her but understood her pain...  She grew up in Mumbai and is understandablyupset.

My friend went on to say: "The Muslims and Islam have aproblem and only they can solve it.  Ifthey do not, the whole world will turn against them."

Can you blame the world if it's turning against Muslims?What do you expect when not a single day passes without the name of our faithbeing dragged through the mud by fellow believers around the world?

Is this what Islam and the noble Prophet teach and standfor?

It's all very well for us to say Islam has nothing to dowith extremism and terrorism.  We can goon deluding ourselves these psychopaths do not represent us.

However, the world finds it hard to accept this line ofargument because it sees the extremists increasingly assert themselves and takethe centre-stage while the mainstream Islam remains silent.” 

 Religion seems tooffer a particularly fertile matrix, in which fanaticism can grow, is religiousbelief itself the cause of fanaticism? Or is religion simply one of manycatalysts that can transform desperation into extremism? We might find theanswers in the teachings of the Founders of the world's major religioussystems. What do they say about fanaticism and religious zeal? Did they espouseit or promote it? And if not, where does it come from?

Some particularly sharp insights may be found in the Bahá'íWritings. Bahá'u'lláh clearly condemned fanaticism of all kinds. In a statementthat seems to foreshadow our times, He wrote:

Religious fanaticism and hatred are a world-devouring fire,whose violence none can quench. The Hand of Divine power can, alone, delivermankind from this desolating affliction.

(Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 13

Religion itself breeds fanatics. If the teachings of theManifestations of God had been followed, fanaticism would never have taken rootwithin the religions they established. We can say this because fanaticism andhatred are so clearly contrary to their explicit teachings. It uses religion asa tool to further aims that have nothing to do with true religion. If we use ahammer to open a jar, we're going to destroy the jar. Hammers are not meant foropening jars, and they are powerful enough tools to do considerable damage whenmisused. Religion is one of the most potent forces known to humanity. Misused,it is capable of doing correspondingly great damage.

Why do the fanatics succeed? The answer lies in a shortstory. A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, Owned anumber of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people weretrue ***, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. 'Veryfew people were true ***,' he

said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and manymore were

too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought theNazis were a

bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let itall happen.

Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lostcontrol, and

the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. Iended up

in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed myfactories. The essence of this story is simple. The terrorists are very smallin number but they are very cohesive. Their negative attitude is cohesive aswell. Therefore they can inflict so much pain. The good and peace loving peopleare much much larger in number but are not cohesive at all and hence theirpositivity and goodness does not percolate down the society. The fanatics areso cohesive that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is thefanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting warsworldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribalgroups throughout Africa and are

gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamicwave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanaticswho take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread thestoning and hanging of rape victims and

homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to killand to

become suicide bombers. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese,Russians , Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians,Algerians, Indians including Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and many others have diedbecause the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

Each religion brings out its own doctrines and insists uponthem as being the only true ones. And not only does it do that, but also itthinks that he who does not believe in them must go to some horrible place.Some will even draw the sword to compel others to believe as they do. This isnot through wickedness, but through a particular disease of human brain calledfanaticism. They are very sincere, these fanatics, the most sincere of humanbeings; but they are quite as irresponsible as other lunatics in the world.This disease of fanaticism is one of the most dangerous of all diseases. Allthe wickedness of human nature is roused by it. Anger is stirred up, nerves arehigh strung, and human being becomes like tigers."

Thus faith turns into fanaticism. The communal frenzy eruptsand religious wars are fought with ensuing mass destruction and chaos. There isno doubt that more blood is shed on religious wars and persecution than on anyother cause. But this is no fault of an individual. It is the evolutionaryweakness. It is not a crafty design of one individual, or one particularreligion. Our inability to convert faith into the knowledge of directperception (of the truths as preached by the religious seers) is responsiblefor this. The mammal in us is still strong; we have as yet failed to evolve ascomplete human beings.

When a person embodies values like spiritual wisdom, purityof heart, qualities of universal love and altruism, we call him a saint or a sage.Sometimes such a person contributes to the welfare of humanity in such a greatmeasure that he is referred to as God -the founder of a religion. Such examplesare Sri Krishna, Jesus Christ, Lord Buddha, Mahavir, Guru Nanak, SriRamakrishna, Sri Aurobindo, and many more. The list is unending; we encountersuch great souls in every religion of every continent and in every era.  These great souls have intuitive knowledge ofoneness of human race. Their intuition is based on their experience orrealization and conforms to rationality and reason. They speak from theexperience of realization of Divinity acquired after transcending thelimitations of body-mind complex. They have the direct knowledge of Reality.Millions of followers of these saints intellectually and emotionally grasptheir message of love and compassion; but cannot claim to have experiencedthese values as direct knowledge. They believe in what the saints say.

None of the saints or their religion preaches hatred andkilling. Every religion preach that humankind is a single family and the earthits common homeland. There is no place for fanaticism or the fanatics.