I believe, as a society, we are evolving with a handicap of religious dogmas that are tied to ideology, rituals and practices that were relevant to the times when these were formed. Religions should evolve along with pursuit of social, technological evolution. Religion should have a temporizing and balancing effect on the young mind, rather, it drives the motivated, frustrated and those with available training and access to arms, to Kill and create an act of terror.
This evolutionary process was well ingrained within Hinduism. We lost that trait over a period of time or rather, we froze those value system, monopolized and negotiated to the advantage of those who dominated the system. With my inadequate understanding of other religion, I do feel that some religions have shown partial traits of incorporating evolutionary ideas, whereas others so religiously bound to their ideology, to the extent of being bigots. It’s is alarming to see how frustrated, motivated, trained and those with access to weapons, can cause havoc and create a sense of fear. When we analyze events from last few years, we see several such examples. It’s really noticeable to see, similar segment of frustrated people from other religions are not involved in such carnage. Despite the vast number of highly civilized people with character, Islam does have propensity to tap radicalized folks to drive them on the path of social destruction.
As CNN editor Stephen Collinson wrote “last week’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, was a terrorist attack by a couple who had gone down the “dark path of radicalization” and embraced a “perverted” form of Islam”.
Driving radicalized individuals towards perverted practices to attest their cause, if not unique, is very common to Islam. I am not a Christian but I do see extreme right wing Christians dedicating themselves to proselytization and working in remote poor communities and countries to espouse the cause of their religion.
Can Islam not tap the same segment towards constructive cause? We have geographic swaths of regions where humanity and industrial civilization has not reached. Only motivated folks can do that. To achieve this, fundamentally, we need to unplug religion from politics and power, or simply speaking any vagaries and trappings of material attachment.
mymilieu.org 