Has Religious Extremism gotten to the point of no return?

Has Religious Extremism gotten to the point of no return?

The past generation still remembers the golden days of Pakistan in the early 70’s as the golden period, where people of all races and castes lived together as brothers and sisters under one nation, along with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto leading the country towards being a superpower.

Unfortunately, that is all gone now and Pakistan is certainly is in one of its lowest points thanks to one of the major contributors in bringing extremisms to this great nation, Zia-ul-Haq. Religious extremism is one of those factors in fuelling our disparity and spreading hate amongst the people with the liberals and educated hiding in their homes and extremists roaming the streets, ready to slaughter anyone with a second opinion.

As cities even like Lahore and Karachi begin filling up with people living their lives based on pointing fingers at others for crimes against religion, the educated and middle class society has nothing else but to either flee or join them.

How has Pakistan gone from being a potential superpower to now being a nation resembling Afghanistan’s rule by extremists threatening to kill others for what differences in speech they might have. Promoting one’s ideas of religion nowadays is a certain ticket to being not only approaching by a class of illiterates but being threatened at all corners.

The other day on a leading TV news channel, a female broadcaster questioned one of the guests as to whether the killing of Governor Salman Taseer was justified and to my surprise, he answered in a quick manner by terming the killer of humanity to be an “Ashiq-e-Rasool”. Even more surprising was how the other guests almost immediately sealed their lips and declined from stating their opinion on the matter, due to obvious fear of being ridiculed by these uneducated mullahs, or even worse, death.

Does love for religion result in the killing of people based on their difference of opinion without actually trying to discuss the matter with the other person directly or through a public forum? Have we reached such a low point that we are now accusing 12-year-old children belonging to minority groups as having committing blasphemy and personally sentencing them to death?

These are some things which are really painting a dark future for Pakistan as it begins to resemble the darkness of Afghanistan, led by a majority of incapable people, profiting on the name of religion and not even qualified enough to talk to a 10^th grader. Will we actually let these sort of people take over our lives and do as the same they do in countries like Afghanistan by selling opium for profit and fight in the name of Allah?

They were afraid of leaders like Benazir Bhutto because she was a woman and have always been afraid of visionaries and philosophers like Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Iqbal and will continue to be.

I am a liberal Muslim who is solely devoted to practicing his religion by choice and not by force, which is what my religion teaches me and God willingly, it will stay that way no matter what any religious extremist has to say about it.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=31527

Posted by Syed Hassan Bokhari on Aug 27 2012. Filed under Editorial, Latest News, National, Opinion, Pakistan, Politics, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.