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Principles and priorities. Published on February 13, 2007
When Socrates was put to death by poison, he decided to die to uphold the truth. That was the priority of a highly principled man.His death held high the values of truth and morality.I n such matters there is no place for a dialogue. Jesus Christ was crucified not because that he preferred death over truth but he felt that his sacrifice will establish a solid reason when truth becomes a priority over life. That was his greatness and magnanimity that he felt that way. We can assume that Socrates and Jesus both are standing firm on their own principles and priorities. In this century with an entirely different social conditions the principles of priorities needs to be redefined. If we take religion as a guide, although many people believe that our modern jurisprudence and education held more power than religion, the interpretation of it's real role in our contemporary life is a matter of great controversy. That's the reason our extreme sense of liberalism kept many people away from reacting on many controversial issues. That's happened when a film was made on Jesus's sex life, Salman Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses or Taslima Nasreen said that Quran should be revised and very recently the Danish cartoons on Prophet Muhammad. The people who fear that these acts will harm any established religion are not really thinking about the real priorities. The emotional outburst and a fear does not really establish anything. We complain that the West is oppressing us, trying to annihilate us and also sucking our blood. How we can come out of this situation, is it through protest or we need to be strong enough to withstand their onslaught? The reality is that the Muslim world is weak in all the way, they need to gather economic power to make their voice heard. This is the priority nothing else. As a matter of fact it is very unrealistic in many ways to think that West is trying to annihilate the Muslims. They are just using their superior powers to overwhelm the weak. We must understand and accept that religion can be used as a moral guide but we need to update and translate them to face the modern realities. We can't say that this life is temporary and the life after is permanent in the hells or heavens. This is a ridiculous logic which does not conform to any practical cause. Another aspect we need to heed that the brew of religion and politics is always lethal. Akbar Hussain, Toronto
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