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By Avijit Roy
E-mail: [email protected]
[SH]
Again Mr. Avijit makes same accusation, abuse and blame against me. He
feels it is only his authority to do so, not others.
[Response]
Please do not put words in my mouth. I did not claim to be any authority.
The only thing I requested you to refrain from personal attack while
responding. If that
irritates you, I have nothing more to say.
[SH]
Thanks for attributing me American policy basher. I am proud.
[Response]
Again you are putting words in my mouth. I did not attribute you any kind
of 'basher' or anything. Please read the sentence what I wrote : "You
are a good critic of western policy, we all know. However, I am not calling
you America basher". Does it mean I am attributing you something? Come
on, we do not need to play a silly game here.
You said that you are proud of bashing US policy. Fine. It only proves
that sometimes bashing is necessary, right?
[SH]
....Within this Islamist, a few are fundamentalist, rest of them are
secular. A secular restrains from criticizing or bashing Islam or any other
religion, as it is personal affairs.
[Response]
Yes, I agree. Religion is a matter of personal affairs, so it would never
be problem if it was kept in personal level. But it has not been done so
far. In fact, Islamism is an ideology which holds that Islam is not only a
religion, but a system that also governs the political, economic and social
imperatives of the state. A crucial goal of Islamism is to take control of
the state in order to implement the Islamist system. Most Islamist rhetoric
and literature compares Islam not only with other religions, but also with other
ideologies, such as Nationalism, Communism, Capitalism, Fascism, etc. I am
sure you have seen many write-ups from Islamic scholars and apologists regarding this. So secular
philosophy, according to you, should be followed by keeping our mouth shut
and keeping our eyes closed, right?
BTW, I am repeatedly saying that this thread is not in Islam and I am not
interested to debate on this issue, not sure why I am being pushed to the
issue always.
[SH]
If those who are creating religious hatred are to be called freethinker or
mukhto Mona, then the definition of these words is to be changed.
[Response]
Well, Perhaps you forgot what communist philosophical guru Karl Max
uttered about religion:
"Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of
real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of
the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of
soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
and,
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people
is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their
illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition
that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo
the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."
I am eager to know whether Karl Marx had also some kind of hatred towards
religion or was a "true" religion basher like us :-)
You might also want to know the reason of bashing religion by some other
famous people like Engel, Bertrand Russel, Salman Rushdi, Aroj Ali Matubbar,
Ibn Warraq, Ahmed Sharif, Humayun Azad, TH Huxley, Thomas Pane, Bacon, Bruno
and many others perhaps?
check the following link:
https://gold.mukto-mona.com/Articles/hoax_constuctive_criticism.htm
There is definitely a time and place to make religion look as ridiculous
as it actually is, you should understand.
[SH]
All deaths are inhuman and barbarian act, but some time it is not. Example,
Col. Taher and Ershad Sikder were hung to death. Siker's death was hailed but
not Taher. So inhuman and barbarian act is depend on the type of person's
activities and situation. To be a humanist, one is to understand these.
[My response]
I completely understand. However, I already pointed that sometimes
ideology also preaches hate and the followers ty to justify the barbarism
for the shake of ideology. In many cases, many devoted Muslims ty to
justify the violence of Muhammad in the same way a Christian tries to
justify the violence of the Bible. Hindu fanatics also destroyed ancient
Babri Mosque and killed hundreds of Muslims in Gujarat based on fake 'Ram
Janmabhumi' myth and Hindutva ideology. So, even today you will find a lot
of "good" people who are so brainwashed that are not bothered
about the violence in the name of God or prophet or so called holy books or
any "good" ideology. Communists tries to justify the killing of
class enemy for the shake of their ideology. US also is trying to justify
her atrocities by attributing an ideology -"war against terror".
Sometimes human brain is so shrunk that it does not occur to them that may
be all inhumane books and ideologies are false and none of them are for
well-being of the society. You might want to read a good Bangla article of
Dr. Murshid on this:
https://gold.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/rationalist_day/rationalism_ghulam.pdf
[SH]
Social and economical properties and characteristics of each of these
stages are different from other stage. Therefore Hitler and Stalin are not
comparable as water and oil are not comparable.
[Respone]
I am not comparing anything. For me both atrocities done by Stalin and
Hitler are wrong.
However, readers might get astonished to find the relationship between
Nazism and communism which was much more complicated than appearance of
their irreconcilable hostility would suggest. The two movement competed
fiercely, but they also collaborated.
For one, they had common enemy, which was liberal democracy with it
relevance for civil rights, property and peace. Both totalitarian regimes
regarded human beings as expendable raw material for the construction of new
social order and the creation of a 'new man'. Unlike the soviet Union, the
Nazi Germany tolerated private property but treated it as a revocable trust
rather than inherent right, and regulated it minutely for the benefit of
state. Both regime viewed pacifism with contempt.: in Lenin's word, 'the
slogan of peace ... is a slogan of philistines and priest' (source: Richard
pipes, Communism a brief history, pp 104). After coming to power, Lenin
insisted that there would be no coexistence between Communism and
'imperialism' : one or the other had to win out, and before that happened,
'a series of the most terrible conflicts between Soviet republic and the
bourgeois states is unavoidable (source: M.B. Olcott in Russian review, vol
XL, no. 2 (1981), 122, 136). As for Hitler, his glorification of power and
his single minded preoccupation with building up Germany's armed forces for
war are too well known to require elaboration.
Hitler found the Soviet Union a ready model for the one party state with
which to implement the authority granted him by the march 1933 ordinance.
This kind of state has traditionally labeled 'totalitarian', a term initially
popularized by the Italian dictator Bentio Mussolini to define his fascist
regime.
One might also want to point out that In August 1939 Stalin on his August
19 speech agreed to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany which
divided Central Europe into the two powers' respective spheres of influence.
It is a pact that sometimes called the 'Hitler- Stalin' pact, was a
non-aggression treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It was
signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939 by the Soviet foreign minister
Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.
[SH]
All the death due to internal fight, famine and war casualty were piled up
during cold war time and attributed to communism.
[Response]
Infract, fight famine and war - communist leaders were responsible for all
three. More over, you seem to forget about Gulag and labor camps. It is a historical
fact that about one million people were shot during the periods 1935-38,
1942 and 1945-50 and millions of people were transported to Gulag labor
camps. In Georgia about 80,000 people were shot during the periods 1921,
1923-24, 1935-38, 1942 and 1945-50 and more than 100,000 people were
transported to Gulag camps. On March 5, 1940, Stalin himself and other
Soviet leaders signed the order to execute 25,700 Polish intelligentsia
including 14,700 Polish POW. It became known as Katyn massacre. Some other
famous massacres: massacre of prisoners 30,000-40,000 people. It is believed
by most historians that, including famines, prison and labor camp mortality,
and state terrorism (deportations and political purges), Stalin and his
colleagues were directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of
millions.
Many historians agree that the disruption caused by forced
"collectivization" of Stalins policy was largely responsible for
major famines which caused up to 5 million deaths in 1932-33, particularly
in Ukraine and the lower Volga region. I have seen a picture where Stalin
used starvation as a weapon, particularly against the Ukranians and in 1933,
in Kharkiv, the peasants became indifferent to the phenomenon of death.
Canabalism was so wide-spread that government printed posters that said
"Eating your children is an act of barbarism" ( Stephane Courtois
et al, Black book of communism, pp 202-203)
[SH]
There are people, who are allergic to communism and advancement. I feel you
are one of them.
[Response]
No I am not allergic. In fact I have brought up in a communist
environment. We had communication with left politicians in BD. Even famous
communist leader Nirmal Sen, friend of my father, when came for treatment in
Singapore few moths ago, I used to visit him regularly. It is a separate
issue, though. I have a lot of communist friends in my personal life, and
associated with left leaning people without being allergic.
If we see the history, we will find that the western humanists whom you
think to be allergic to communism, were in fact very sympathetic to
communism initially. They changed their mind after viewing communism from a
close look. Bertrand Russell visited Russia in 1920, as a member of British
delegation. He approached the Soviet experiment with sympathy: Capitalism,
in his judgment, was doomed, whereas "communism" he thought,
"was necessary to the world..". (source: Richard Pipes, Communism
a brief history, pp 100). But after visiting Russia, where he observed
'practice' with a keen eye, left him skeptical: he remarked with dismay on
the quasi-religious fanaticism of the Bolsheviks, their impatience. their
dogmatism. And he doubted whether it was possible to construct Communism in
a country as poor as Russia, the majority of whose population was hostile to
it.
Another example is the French novelist Andre Gide, who similarly
declaring 'love' and 'admiration' for Soviet Union, began as another
classic fellow traveler. The USSR was to him was 'more than a chosen land';
it was utopia 'in the process of becoming reality'. He paid a visit in the
summer of 1936, while the sham 'trial' of Zinoviev and Kamenev was under
way. He wrote After thoughts on the USSR in which he condemned outright what
the communists had done to Russia, the country "had betrayed all
hopes".
Paul Kurtz, the founder and chairman of the Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), the Council for Secular
Humanism, was also left-wing in his youth. But his experience in the US Army
in WWII taught him the dangers of ideology. He saw the Buchenwald and Dachau
concentration camps after they were liberated, he became disillusioned with
Communism when he encountered Russian slave laborers who had been taken to
Germany by force and refused to return to the Soviet Union at the end of the
war.
There are many other examples too. Rabindranath Tagore, sympathetic initially, also showed his great dismay
towards communism after returning from
Russia.
So if you find something really "allergic" in those
personalities towards communism, the reason should not necessarily lie to
their shoulder, main reason of their allergic behavior is that they have
seen a very cruel and dogmatic system, perhaps?
regards,
avijit
Fri May 21, 2004 5:03 am
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