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A Response to Mr. Abdur Rahman Abid's article
Dear moderators I have been watching this discussion about Religion for a while. As an atheist I believe in everybody's right to believe in anything they want to or not to believe as long as they do not cause any harm to other people . That is the reason I try to stay quiet about my own decisions and judgments about religion. But Mr. Abdur Rahman Abid's last write up really threw me off. It is a very nicely written article and it successfully serves the purpose of emotional blackmail with some carefully structured misleading data. I'll like to get to the point directly. I will carefully avoid any debate about why I think Islam or any other religion is wrong as I know there are enough people in different forums who have quoted verses after verses from Quran, Bible or Geeta to show the inadequacy of these books in this era. I will only ask Mr. Rahman to answer some of the questions which have occurred to my mind after reading his article and make few comments about my observation where I think he intentionally or unintentionally tried to manipulate the facts. - You mentioned that there are 599.99 billion people (almost everybody out of 600 billion people) in the world who believe in a religion. But do you know that there are a lot (yes, a lot comparing to what you said) of Atheists, agnostics, freethinkers in this world who have denounced organized religion. There are quite a few web sites which will show you approximately 14%( which would equate to almost 1/7 the of the total population which would be almost close to a ~800 million) of the worlds' population do not believe in any organized religion. Among them, there are atheists who do not believe in existence of God and agnostics who do not believe in any organized religion but confused about the existence of a super power. I know it is very hard to track non-religious people as many countries and organizations do not even allow you to choose atheism or non-religion as an option during a census. I would guess, you could be even executed (at least become a victim of a fatwa J) if you claim to be a non-believer(being born in a Muslim family) in many Muslim countries. It is much easier to find scientific data on non-religious headcount in Europe, America, Australia and New Zealand. Here are some of the web sites you can go to for reference: http://www.mrswebdesign.net/teachingreligion/atheism/numbers.html http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html - How have you concluded that everybody who criticizes Islam think Clinton or Bush is always right and Muslims are always wrong? I have seen lot of freethinkers and humanists and atheists (including a few names mentioned in your article) criticizing American foreign policy towards Palestinians, Indian government oppression on Kashmiri people or rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India and killings in Gujrat. Was it an honest mistake from your part or you wanted to use this wrong information to stir up the common Islamic sentiment of those people who are not familiar with all these writings? - You have mentioned about your friend who thinks Muktomona is a pro-Indian forum. Let me ask you, why has it been a fashion to call everybody pro-Indian whenever anybody criticizes Islam or any government policy in Bangladesh? Is it because it makes it very easy to manipulate anti-Indian sentiment in common Bangladeshi people and get some cheap sympathy or they really think it is true? And I am sure it makes it even juicier if any of these guys have a Hindu origin or a Hindu name, at that point it does not even matter if they believe in any religion or not. - Have you ever considered reading European history during Middle Ages? We see hundreds of years of history of violence, blood shed, war and corruption. Christianity worked as an excuse, if not a basis, for these violence and torture. Christianity had to go through immense reformation for hundreds of years for its own survival. Religion did and always does a wonderful job to act as a weapon of violence for political powers. We have been seeing the same trends now in the Islamic world. Actually, if you consider the recent developments for last couple of decades we see the rise in religious fundamentalism (please do not play with the linguistic tricks, we all know what fundamentalism means) all over the world. We see the same trend in India with the rise of Hindu fundamentalism as well (BTW, I never considered India as a secular country either). I could not agree more with you on the topic that BNP, AL, Jamat all use religion as a weapon for political power. But, before we say some political powers are misusing religion as an excuse for oppression, terrorism, violence we need to understand why all religion always have acted as a weapon to these people. History shows different religious beliefs at different times have acted as the base for violence in many different ways. Does religion provide a trigger point for violence? Does religion itself provoke violence? Why do you find it so offensive if some people question these things about Islam? May be, it is time that we separate religion from State completely. Religion should be a private belief which should be practiced in a private manner and you should have the right to believe or not to believe. That way the State will have to protect you and your rights despite of your religious beliefs. I know lot of devoted Muslim women do not find it disrespectful to allow men to have 4 wives, having half the right on their parent's property, one man being equal to two women in intelligence and memory, allowing men to beat up those disobedient(!) women, and the list can go on and on. If they have the right to believe in these insulting rules and guidance I should have the right to find them unacceptable and tell the world that I think these laws do not give me the fair share of being a human being, it violates my basic human rights. If you have the right to preach your religion publicly through Tableeg and whatever other means, then I should also have the right to denounce them and say that I do not believe in any religion, I am pretty convinced by the scientific revelations that religion is meaningless and full of fairy tells created by humans. I should not be banished from the country or stoned to death or become a victim of a Fatwa if I challenge religion and refuse to live my life according to these rules. Regards Bonna
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