The London Blasts

Heard about the London blasts today. It was the terrorists' way of saying "it ain't over yet", in response to the Coalition's "you asked for it". Indeed a pretty tragic incident by Western standards. In India, we go through incidents like these pretty routinely.

Just surfing the internet today about the blasts, and saw some posts in indiatimes blog, where people say if this is religion, I think there should be no religion.

I just wanted to say, I couldn't disagree more.

Just because some Physicist made an atomic bomb doesn't mean there should be no Physics !! I see the generation-X making more comments like these. Partly because they don't know what religion teaches; and partly because they couldn't care less.

I find the basic idea that "absence of religion would mean people would not have reasons to kill each" other fairly ridiculous. This also assumes that only people of different religions kill each other. Well, I don't have statistics (but the statistically inclined can go ahead and do the number crunching) but just see the proportion of people of one religion killed by people of another religion (and that too because of religious hatred), in the total number of people killed.

In a world without religion, a human being is just another animal. What then, prevents someone from killing another human being for revenge, robbing, hatred, or even just pleasure as long as the culprit doesn't get caught?

My religion on the other hand tells me that God watches everything. That every human embodies God. That the good you do gets you Good Karma and the bad you do gets you Bad Karma. That no one can escape from the judgement handed out when they die. That even if someone has wronged you, you don't have to seek revenge, because God is the saviour of the poor and the week, and the wrongdoer would be punished by the God.

Are these not extremely beautiful thoughts? Even if there was no God, they are extremely effective religious chain of thoughts that keep people's beastly inclinations in check, and contribute to a non violent society?

How can someone then make such utterly irresponsible statements that they wish there were no religion? Most possibly they don't know what religion means.

Contrary to popular beliefs, the terrorism that exists today is not all religious terrorism. Kashmir is religious, but ULFA is not. Veerappan was not. MCC is not. Naxalite terrorism is not. Even the LTTE's brand of terror wasn't religious.

Any form or brand of terrorism or extremism requires some fundamentals, and the most important of them all is an idea of a group - something that its members can identify with. Religion is but only one of these identities. Region (like Jharkhand, Nagaland, Gorkhaland, Khalistan), Language (Tamil for LTTE), economic strata (Ranbir Sena, MCC, Naxalites) or even a political alignment (the MCC) can give an identity to a terrorist or extremist group.

If you ask me, whats the point I am trying to make here. My answer is I am not trying to make a point here. I am trying to tell that the point you are trying to make isnt exactly true. Because there's more to it than meets the eye.

Of course, coming to the issue of Islamic terrorism, it IS very much real. It just cannot be wished away. I speak from experience, as happened in India, with Sikhs - when people started to equate every sikh with terrorism, and Punjabis and Sikhs were seen with suspiscion. Unless the so-called moderate Muslims actively come forward and denounce the Islamic terrorists' activities, and distance themselves actively and publicly from the extremists, they are likely to be clubbed together with the extremists, and suffer the same fate as their other not-so-tolerant religionmen. It is time for the muslim world to realize that by allowing a bunch of idiots to hijack their religion, they're going to commit a blunder.

And then they'd be only themselves to blame.