Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Fatwa: order to kill blasphemers

There are several people who over the period of time have been sentenced to death for saying something blasphemous. Salman Rushdie comes to mind foremost. His book Satanic Verses caused a lot of anguish in the Muslim world because it insulted the memories of the Prophet PBUH. There have been others like him and recently I heard of another person who wrote about Hazrat Ayesha in a book which is described as a "soft porn". Obviously this has upset a lot of people. Similar was the case of the recent controversy about the Cartoons of PBUH.
This is a topic with a lot of heated discussions about what is right and not wrong. Emotions are involved and I have written about the need for a balanced decision process. I believe a similar approach needs to be utilized
To make the discussion simple I will remove the biggest emotional highlighter of good or bad. This article is NOT about whether the Muslims are right or wrong in condemning people to death or whether people who make blasphemies are right or wrong in doing it.

Let us imagine a group of people who like ice cream and worship it. They make a law that anybody who insults the ice cream shall be killed. Now there is another group of people who like chocolate and do not like ice cream. Hence they insult the ice cream and the ice cream lovers are very emotionally invested in ice cream and believe that they can only be born again in this world as little frozen pieces of delight if they uphold the pride of the ice cream. At baseline the chocolate lovers and ice cream lovers look to the eternal life with much more eagerness than this life and all of them have a certain death wish/morbid fascination with death. The result as predictable as what is going on right now.

Now the question arises. Who the f*** told the group of people to start believing in ice cream and chocolate. Who the f*** told the people to start having such morbid fascinations. Who the f*** told the people from one group to insult the other one and not be sensitive about it.

Some people believe in freedom of expression. There is no absolute and that is also not an absolute statement. Similarly all freedom would comes with responsibility. If there is groups of people crazy about ice creams and chocolates, don't insult them. How difficult is that? I understand that sometimes there are artistic muses which are very irresponsible in their urgency to say something profound. I guess that is also life experiencing itself but life gives those muses the consequence of that creativity.

Whether it is through the hands of "unreasonable people" who are after their blood for even thinking those thoughts or whether that is through giving the destructive energies free reign of their life is something that has never been in the hands of one individual. It is the right of life. And the life that gives consequences to all things does not mark things as good or bad.

Similarly the people who string or murder people whether through the aid of group consciousness or murder or whether through their individual wants, will get their consequence. It is no wonder that the "Kafir Farangi" is actually leading a much more harmonious life compared to the "enlightened" people of the homeland of Islam. :)

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