Showing posts with label religious threat to open society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religious threat to open society. Show all posts

Friday 25 May 2012

Open society and religion

Religion has always been a threat to open society because in an open society people have to think beyond their religion. Many times people living in an open society will have to break their religious rules, they will have to keep aside their religious beliefs and think beyond their religion. Liberal and open minded people are able to do it but orthodox and religious fanatic people do not accept this and they start threatening or start using violent means and they make it a case of hurting their religious sentiments. All this creates a hole in an open society and it all depends on the government how it handles such a situation, if the government is liberal and strong then it would never bow down to such hyper sensitive religious fanatic people. If the government bows down to such people then it will further strengthen these people and they will do it again and again. Liberal and open minded people would be afraid to raise their voice and express their views and religious fanaticism and intolerance will increase. An example of such an incident took place in India when Salman Rushdie released a book named 'the satanic verses'. Muslim were angered by this and they started putting pressure on the government to ban the book. Fatwas was announced against Salman Rushdie. The government in India was not strong enough. These is a religious vote bank politics in India. The government wanted to keep the Muslims happy and keep the Muslim vote bank intact. The book was banned and Salman Rushdie had to fled to England where he is living today.
 Almost all Islamic countries are not open societies. If anyone in those countries say anything which is against their religion then either he will be punished under blasphemy law (if that country has blasphemy law) or he would be attacked, killed or threatened by religious extremists and that person would either have to leave that country or live in fear. An example of such and incident was when a 19 year old Muslim girl was stoned to death after taking part in beauty contest in Ukraine.
 Another Example:
 There is blasphemy law in Pakistan which prohibits blasphemy against Islam. Anyone knowingly or unknowingly doing or saying anything which is against Islam would be prosecuted. The punishment ranges from a fine to death.
In November 2010, Asia Bibi was sentenced to death by hanging on a charge of blasphemy.
Pakistani Punjab Governor Salman Taseer opposed blasphemy law he supported Asia Bibi. He was against blasphemy law which the Muslims didn't like. In 2011 Salman Taseer was shot dead by his security guard named Mumtaz Qadri  for supporting Asia Bibi and opposing blasphemy law. But what's worse was that Mumtaz Qadri the murderer was supported by the Muslim people. Thousands of people gathered and showered flowers at him. People applauded killing of Salman Taseer which was a case of sick religious fanaticism and murder of open society.

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