Did God invent us, or did we invent
God?
-Eddie Izzard
The similar question that
arises to my mind is whether religion defines us or we define religion?
Everyday we meet with people from different ethnic backgrounds and different
religions and hopefully, accept their backgrounds and respect their faith and
their religious views. In an international school, it is the basis of building
a strong friendship between other students/colleagues/teachers. In the outside
world, it gives one an opportunity to learn more and openly embrace different
cultures.
My religion was inbred
into me when I was a child. I was taught the culture, the values of the
religion and I built my faith in the many Gods of my religion. I am a product
of two religions – Hinduism and Jainism. As per my will, I decided to respect
both the religions and give them equal importance in my life. I performed the
venerations of the Hindu gods and the Jain gods, sang devotional songs for both
the religions and celebrated all the different festivities that came with both
the religions. My two religions defined me – it gives me my cultural identity.
When I moved to Dubai, I
was acquainted with two more religions – Islam and Christianity in more depth
than I had previously known while living in India. The Islamic religion defined
the country and 70% of its population. It defined my friends and I learnt to
respect the religion and started learning more about the norms and values. I
believed in the Prophet and believed that I could pray in the mosque as freely
as if I were Muslim.
I learnt more about
Christianity as I took part in camps at different churches. My friends told me
more about their identities formed by their religion. I was gifted the Bible
and to date, feel that reading the Psalms or just a few verses gives me the
same peace that I find praying in the temple.
Every night my father and
I, religiously, light a candle near the Buddha as a symbol of the tranquility
required in the busy life.
The faith of Din-Ilahi defines me – I am a believer of all religions. Because I feel that it is religion that defines us.
However, not everyone
perceives religion in the same way as me. Everyone has a different perspective
and one must learn to respect it, even though there may be certain differences.
For example, the recent
news headlines are the siege of the Westgate Mall of Nairobi, Kenya where
people were taken hostages on Saturday, 21st September 2013. 68
innocent civilians have lost their lives by being shot by the Somalian Al
Shabaab group. Lucky of those held hostage, have escaped and given details of
the kind of situation that they were in. One of those lucky people, who was
freed today (23rd September 2013), describes the situation in the
mall.
He says that he hid his
true identity – cultural identity of Christianity – and portrayed himself to be
a Muslim named Hassim. He was released. The next man, an Indian, tried the same
trick. He was then asked a question: ‘Who’s the mother of Muhammad?’ to which
he had no reply. They shot him.
This not only angered me,
but made me question whether religion is defined by the people or it defines
us. The man was freed because he followed the same religion. The other was
shot, probably dead by the time I am writing this, just because he did not know
the religion that he did not belong to and unfortunately, his oppressor was
Islamic and required the correct answer for deciding whether a life could be
spared.
Religion, which is meant
to maintain peace, has increasingly become the reason for violence. Palestine
and Israel fight for the land, which they consider ‘Holy’ for two different
religions. While in Dubai, people were pleaded, by the mosque imams, to donate
blood for the fighters of Palestine.
All these events, are the
symbols of how religion has become manipulated by the fanatics, who fail to recognize
the essence of religion and what it actually asks for – everything except blood
shed. The ethics are lost in defining religion. It is unethical to kill
civilians to avenge the death of the conscripted military. It is unethical to
fight and shed blood for the land that could be distributed with diplomatic
negotiations.
Emotionally, the violent acts under the ‘religion’ tag, anger me and evoke me against the morality of the people. It makes me question their real faith and if they are actually able to understand that God is giving the message of peace, which they are changing to their liking. However, being angry can stop one from thinking rationally.
Thinking rationally about
these acts, would evoke one to find a solution to such unethical behaviours on
the personal front towards/in relation to religion. The fanatics of all
religions have their ‘evidences’ for the violence from their holy books,
however, when the emotion takes over they fail to see the logical approach that
would solve the problems without killing and also, stay true to the religion’s
values.
Our senses hear the
fanatics, see their extremist acts of violence and speak about their
activities, our viewpoints on it and presumably, base our opinions on their
acts. Going by the idea of ‘Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil and See No Evil’ hardly
occurs because we are made aware of the current events and instinctively, find
the need to comment or react. As a society seeing, hearing and speaking should
be used to fight this evil. One can often hear people say “Al Qaeda does all
this and their religion is the cause”. However, we cannot induce that one
religion is the cause of most of the fights. Blaming a religion is the start of
losing faith and blindly following the activities of the majority - the fallacy
of appealing to authority in the majority, ususally, the most radical of the
majority.
As George Bernard Shaw
says, “There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it” –
the versions that we define and are often blinded by.
