The role of ignorance in deciding crucial matters is always deplorable but things become vicious when that ignorance is a product of faith. In 1971 a few Pakistani soldiers entered a house in Dhaka who found two framed pictures hanging from the wall. One was of poet Rabindranath Tagore and the other was of poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. Tagore had beard Nazrul did not. The soldiers determined that the bearded one was a Muslim and the other one was a Hindu. They destroyed Nazrul Islam’s picture and showed much reverence to Tagore considering him a Sufi. The instructions clearly given by the authorities to the invading army in East Pakistan that they were being sent there to kill the Hindus to save Pakistan and naturally every Bengali was a target. I abhor the idea to use faith for any purpose which can only darken the path to enlightenment. Pakistan would not have suffered this much if the lethal brew of religion and politics was not used to sustain its existence. The rationale of any faith can be found in reason only. Religion minus reason is dangerous.

Osama bin laden, mullah Omer or any other religious thug can’t face the open world because they are the dark forces of ignorance. But these criminals reign in the mind of so many Muslims that an untimely eclipse is taking place. A cartoon of a man who died 1500 years ago brings millions on the road to express their anger but no one is moved when thousands are being killed and maimed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or somewhere else. How would you explain this behaviour? Is it not the fear generated by the religious demon that has killed their conscious? Would the so called Islamic apologists dare to answer this question? 

Akbar Hussain