LABELING PREVENTS LEARNING

LABELING PREVENTS LEARNING

It has often become a preferred method to label or accuse free thinkers as atheist or people with no knowledge. Having a slightly different view from majority in the mainstream Islam is enough to be categorized as a traitor or neo Islamist or apostate. Many people think that I am an atheist dressed up as a Muslim to bash Muslims. Is it a sin to think independently or differently?

Muslims generally believe that critical analysis of held or so called established traditional Islamic beliefs is only done by non-Muslims to embarrass all Muslims.

Many of my friends say that we should not criticize publicly the faith in which we are born in, because if we criticize our own faith, we provide material to the non Muslims haters to bash Muslims. There are black sheep in every religious community whose agenda is to spread hatred and feel superior about their own ideology and religion. But in my view, in the age of the IT revolution, if we liberal / free thinking or moderate Muslims remain silent due to the fear that our data would be misused by Muslim haters then I think we are living in fool’s paradise.

Truth should prevail at any cost. In fact we should become a beacon for all irrespective of the differences we may have with others our within our own group. This is the time for all thinking Muslims to courageously come forward for the sake of humanity to show the world that there are muslims who for the sake of peace can face the firing squad from their own community. If we call ourselves Muslims then it becomes our duty to amend our community at this crucial juncture and respond to their immediate need to reform, and if we fail to do so I am sure our future generation would never forgive us.

I think the only true believer of any faith is one who questions everything including his/her own beliefs. If you are not questioning, how can you be thinking? And if you are not thinking, that means you are following blindly, to be more precise following without the help of your mental faculty.

Here we go ... the standard epithet hurled by the blind followers and the fear-mongering mullahs - Kaafir!, Atheist!, Mushrik!. Did they spare one single thinking Muslim? Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was accused of kufr, Allama Iqbal was accused of kufr, all the thinking heads who rejected the holy prattle were declared atheists or ignorant or neo Islamist. Irony is that they even accused Ghazali their Imam, of atheism because at the later stage of his life he made some critical analysis and for that he had to spend rest of his life in jail.

Anyone who chooses to use their brain in contemporary Islam is considered as an atheist or apostate according to these demented lunatics. If you keep chanting the usual holy prattle then you are golden or poster boy of Islam.

Any correctional process leads to progress. We have all progressed in life. Then what is wrong in evaluating or analyzing our religious teachings. Throughout the world there is unrest and the cause is the belief system. If this system is the root cause of all the problems, then we definitely need to amend it. Our youngsters are brainwashed with the outdated defunct data. Any progressive society will always bring about changes and develop. Just adamantly sticking on to the old stories and revering them will take us nowhere.

READ, THINK, CHALLENGE, and QUESTION! Every single one of us must do that. Question EVERYTHING. It is immaterial what answers you come up with as long as you are honest to yourself. But it is CRITICAL that every single Muslim must reason and think independently but the criteria should be unbiased and the aim should be to spread love for all and hatred for none.

IF WE WANT TO SURVIVE AND SUSTAIN, WE NEED A MAJOR RE FORMATTING AT THE EARLIEST.

SALAM / PEACE.