The world is plagued by many issues today, and most aren’t really new. We know more today of these issues than ever before, and many more get known than ever before. Poverty, Illiteracy, anarchy, religious violence, and many instances of might over weakness, with a few instances of the might of collective weakness. These are only a few of the issues we have to deal with, but the roots of most of our issues lie in fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism is defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary as ‘a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles’. While more religion specific definitions exist, I believe this is a more comprehensive definition than those.
The sets of basic principles in the definition, have changed over the years in various geographies, for various communities. It is the lack of flexibility of different generations, different geographies, and various communities that creates all these issues. While many of my friends will simplistically vouch for an individualist and conscientious definition of principles as a policy to avoid fundamentalism, I think while that would be desirable, a recognition of socially accepted belief or principle is crucial to coexistence in the imperfect world created by whichever cosmological event or perfect being.
While TV debaters and parliaments alike debate on how to eliminate each of the various evils we talk of, let us look at something more fundamental, like fundamentalism.
Honour killings are now commonplace across the world, and across religions. Both the younger and older generations have been reported to resort to these brutal, most judgemental way of ideological suppression. This is clearly an example of intolerance towards different ways of thinking. How one (and far more frighteningly many) can believe in something so strongly as to kill someone for differing, for merely marrying against tradition, or for anything, is a matter for serious discussion. In a world where everything from incest to murder has been common and okay at various places during various times, and in a world where rape is increasingly common, how does one feel that their way is right, or is working?
Illiteracy is an issue of access, but it is increasingly compounded by intolerance and fundamentalism, as was clearly highlighted by the violence against Malala Yousafzai. Most religious beliefs are now not recent, and most scriptures were first written (or handed to men if you prefer it) hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. Even if one believes that God indeed asked of us to follow one of those many scriptures, don’t these hundreds and thousands of years merit a revision in these texts? Societal structures have changed, technology has changed, and in many cases even the geographical extent of religion has changed. Religions have spread across continents, engulfing many indigenous ways to God. Many cultures have differences with western education, but is there a relevant and recent alternate available? In a world where people are moving across countries, can nations with laws based in particular religions be expected to be tolerant?
It is not only an issue with the developing world, though. Developed, rich nations have significant populations with fundamentalist leanings, whether enforced by the gun or not. In fact, anti- fundamentalism has taken fundamentalist shades, with many who oppose fundamentalism opposing only a version of it, or opposing, even hating the religions or ideologies that fundamentalists claim to adhere to.
Poverty and illiteracy are again strongly linked (at least logically) to population. Nationalistic or religious beliefs have been commonly responsible for overpopulation, where people of different religions have some strange notion of the sanctity of life and the gift of children, even when their life cannot be ensured, even when parents have no means to protect or feed these children, leave alone giving them a good life. We have endlessly pushed on the forests’ borders, forcing the wild animals out, making more homes, needing more farms, to feed all of us. The irony in this may be obvious in the fact that governmental support to the needy goes from the taxes of all citizens, not just those with such beliefs.
Should we do away with religion then? Even assuming such a thing were possible, I would say no. religion is a force that binds people together (although in separate groups), and more importantly gives people a reason to follow the right path (though not always). What is more important is to make sure that one person’s right path does not involve destroying another’s. What is even more important, is that we make sure the generations to come are not taught to be intolerant, and that their impressionable years must not be spent in schools teaching ruthless, inflexible ideologies, whether religious, political, or otherwise.
We must introspect, as individuals, as communities, as nations and as generations, whether our beliefs are flexible enough to accommodate another’s, and how intolerance and ideological inflexibility can be dealt with, with tolerance.
Fundamentalism is defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary as ‘a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles’. While more religion specific definitions exist, I believe this is a more comprehensive definition than those.
The sets of basic principles in the definition, have changed over the years in various geographies, for various communities. It is the lack of flexibility of different generations, different geographies, and various communities that creates all these issues. While many of my friends will simplistically vouch for an individualist and conscientious definition of principles as a policy to avoid fundamentalism, I think while that would be desirable, a recognition of socially accepted belief or principle is crucial to coexistence in the imperfect world created by whichever cosmological event or perfect being.
While TV debaters and parliaments alike debate on how to eliminate each of the various evils we talk of, let us look at something more fundamental, like fundamentalism.
Honour killings are now commonplace across the world, and across religions. Both the younger and older generations have been reported to resort to these brutal, most judgemental way of ideological suppression. This is clearly an example of intolerance towards different ways of thinking. How one (and far more frighteningly many) can believe in something so strongly as to kill someone for differing, for merely marrying against tradition, or for anything, is a matter for serious discussion. In a world where everything from incest to murder has been common and okay at various places during various times, and in a world where rape is increasingly common, how does one feel that their way is right, or is working?
Illiteracy is an issue of access, but it is increasingly compounded by intolerance and fundamentalism, as was clearly highlighted by the violence against Malala Yousafzai. Most religious beliefs are now not recent, and most scriptures were first written (or handed to men if you prefer it) hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. Even if one believes that God indeed asked of us to follow one of those many scriptures, don’t these hundreds and thousands of years merit a revision in these texts? Societal structures have changed, technology has changed, and in many cases even the geographical extent of religion has changed. Religions have spread across continents, engulfing many indigenous ways to God. Many cultures have differences with western education, but is there a relevant and recent alternate available? In a world where people are moving across countries, can nations with laws based in particular religions be expected to be tolerant?
It is not only an issue with the developing world, though. Developed, rich nations have significant populations with fundamentalist leanings, whether enforced by the gun or not. In fact, anti- fundamentalism has taken fundamentalist shades, with many who oppose fundamentalism opposing only a version of it, or opposing, even hating the religions or ideologies that fundamentalists claim to adhere to.
Poverty and illiteracy are again strongly linked (at least logically) to population. Nationalistic or religious beliefs have been commonly responsible for overpopulation, where people of different religions have some strange notion of the sanctity of life and the gift of children, even when their life cannot be ensured, even when parents have no means to protect or feed these children, leave alone giving them a good life. We have endlessly pushed on the forests’ borders, forcing the wild animals out, making more homes, needing more farms, to feed all of us. The irony in this may be obvious in the fact that governmental support to the needy goes from the taxes of all citizens, not just those with such beliefs.
Should we do away with religion then? Even assuming such a thing were possible, I would say no. religion is a force that binds people together (although in separate groups), and more importantly gives people a reason to follow the right path (though not always). What is more important is to make sure that one person’s right path does not involve destroying another’s. What is even more important, is that we make sure the generations to come are not taught to be intolerant, and that their impressionable years must not be spent in schools teaching ruthless, inflexible ideologies, whether religious, political, or otherwise.
We must introspect, as individuals, as communities, as nations and as generations, whether our beliefs are flexible enough to accommodate another’s, and how intolerance and ideological inflexibility can be dealt with, with tolerance.
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