BARBARISM IN BANGLADESH

Bangladesh ought to pursue her language movement (Bhasha Andolon) instead of the religious one for in it lies her redemption. Jai Bangla!

Basic scriptural tenets remaining exclusive and fanatical, it is but natural that extreme adherents of such will resort to literal pursuit of precepts. Time for fundamental change if fundamentalist barbarism is to be ended.

The problem with extreme religious dualism is that it awakens the meaner, the vicious, the violent elements of man which sooner or later can only perpetrate terror, especially, if backed by scriptural sanction. Today's global terrorism is not a novel phenomenon but is the revised edition of the long history of fundamentalist violence.

Right from its inception violence has been the dominant note of this fundamental faith which has rained terror on infidels and forcibly converted victims the world over. If, today, things are what they are, is it cause for wonder? Has it not been said : 'Yatha purvavat, tatha param' (As in the past, so in the future)?

Intolerance is basic to extreme dualism, exclusiveness is its very breath. Arbitrary pronouncements, archaic reactions and authoritarian principles are in the very fabric of this faith that deny its adherents the choice to rationalise and reject honourably its tenets and so, become fearless apostates. Instead, the one that dares dismiss the dogma as unworthy of acceptance through a refusal to submit one's faculties, runs into retrograde elements rife within the fold with its obvious consequences as is so much evident the world over.  

The horrific pictures released by the perpetrators of barbarism leaves one shuddering not with fear but with abhorrence at the depth of evil that goes by the name of this extreme culture of tribal origin. To what levels man may sink under indoctrination of a noxious kind is now being freshly revealed but is not a phenomenon new. It has a tradition in history when brutality spread through the world in the name of religion and everything that stood in the way of conquest for the Lord was swept aside and the human soul was sacrificed in much the same way as today when sanity seems to have have lost in the wake of primeval ignorance.