THE IDEOLOGICAL WAR AGAINST ISLAMIC TERRORISM
This war against global terror must be won ideologically at the very roots from where it springs. Radical Islam is to be met and defeated on a philosophical basis and the message must percolate right to the grass roots of Islamic society. Scientific education holds the key to it.
But the odds are heavily pitted against its success, for ignorance easily takes hold of the masses when it assumes doctrinaire fanaticism built up in the human system through systematic brainwashing, fear-mongering by positing punishment in hell in case of disobedience to scriptural authority and the daily diligence of deepening of the vital self through prayers and other life restrictions and restraints. This combination of brainwashed adherence to dogma, practised piety and a sense of superior religious culture fed into the system through scriptural articulation is a curious mix that strangely holds the common mind in its subordinated and submitted mode.
People simply wish to fear an overbearing authority --- as Adolf Hitler had maliciously stated and which he had proposed to provide the German masses and, in event, actually did --- and, so, authority holds, especially, when it has human superstition and the consequent fear of the unknown as its ally in doing so.
Thus, mere scientific education may not win this war against fanatical Islamism nor may any amount of goodwill and love harboured for such bear any fruit. What is needed is an all-out ideological combat, not merely in intellectual terms whose force and penetration into mass psychology is limited but in terms of an all-consuming spiritual inundation of the world in a robust way where the principles preached and practised are universal in scope, yet, fanatical in focus, catholicity and intensity combined in a comprehensive manner. Such a continuous flooding of a universal spiritual message of the divinity of the being behind phenomena will in course of time bring about significant changes in the hearts and minds of men and women across the world and it shall alter the bigoted stance of faith-fanatics as well.
This is the only hope and one that we may trust will result in this golden transformation of the human consciousness. But, first, the developed nations of the world will have to absorb this lesson of the Vedanta, thus far enunciated, instead of their dirty chase of Mammon, so that a powerful counter-narrative to fanatical-faith-ideology is built up as the springboard for this human spiritual evolution.
To the Vedanta everyone on earth has equal rights and not merely the Hindus who first discovered its principles for it is the science of the being which like the science of material Nature is universal and belongs to all and sundry. Let humanity hearken to this message of the Self sounding from deep within and arise in consciousness to self-dignity and wisdom instead of chasing a shadowy extra-cosmic authority that dictates terms to superstitious minds afraid of their own selves in the dark corridors of their beings. May the real divinity of the real Self unfold in all and end once and for all the reign of terror divine and terror human on earth !
Written by Sugata Bose
This war against global terror must be won ideologically at the very roots from where it springs. Radical Islam is to be met and defeated on a philosophical basis and the message must percolate right to the grass roots of Islamic society. Scientific education holds the key to it.
But the odds are heavily pitted against its success, for ignorance easily takes hold of the masses when it assumes doctrinaire fanaticism built up in the human system through systematic brainwashing, fear-mongering by positing punishment in hell in case of disobedience to scriptural authority and the daily diligence of deepening of the vital self through prayers and other life restrictions and restraints. This combination of brainwashed adherence to dogma, practised piety and a sense of superior religious culture fed into the system through scriptural articulation is a curious mix that strangely holds the common mind in its subordinated and submitted mode.
People simply wish to fear an overbearing authority --- as Adolf Hitler had maliciously stated and which he had proposed to provide the German masses and, in event, actually did --- and, so, authority holds, especially, when it has human superstition and the consequent fear of the unknown as its ally in doing so.
Thus, mere scientific education may not win this war against fanatical Islamism nor may any amount of goodwill and love harboured for such bear any fruit. What is needed is an all-out ideological combat, not merely in intellectual terms whose force and penetration into mass psychology is limited but in terms of an all-consuming spiritual inundation of the world in a robust way where the principles preached and practised are universal in scope, yet, fanatical in focus, catholicity and intensity combined in a comprehensive manner. Such a continuous flooding of a universal spiritual message of the divinity of the being behind phenomena will in course of time bring about significant changes in the hearts and minds of men and women across the world and it shall alter the bigoted stance of faith-fanatics as well.
This is the only hope and one that we may trust will result in this golden transformation of the human consciousness. But, first, the developed nations of the world will have to absorb this lesson of the Vedanta, thus far enunciated, instead of their dirty chase of Mammon, so that a powerful counter-narrative to fanatical-faith-ideology is built up as the springboard for this human spiritual evolution.
To the Vedanta everyone on earth has equal rights and not merely the Hindus who first discovered its principles for it is the science of the being which like the science of material Nature is universal and belongs to all and sundry. Let humanity hearken to this message of the Self sounding from deep within and arise in consciousness to self-dignity and wisdom instead of chasing a shadowy extra-cosmic authority that dictates terms to superstitious minds afraid of their own selves in the dark corridors of their beings. May the real divinity of the real Self unfold in all and end once and for all the reign of terror divine and terror human on earth !
Written by Sugata Bose
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