Don’t Blame Religions, Blame The People

My first religious practice by no mean started off with a serious intention. I visited Nepal in 2019, only to find myself staying in a monastery for 10 days learning the basic foundation of buddhism philosophy because it was one of the recommended activities for tourists. Basic tourist I am, yes. Many interesting and respectful conversations with atheists take place, and I think that sometimes people are blaming religion as a scapegoat for human’s misdeeds.

Now it’s not like I’m trying to change someone’s religious practice, but it is crucial to examine the question seriously, especially nowadays when mainstream media hugely impacts people’s perspectives without them realizing its bias.

The Cause Of Misery?

I’ve heard people claim that they chose to be an atheist because religion itself is a cause for misery. Religion has been extensively used as a political weapon to benefit a certain group of people — a cause of wars and terrorism. I agree that religion has been and continuously being exploited. In the book Betrayal: the crisis in the catholic churches, which later inspired Oscar-winning film Spotlight, I felt sick reading about how people, under the disguise of catholicism, molested and traumatized thousands of kids, yet always successfully getting away from their degenerate acts’ consequences just because they were publicly viewed as the missionaries of god. they took advantage of trusts from parents to benefit their sexual desire while still being able to act high and mighty when accepting a ton of donations from practitioners. Religion has also been the culprit of wars in many countries and groups of people. Blood and tears are shed between Shia and Sunni groups, for example, (the two major denominations of Muslim), among countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and the list goes on. As i think very well-put by my friend, “some of the most diabolical acts have been committed by those whose faith towards their god is strongest”.

Human As The Real Culprit

What I think we should be aware of is that religion itself is twisted and misused by humans. Humans, in the name of religion, create their own evil agenda and once turmoils happen to take place, they turn to religion treating it like a scapegoat. There are surly many surreptitious practitioners who commit frightful acts as a result of their blindly following the wrong teachings without further examination or reflection. However if there’s anything they should be blamed for it’s their own ignorance. they also deserve a certain level of sympathy, for they simply play as the pawns in someone else’s political agenda. Religion itself doesn’t have any fault.

To me, Prophet Muhammed, known as the last messenger of God in Islam, is probably the most progressive human being at the time. Over 1500 years ago he received his first revelation from God and successfully built an Islamic empire that took off in Saudi and expanded later to the surrounding neighbours. It’s true that now when someone mentions Islam, thanks to mainstream media, our brain automatically translates it to extremism, zero women’s rights, and terrorism. Barely does anyone know that Muhammed spent over 60 years of his life preaching a religion that originally promotes and protects women’s rights; a religion that aims to blur the line between the rich and the poor; a religion that discourages social hierarchy. In his days, Shira (Islamic law that forms tradition in Islam) recognized that women should be treated fairly in the society: a women had the power to own properties; a man couldn’t marry more than 4 wives at the time. this is not because man’s status is assumably superior to woman, which give them the right to marry more than one wife. Rather, the law takes women with their husbands sacrificing in wars into consideration and hopefully made it easier for them to remarry. Women were allowed to take the initiative to propose to a man she loved, to work freely and independently.

1500 years later, ironically, women in Saudi are not allowed to go on the street without a male guardian and discouraged to work on her free will. Not to even mention how the status of Islamic women are decreased to the point of causing severe domestic violence, social abuse and tremendous injustice in education and professional career advancement.

1500 years later in Saudi, women are not allowed to drive a car on their own without a male accompany. as if it doesn’t sound like a joke just yet, the male guardian has to be a family member so as to avoid potential adultery. Not all males in the family have enough time to escort their sisters or moms every single time they need to head out, of course, so a law was published in 2010 to allow women driving a car with a male who’s not her family member as long as she feeds him with her breast milk. To put it in the fucking plain words, as long as she lets him suck her breast. In Islam, breastfeed kinship is as important as blood relationship. turning foreigners into a family member by breast feeding him is, therefore, a solution to women demanding to drive a car on their own (???)

Was it specifically written in Quran that women are not allowed to commute without a male accompany, or that they better let a stranger suck their breast if they want to drive? No. The society, the people, the government, whoever has more political authority to impose such absurd are the culprits.

Culture As The Exploiter

Now i cite a lot of examples in Islam because it’s the most misunderstood religion in my point of view. Extreme religious interpretation, if not used for political purposes, is abused in the name of culture. in some countries ruled by a patriarchal society such as Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, for example, women are by culture set up to be marginalized by men. What happens when women are not obedient and start questioning the abuse forced on them? that’s when religion is cited as a source of authority to allow injustice to operate without obstruction. If one wants to maintain certain social constructs, it is then reasonable that one only chooses the methodologies that he think will support the reign. the teaching is therefore interpreted in a way to guarantee it will serve whatever considered appropriate to the “culture”.

In either pakistan or Afghanistan, a woman might get beaten up hard if she’s raped. If a woman reports a harras to the police, it’s most likely that the man stays intact while the woman suffer more humiliation and beatings from her husband. The circumstances that the man will get arrested is when there are 4 (or 6) witnesses of her rape. Absurd. In Quran, it is recounted that the youngest wife of Muhammed was stranded during a travel through the desert. she was helped and rescued by a man. As she was being criticized due to her staying overnight with an unknown man, she was convicted of adultery. Muhammed, in an effort to save her, established a law that says a woman is found guilty of adultery only when there are at least 4 witnesses. In the modern day, some Muslim countries counter argue that if 4 witnesses are needed to verify a woman’s adultery, then the same number of witness is also required whenever a man is accused of rape. Culture is very objective. It is defined by humans to make sure a certain group of individuals will be able to live in harmony with each other. Sometimes it is no less than a way to make sure people obey. There are some muslim countries that lift the heavy shades against women by interpreting the Quran in a different ways that’s beneficial for women, therefore changing part of the culture that marginalizes women. However there are so many interpretation tailored for the sake of one social system, regardless of how unfair it is.

Stay Alert

So, maybe we should all be wise to blame those morons who exploit the meaning of religion to create misery for others, and rewards true religious practitioners who use religion to promote peace and love. religion has never been the problem. It is no better than a pawn. People are the problems.

I think religion is sexy. No one can ever capture a “scientific” proof of its existence nor be justified to actually have felt it, but it still has the power to give people sort of mental support and hope, something to hold onto during tough times. It is true religion is misused and taken advantage of, but we should not neglect the fact that it is absurd to attack one’s religion for the evil acts committed by another individuals. I’d rather look at how one interprets the religious teachings and then execute it, since will realistically tell me more about that person than just believing that religion itself is the culprit for all the bad things.