20
Syed Kamran Mirza (Bangladesh)
Many times I have been asked by my friends and peers why I am not a true believer in Islam, although I belonged to a Muslim family. I never thought that I would ever disclose my own belief to the public for fear of social insult that may be inflicted upon me, as the apostate in Islam is punished by death. Things have changed a lot at the beginning of the twenty-first century and Islam has begun to be scrutinized, criticized, and evaluated by many freethinkers among Muslims throughout the world. Especially after the horrendous incident of September I I by the Jihadi Muslims of Bin Laden's al-Qaeda on the soil of the United States, Islam has fallen into a hot pan of criticism by the entire world. I thought this was the time to be fair to my friends and admit that I am no longer a believer in Islam. The erosion of my belief system started over a long period, slowly and gradually. Dear readers, let me take you to my childhood in a remote village of Bangladesh to discover how I was changed.
I was born in a traditional Muslim family of Bangladesh. My parents were devout Muslims and their mother tongue was Bengali. They both used to pray regularly, observe fasting (Ramadan), and follow other conventional rituals of Islam. Nonetheless, neither of my parents were fanatic Muslims in any way. My father was quite a liberal person of honest personality, despite his regularities in prayers and daily Koran recitations. My father established a beautiful mosque in our house at his own expense in which he used to recite the Koran in Arabic with a sweet melodious voice. He also performed the pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca. My father was a middle-class zaminder (landlord) who loved people of all religions equally. As a result, he had many friends from the local Hindu community.
In my early childhood days, I underwent religious education every morning from 6 to 8) in the maktab (Koranic school) before I went to primary school of general education at 10 A.M. In the maktab I learned all those suras/rules/methods required to observe five daily prayers, and also learned to read the Koran in Arabic. However, I never understood the meaning of any word of the Koran or the suras, which used to bother me very much. From my boyhood, I was very inquisitive, wanting to know about the religion of Islam. I wanted to know about the meaning of Allah, the Prophet, and angel. I often questioned mullahs about Allah, as to who he is and how he looks, where he lives, what he eats, angels, hell, heaven, and myriad other things related to the religion of Islam. Nevertheless, I was never satisfied with their answers. I was always trying to judge everything with human logic, which angered the mullahs. I used to ask my father who Allah was and where he lived. My father used to answer: "Allah is very big and powerful, and Allah lives over the sky (other side of the sky) with his many angels who help him in every business. Allah looks over all of us from the sky, decides the fates of everybody, decides every action taken on Earth." Then my father also talked about the dangers of hell and the good life of heaven, which I had already learned from those mullahs in the maktab. In those early childhood days I was praying regularly, but I did not attempt to read the Koran because I was not interested in something that I did not understand. One day, I asked my father if he understood the Koran which he read so routinely. My father replied: "I also do not understand what I am reading, but Huzur (pir) told me to read it everyday which will bring immense sawaabs (recompense, reward, profit) for me and for my family. Allah will reward me for reading the Koran daily. You don't need to understand the meanings of the Koran. Just by reading the Koran you will get lots of sawaabs."
I could not conceive what my father told me about reading the Koran without understanding the meaning, and I did not read the Koran again until recently, in translation. Fortunately, my father never forced me to read the Muslim holy book, but he asked me to pray regularly, which I was doing anyway. I was proud and happy to be a born Muslim, since I learned from mullahs, learned men, and my elders that Islam is the ultimate truth and best religion in the whole world. The Koran is the infallible words of Allah, who loves only the religion of Islam, and all other religions are simply bad, people of other religions are all kafirs and destined to go to hell. Muslims are impeccable human beings, and Allah loves only Muslims. Only we, the Muslims, are supposed to go to heaven and nobody else can enter the gate of heaven. I was also told that only Muslims would be pros perous in this world and hereafter. Among the peoples of the entire world, Muslims are the only perfect and good human beings, and so on. Also, I learned from the pirs (holy men) and mullahs that someday the entire world will be converted to Islam. Even though I was praying daily (namaaz), I did not observe fasting. I used to enjoy attending Waaz Mahfils (sermons) to listen to all those myths about Islam and prophets, but I had hard times digesting those incredible stories of Islamic miracles and the like, which were recounted by village maulanas with their extreme, loud voice of fanatical zeal. I used to make fun of those illiterate village musullee.s (devotees) who used to weep with their endless tears of fear induced by the dreadful scenarios of hell fires as described by a fanatic maulana. However, I could hardly believe such cruel tortures would be inflicted by a merciful Allah, nor could I imagine all those fanciful lifestyles of Islamic heavens described by mullahs.
Life went on, and when I was in the eighth grade, my father was preparing to transfer me to a good high school in a district town for a better education. At that time, something happened to me that gave a big shake-up to my belief system in religion. My father and most of other adult Muslims in our village were inureed (disciples) of one famous pir of Barisal (southern district of Bangladesh). This pir used to visit our area during the monsoon period in a decorative boat (popularly called Pinnish) with his several disciples, cooks, and servants. At the time my father was planning to send me to the district town, that pir arrived at our house with his gang of followers. There was a big festival of celebration for Pir Shaheb in our house, with lots of delicious foods being prepared to serve the wise man and his retinue. At that moment, when the pir heard from my father about the plan of sending me to a district town high school, the pir asked my father not to send me to a high school. Instead, the pir asked my father to send me to a madrassah (religious school) for religious education by which he (father) could please Allah. My father basically agreed with his pir. Later when he disclosed this matter to our family, everybody in my family (elder brothers, sisters, and mother) including me were furious and vehemently protested at this silly idea of the pir. My father dropped the suggestion of the pir upon pressure and agreed to send me to the high school. Later, when the same pir came to our house next year, we learned from his close disciples that the pir himself had three sons, all of whom he had sent to Dhaka to study in a good high school, and one of his sons would study medicine. The pir never sent any of his own children to madrassah to please Allah, on the contrary, he advocated his disciples to send their children to madrassah. We discussed this hypocritical attitude of the pir with our father. He was shocked to discover this hypocritical attitude of the pir. I, too, was very much disturbed by the selfishness of the pir. For the life of me, I could not understand why he was suggesting to my father that he send me to madrassah while his own children were studying in the English school. But such was life in rural Bangladesh in those days.
While in the school at district town, I was still praying regularly and following some of the Islamic rituals, and, of course, still believed in Allah, hell, and heaven. I was always inquisitive about Islam, religion, and Allah. Whenever I got the chance, I asked questions about religion. One thing that was very strange to me was the fact that religion and poverty go hand in hand. I mean, poor people are always very deeply religious, and the rich and affluent were mostly liberal or nonreligious. Although mullahs told me that Allah loves Muslims or religious persons, I could never see the proper reflection of that in real life. If Allah really loves Muslims, then how could he not see the distress and sufferings of the poor Muslims? While I was still in our village home, I was very fond of attending various religious gatherings like Waz Mahf11, Urus (festival of rituals to commemorate the birth or death of a famous pir), milad mahfil (meetings), and the like. There in the Waz Mahfil I had many opportunities to listen to religious sermons by maulanas who, on the one hand, used to proclaim ample rewards from Allah for devout Muslims in this world and hereafter, and little or no success for the infidels in this world and dreadful punishment of hell in the hereafter. On the other hand, the same maulana used to say that sometimes Allah let Muslims remain poor and to suffer the abject poverty to test their iman (devoutness to Allah, faith). This flip-flop attitude of Allah used to bother me a lot, and I just could not conceive this idea of testing iman. The entire thing looked to me incongruous and did not make any sense
SOME CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES
Maulawi Kader Mullah was our village mullah who taught me the Koran and methods of prayer. This mullah was very poor but an honest, amiable type of person. I liked him because of his simplicity and honesty. This Kader Mullah used to recite the Koran twice a day without fail, in addition to his daily prayers and other rituals. As a child I wished him financial success, as he was so poor that he could hardly get two square meals a day. His son was my playmate and most of the time he was poorly fed or sometimes not fed at all because there was no rice at home. Many a time I fed him from my house with whatever I was able to save for him. This Kader Mullah never saw any happiness in his life, although in my judgment he was the most devout Muslim. Many years later when I inquired about Kader Mullah, I was told he had died of a serious sickness; his family suffered untold misery of poverty and one day they left the village for an unknown destination. Poor Kader Mullah died of malnourishment and disease. This cruel incident was a shocking surprise to me, and I never understood why a Muslim like Kader Mullah had to suffer to such an extent when almighty Allah is so merciful? Kader Mullah did his humble Munajat (supplication for blessings extending his two hands) to get enough food five times each day for sixty years. Yet the merciful Allah never heard his prayers even once!
Cholera and Smallpox Eradication
In my school period (in the 1950s), I saw that village people always took the help of pirs, saints, and mullahs in order to get well from their diseases. There was no good doctor in the rural areas of the erstwhile East Pakistan, and sick people had to depend mostly on quack doctors, pirs, saints, and mullahs. They used to depend on pani para (hydrotherapy) received from the famous pir or saints of the locality. Every year during wintertime, cholera and smallpox were almost epidemic in rural East Pakistan. The mullahs used to give religious sermons in Waz Mahfil that Allah was sending cholera and smallpox to punish the sinners. Needless to say, the village people did not have the faintest idea at all as to what caused cholera or smallpox! They strongly believed that these diseases were purely sent by Allah as punishment. Our local maulawi shaheb (preacher) used to advise us to perform more regular prayers to avoid ghazab (curse from Allah, wrath of Allah) and he used to arrange cholera and smallpox elimination prayers every year in our village. These "cholera-driving" methods were really very interesting. The pir from Barisal used to arrive at our village and the entire village was informed about the ceremony of the cholera-driving prayer at night. It used to start after Esha prayer (last prayer of the day). The pir, along with his several assistant mullahs, used to stand at the center of the Uthan (open space of every house), and hundreds of village musallees (devout Muslims) and their children would gather around them, all extending both their hands toward the sky. Then the real drama of rituals would begin. First, the big pir used to recite some dua (supplication) in Arabic (which we never understood) for a few minutes, and after that the remaining small mullahs would recite in loud voices some incredible sermons and Zikirs (chanting) together for a few minutes. Then the big pir used say in Bengali that he has asked the devil of cholera and smallpox to leave this home immediately. After that, the joint rituals of Zikir in chorus used to begin, in which everybody would participate. For about twenty minutes, everybody performed Zikirs in loud voices, and then there was a final Munajat (supplication) by the pir and that would conclude the cholera/smallpox driving ritual. The total time taken for this entire sermon was about an hour. Then we would go to another house and do the same, running from house to house until we had completed the entire village. To complete the entire village took the whole night, and we would return home the next morning. The pious pir used to return with a big chunk of cash and materials collected from each house for this job wonderfully done. The villagers would heave a sigh of relief, knowing that destructive cholera and smallpox could enter their houses no more. These ridiculous sermons of disease eradication used to happen every year until the mid-1960s, when village people somehow realized this nonsense ritual had no value in eradicating cholera and smallpox from their villages. The villagers were smart enough to know that cholera and smallpox were still afflicting the poor villagers with poor hygiene.
Natural Calamities
In my childhood, I heard from mullahs and pirs that Allah sends rains, storms, thunder, earthquake, and other natural calamities according to the needs and performances of humankind on Earth. In the monsoon, we had rain every day, causing floods, and the deluge used to bring all kinds of misery to our people. Then, in summertime, we saw continuous drought drying up ponds and canals and burning crops. To get rid of drought, people used to perform special prayers to Allah for rain. All these activities used to raise more and more questions in my mind about Allah and his whimsical purposes. I could not comprehend the acts of God in such a way. Why so much rain when we did not need it? Again, why so much drought when the land was already too dry? In 1954 there was a devastating flood submerging two-thirds of erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). I was a young boy still living in our village. I still remember vividly how the entire village was under water; all crops were under water and the cultivating lands around our house looked like an open sea. Moreover, it was raining almost every day making peoples' lives ever more precariously miserable. I could not understand the purpose of rain when there already was water-water everywhere. There was a sea of water submerging entire villages, on top of that, the rain was falling from the sky-cats and dogs every day and night. I was thinking and questioning: Why is Allah pouring water from the top when we are already inundated below? What was the purpose of pouring water over the water? How could a merciful, benevolent, and wise Allah justify this kind of unjust act? All those questions used to bother me very much. In spite of all this, people in the village were devout Muslims despite their extreme poverty.
Communal Riots
In our neighboring villages Hindu families lived peacefully with Muslims sideby-side for centuries, until 1947 when Pakistan was created by Jinnah as a consequence of his two-nation theory. First, during the partition (1947), there was a Hindu-Muslim riot in our area and many Hindus were killed because they were a very tiny minority in that area of densely populated Muslims. During that riot, I was a mere child so I did not quite understand why there was riot between Hindus and Muslims! Only thing later I learned from the seniors that Hindus are kafirs and bad people, so they have to die.
There were several good affluent Hindu families near our village and I had some school friends from those Hindu families. Several of them were very good friends of mine, with whom I used to go to school and play and eat together in their houses. I noticed that many times local Muslims were hostile toward those Hindus whenever any riots occurred in neighboring India. These scenarios of riots used to bother me very much, as it was very hard for me to conceive why Hindus in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had to die for crimes committed by some Hindus in Delhi or Bombay. One day I asked one local mullah if he supported killing of local Hindus for his Muslim brother in Delhi or Bombay. I was simply stunned and horrified by his reply. The mullah told me: "It is the sacred duty for the Muslims to kill kafirs. Hindus are kafirs, therefore it is our duty to kill them!" I asked him if it is written in the Koran or hadith to kill Hindus. The mullah replied, "Yes!" At that time, it was not possible to verify the mullah's assertion, since I did not understand a word of Arabic and there was no translated Koran available to me.
Later, in 1963, there was another riot in East Pakistan (as it was then called) during which I lost one of my Hindu university friends who left Pakistan for India as a refugee because his father was killed in that riot. After a few months, when I returned to my village home during summer vacation, I was told that most of those Hindu families that we had in our locality had left for India for fear of losing their lives in riots. I also learned that, along with some other Hindus, one of my boyhood friends, Nani Gopal, died in the riot of 1963. That news broke my heart. When I tried to remember the handsome childish face of Nani Gopal, I could not accept that terrible news. I was searching for answers for this tragedy, but nobody could answer my questions. I wanted to know how a religion could advocate killing humans of other beliefs. I wished I could ask Allah about this!
After my graduation from the university, I became a lecturer in the same institute. Immediately after that, I was sent to an Eastern European communist country for higher studies. I lived four long years in that communist country, where I got some experience that has changed my perspective about the world. I was told back home that a communist country is a godless country where people are generally nonbelievers. Before I arrived in that country, I thought the communist country must be poor because God does not love them, therefore these communists must be devoid of any glad tidings from Allah. In addition, I thought, communist people would be not good people and they would be devoid of any morality, or they may not be compassionate, either. At the beginning, I was somewhat suspicious about the general population in that country, and I was reluctant to socialize or talk with them. However, to my surprise, I found most people in that country were gentle, cordial, and very friendly. Ordinary people were very curious to know about me and my country, rut people, and so on, with much sympathy.
In those days, the number of foreigners was very small in that country; nonetheless, there were quite a few foreign students from the Middle Eastern and African countries in various universities. One day, I was sitting alone in the corner of a kavarna (tea stall) and was drinking a cup of tea when a middle-aged gentleman suddenly came to my table and asked permission to join me. Out of politeness I said yes, and he sat down next to me and immediately ordered two beers. When I asked, "Why two beers?" He replied, "One is for you and the other one is for me, if you have no objection." Then we talked about various issues, and I found him a very courteous and kind person. He told me that he was observing me from the other corner and I seemed to him very sad and lonely. He said during the Second World War he was in France, a foreign country for him, and he knew very well how painful it was to be alone in a foreign land. After a pause, he offered me friendship with his family, so that I would not suffer the same ordeal as he. He had two sons and one of them was just my age and was studying medicine. He gave me his phone number and address before he said good-bye to me.
I found them to be a good, respectful family who really extended their friendship to me. I used to go to their house almost every weekend to enjoy dinner with them. As long as I was staying in that country, this family gave me everything I missed-love, care, good advice, and lots of compassion. We discussed many different issues, like politics and social matters, with ease, but I found disappointing their comments when I brought up religious issues. The man I called "Uncle" (by his wish) was a die-hard communist and never believed in any deity at all. Sometimes he used to make some jokes about Islam, especially the system of four wives (polygamy), women's inferiority to men, the Prophet's polygamous habit, and the like, which hurt my feelings. You see, I was still proud of being a Muslim, and I loved the prophet Muhammad, Allah, and other features of Islam. It was difficult for me to take sarcastic jokes about Islam from others, even though I was not a practicing Muslim. This kind of joke about the Prophet's polygamous habits and other fallacies of Islam were common weapons thrown to me by many other friends and by some of the university teachers who used to question me about Islam. Sometimes I got so hurt and annoyed with their questions that I tried to answer with all my knowledge, and I was always defensive. I tried to defend our Prophet by whatever logic was possible. Nonetheless, I could not sell my logic to them.
Most of all, it was a mystery to me how these people were so good in all other aspects in spite of the fact that they were godless people. If they did not believe in Allah, hell, and heaven, then how and why were they good human beings? What made them such moral and perfect human beings without a belief in God? Back home in Bangladesh, I thought only the Muslims were good people and rest of the world's populations were simply bad people or not as perfect as Muslims. I found the majority of the people in that communist country were basically good, more sincere and honest than the people of Bangladesh. Out of one hundred people I could find ninety good ones; on the contrary, I could not find even twenty good people out of one hundred Bangladeshis. How was that possible? Besides, I found these communists were light years ahead of Muslims in the fields of science and technology. Otherwise, why would I come there for my higher studies? Compared to Bangladesh, this communist country was much richer and more developed. I pondered why. I found all the Muslim countries were desperately poor. Yet we, the Muslims, were claiming that we were God's chosen people! These are some (I have mentioned a few out of many) valid questions that used to bother my mind. I wanted to find the reason why Muslims were so poor. Why is the person who is super-pious desperately poor? Why did Kader Maulawi have to die in dire poverty and in hunger? Does Islam, or overreli- giosity, have anything to do with our poverty?
Another question brewing in my mind was the fact that the scientific field is totally under the control of the West. Out of one hundred famous scientists, I could not name even five Muslim scientists! Does religiosity have anything to do with it? My faith in religion was getting thinner and thinner day by day, and I decided to explore Islam more in detail. I decided to read the Koran and hadith when I got a chance in the future. Nevertheless, I still maintained my faith in Allah and his prophet, but with some skepticism. Finally, in 1969, my higher education was over and I achieved my Ph.D. from that communist country, and I left for home.
After returning home, I joined my alma mater as a teacher. Within a year, I got married. Life was really very romantic for a few months until the freedom struggle of the Bangalee nation began in March 1971. Being a staunch freedomloving Bangalee, I supported Muktijuddh (freedom fighting) wholeheartedly. But I was shocked to discover that most Islamists (Islamic clerics-mullahs, maulanas, qari, hafez, madrassah students) were generally supporting the Pakistani military junta in their cruel suppression of Bangalee movement. These mullahs were supporting the Jama'at-i Islami (religious party) of erstwhile East Pakistan. Mullahs and madrassah students were the nucleus of paramilitary forces (Razakar, Al-Badr, and Al-Shams) formed by the Pakistani military junta's chief intelligence officer, Maj. Gen. Rao Farman Ali Khan. The Pakistani military junta unleashed terror on the Bangalee nation with its fake slogan of saving Islam. They were killing Bangalee men, women, and children by the thousands daily throughout the country, burning thousands of homes, raping thousands of Bangalee women, and looting properties in the name of saving Islam. "Save Pakistan to Save Islam" was their slogan. And our Bangalee mullahs were brainwashed by this fake slogan of the Pakistani rulers, and they decided to dedicate their lives to protect Pakistan. These mullahs were supporting the oppressive Pakistani force with their minds and bodies. They were practically sold out to Pakistani army generals because the military tricked them into believing that by serving the military they were serving Islam.
I could not understand what Islam had to do with our freedom struggle for the Bengali nation. This betrayal of mullahs was the turning point in my faith, in my religious beliefs. In those days I was commuting between my university town and Dhaka, and I saw thousands of villages that were burned to ashes, many hundreds of innocent peoples who were killed in the rural areas of Bangladesh. In one such incident, local razakars (mullahs and inadrassah students) took my childhood friend Anwar Ali, a twenty-six-year-old young man from a neighboring village as a Muktijuddha (freedom fighter) suspect. These heartless Islamists tortured him for three days and nights, and eventually killed him with a bayonet. He was the only child of a village doctor popularly called "Doctor Uncle." In my childhood, Doctor Uncle used to treat me with fatherly affection. When the war was over, I went to see our Doctor Uncle in his village. On seeing me, both Doctor Uncle and his wife began crying like babies, rolling on the bare ground. That terrible scene was heartbreaking. I was trying to figure out how those mullahs (Razakars) could be so cruel as to snatch the only child of these unfortunate parents. I could not understand how those persons, after reading the Koran and hadith (so-called Allah's books), turned into such devilish human beings? Therefore, I immediately decided to investigate what was in the Koran and hadith that could make people worse than a ferocious lion.
That day, I started to read the Koran bit by bit. I purchased two translated Holy Korans, one in English and one in Bengali. I also purchased some renowned sahih hadiths books.' I also gathered the Bible, Bhagavat Gita, and some chapters of the Upanishads. I was reading the Koran, first very slowly but systematically from the beginning, and my intention was to finish the Koran. Before that, I had read the Koran selectively, some verses here and there with no clear-cut idea of what it was. The more I read the holy book, the more I was dismayed. My intention was to search divinity, philosophy, science, ethics, morality, social, and political issues in the Koran. But alas, the Koran was a book with no chronology, no philosophy, no science at all (but had plenty of erroneous science), plenty of problems in ethics and morality, ample redundancies, unfit social and political teachings by today's standards, and, above all, it had ample superstitious scriptures. I also found out that the Koran was a book full of hatred, cruelty, unethical matters-no divinity at all. Some of the hateful verses that bothered me most are:
O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors to each other.... (V.5 1)
If anyone desires a religion other than Islam (submission to Allah), never will it be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter He will be in the ranks of those who have lost (All spiritual good). (I11.85)
And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere. (VII139)
Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book (Christians and Jews), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (IX.29)
If you meet those who are infidels or non-believers, you cut their heads off and tie things around their necks, start a war and God will give victory and those who will die in the war fighting God will not forget their acts. (XLVII.4)
My childhood religious teacher (Huzur Shaheb, a mullah who taught me about religion) always used to tell me that Islam is the best religion, Allah's chosen religion, and the most peaceful religion. It is beyond my comprehension how religious scriptures can dictate to kill other human beings! I will never understand how a socalled religion of peace can dictate to kill. At the same time, I could not believe in a deity who advocates the killing of other humans. This was when I lost my faith in Islam completely and became a secular humanist. To me, all people are the same, and I do not make any distinction between any religions. Finally, I came to terms with the notion that religious identity is not at all important to me.
My conclusion was that the Koran was man-made, as other holy books that predate Islam were, and I came to the realization that the Prophet himself primarily created it for his own self-serving, adventurous ambitions. Along with his own self-serving scriptures, he plagiarized verses from various books such as the Bible, Book of the Zoroastrians, other older religions, and local folklore. The Koran is full of folklore and mythological stories of ancient Arabia. Many verses were purely self-serving for Muhammad. Many verses are so unethical that no divine power would have ever uttered such silly things! Then I also read the hadith-sahih Bukhari, sahih Muslim, sahih Tirmidhi,2 and others-and I found that the hadith are full of superstition and even worse than the Koran. Then I read the entire Bible and I found that the Bible is not holy, either; it is also full of junk talk and did not sound divine to me at all. One thing I should mention here that in the Bible there is a decent chronology and redundancy is very rare. In the New Testament, I found some good philosophical parables and also I found some good humane talks by Jesus. However, overall, there is no doubt that this book was also man-made. Other books, such as the Gita and the Upanishads, are all more or less the same-man-made books. But the Bible and other religious books do not have hateful dictums, as is the case with the Koran. And that is for sure!
My conclusion about religion in general is that all religions are man-made. Either all those prophets were pathological liars, or they were ambitious psychopaths who wanted to establish social order in the name of a supreme being. I do not believe for a moment that religion in general has any import toward one's morality, and I do believe that a person can be morally rich even without a reli gion. Most psychologists, philosophers, and scientists overwhelmingly reject religious models of human morality, and for good, valid reasons biologists reject the laughable biblical and Koranic creation theory.
Religion has some good things in it, but in general, bad things outweigh the good things, which has created a division among humans rendering racial and sectarian competition leading to immense miseries and intolerance among people. Moreover, in this material world we perhaps do not need any personal God or Allah or Bhagavan who will reward people for their kowtowing or sycophancy, some supreme, jealous God who severely punishes humans who do not kowtow to him and even punishes those who have not commited bad acts in the world. We perhaps need a very compassionate and a merciful God who would help people in their times of misery and sorrow. As modern science is progressing day by day and humans are getting knowledge about their surroundings, people all over the world are realizing that it is science, not religion, that gives humans knowledge and courage to fight natural calamities and tackle other social and medical problems. Besides, in my opinion, in this era of scientific revolution, one does not need to believe in any puritanical, superstitious deity, which only benefits people in an imaginary way and not in the real sense. Religion unquestionably makes divisions and creates prejudice among people. Therefore, we should believe in just one religion, and that is "Human Religion"-in other words, we should believe in humanity. This would invariably stop any future bloodbath and would spare future generations from the bondage of religious slavery. The time has finally come to slay the dragon of monotheism because these religions have done more harm to humanity than all other religions put together. Therefore, the sooner we get rid of all the religions, the better it will be for future generations. And this is my heartfelt wish.
NOTES
1. Especially the collections of traditions of al-Bukhari (d. 870 A.D.) and Muslim (d. 875 A.D.). Their compilations are often called Sahih, meaning "sound" or "authentic."
2. al-Bukhari (d. 870 A.D.), Muslim (d. 875 A.D.), al-Tirmidhi (d. 892 A.D.).