Why the notion of faith is equivalent to poison. Part-2

Parasitic Infection

To understand how exactly parasitic religious beliefs can be to the conscious mind, we’ll have to delve into the world of biology for a bit. Here we shall explore some of the more common examples in detail. Some are already within our grasp –

·         Most of us are probably familiar with rabies or hydrophobia. This particular disease generally originates from animal bites with the most common occurrence being bit by a rabid dog. Now if we do not seek proper medical help immediately the rabies virus will latch onto our consciousness and fester thereafter. As a result our infected mind tends to function like that of a rabid dog in turn. The affected individual now is capable of infecting others around him as well. In a way virus renders us incapable of retaining control over our conscious minds.

Religion, tends to operate in a similar manner. Instead of biting other people it tends to utilise holy dictums or Jihadi manifestos to induce the virus into other people’s systems infecting them to the core, converting their normally healthy conscious into a suicidal maniac. That suicidal maniac in return drives a plane straight into the twin tower. Or on a day when it is particularly “inspired” it tends to seek and destroy, fishing out atheists like “Thaba Baba” for fun and then to murder them in cold blood, or as they put it to exact “justice”.

Virally infected thoughts

Time and again history has provided substantial evidence to incriminate how ‘belief’ once settled, has later morphed and mutated into the nuclear weapons which have wrought mass destruction upon this world, taking millions of innocent lives with it. Battles fought in the name religion are sufficiently gory illustrations themselves. Some of them include –

·         The first crusade which was assembled in the year 1905. That year thousands of people were slaughtered and countless more displaced in Rhine valley Germany because of ‘Deus Vult’ (God’s wishes). The entire population city of Jerusalem was nearly annihilated, all in the name of cleansing the city in order to make it “holy”.

·         The ‘Battle of Jamaal’ contested in ancient Arab, coincided with the death of nearly ten thousand Muslims. Muslims, dear readers, killed by other Muslims, their own brethren. The father of Islam Prophet Muhammad himself according to history is known to have been the slayer of about 700 prisoners, all hailing from the Bani Quraish.

·         According to the Bible (no. 31:16-18), Prophet Musa is responsible for the murders of about a 168,000 defenceless women.

·         During the third crusade, on the orders of Richard, three thousand prisoners- a congregation mostly comprised of women and innocent children were slaughtered without remorse. Ismaily Shia Muslims at one stage used to conduct covert operations to identify and kill those with other faiths and beliefs.  From the 11^th to the 13^th century many influential leaders in Iraq, Iran and Syria lost their lives. Their demise eventually came at the hands of the Mongols, considered a group of outright pirates themselves by history. But even that did little to veil their heinous crimes.    

·         In the year 1209, by the order of pope innocent the III, a verbal crusade was launched against Albigensian Christians settled in northern France. After they seized the city the soldier sought advice from their superiors on how to segregate the ‘believers’ from the ‘non-beleievers’.  The Pope in turn supplied, “Kill everyone”. And with those two words, about twenty thousand people were dragged by horses, marched onto to a discrete location and obliterated without a second thought.

·         The Incas established their reign in Peru sometime during the 12th Century. They were led by a group of priests, who in order to execute a holy initiation of sort and to prove their devotion to God that is, sacrificed 200 children by burning them alive.

·         After Pope Innocent the III’s antics in 12^th century, Albigensian “non-believers” across Europe, were hounded down like animals and murdered on sight. At times they were burned alive, at times poked to death with sharp weapons or simply beheaded. Pope Innocent the IV was thought to be the main instigator in this scheme. It is said that he ordered Robert Lee Borge, inquisitor for the mobile religious congregation, to kill 183 “non-believers” as it were, within one week.

·         When the ‘Black Death’, one of the most significant events in history was laying siege across Europe from 1348-1349, a rumour went around that it was because the Jews had mixed something poisonous in the water wells. Many Jews, based on this flimsy suspicion, where slaughtered to death mercilessly. In Germany particularly, many were burned alive and their bodies were stuffed into large alcohol boxes and floated down the Rhine River. North Germany saw Jews cluttered stiflingly into small compartments or rooms so that they die of suffocation. To accelerate the process they were lashed and whipped at times. The Thuringian prince announced that he had murdered his Jewish servant in the name of God of course, and he encouraged others to follow suit.

·         During the 1400’s, the Church redirected their attentions from “non-believers” to witchcraft. Many women were branded “witches” and burned alive by the Church’s orders. This ‘Witch Burning’ ritual at a point turned into mass hysteria in almost 12 countries in Europe but the question still remains as to how many women were actually murdered? The number could be anywhere between a hundred, to two hundred thousand. Villages, settlements were decimated all in the name of identifying and eradicating “witches”. During 10^th century France, particularly in a province called Alsace, 5000 “witches” were burned alive. In Hamburg Bavaria, 900 hundred people perished under similar circumstances. This systematic elimination of witches all in the name of faith, had managed to eclipse all forms of religious barbarity in history up until that point.

·         On the other hand in 15^th century India, the Kapaliks, devotees of the Goddess Kali, slaughtered human beings and offered them as sacrifice to the Goddess. This horrid ritual saw almost two hundred thousand people lose their lives. Till today this ceremony exists in many temples across the world. However due to the modernization of rules and regulations in society, priests are prohibited from sacrificing human beings. Thus instead, they take their frustrations out on innocent animals like a goat, in order to satisfy the blood thirsty Kali. 

·         Once Anabaptists were chastened by Catholics and Protestant authorities. The Anabaptist successfully captured the city of Munster in Germany, establishing the “New Zion” in the process. In retaliation, the priests led an armed campaign against the Anabaptists. After they successfully took back the city, they murdered and strung Anabaptist leaders from the towers of the church.

·         The year 1801 saw Romanian priests lead a series of protestations against Jewish people, the result of which saw 128 Jews murdered without cause.

·         In 1988 when the Bahai arrived to preach their religion in Persia, a group of Islamic hardliners took offense in their action. In response they chose to imprison Bahai preachers and eventually kill them. Within the next two years, the fundamentalist government then residing over Persia, terminated nearly 20,000 Bahai. The streets of Tehran were quite literally bathed in blood.

·         During the British rule on the subcontinent in 1857, there was a rumour that went around claiming that the cartridges of the Enfield rifle are spiked with oil derived pig and cow fat. That instigated a harrowing chain reaction of incidents during which many innocent men were murdered without cause.

·         The battle of Christero in 1920 saw 90,000 Mexicans perish.

·         A conflict which raged between Christians, Animists and Muslims from 1950 to 1960, saw 500,000 people perish in between.

·         In Guyana Gerorgetown 1978, Reverend Jim Jones murdered a travelling congressman and three journalists. But after that, he along with 900 other people committed mass suicide. An event, which is regarded as one of the most shocking incidents in world history today.

·         Saudi Arabia in 1977 saw a young princess and her lover publicly executed for committing adultery. In Pakistan 1987 the daughter of a lumberjack was held culpable of committing “Zena”, and was ordered to be publicly executed by having stones thrown at her. In 1984, in an almost similar incident, a master and his maid servant were publicly executed on grounds that they were in an illicit relationship together.

·         In 1983 catholic terrorists invaded a Protestant Church and gunned down all the faithful within. Almost 2600 people lost their lives.

·         A series of suicide-bombing incidents in Lebanon 1975, saw almost 130,000 people lose their lives.

·         The conflict between the Buddhist Singholis and Hindu Tamils in the 1980s and 1990s respectively, quite literally converted Sri-Lanka in to pits of hell.

·         In India the Sikhs campaigned that that they be allocated a separate religious state in Punjab. They came to christen it as “Khalistan” (Land of the Pure). Led by one Jarnain Vrindanwala, a man governed by extremism himself, he famously taught his followers that it is their “holy duty” to condemn those that oppose them to the pits hell. The 80s saw many Hindus murdered discretely across India.

·         In 1989, controversy surrounding the writer of “Satanic Verses” one Salman Rushdi, prompted Ayatullah Khomeni, one of Iran’s most recognizable religious figures issued a “fatwa” (religious dictum) against him. The worldwide Islamic community meanwhile demanded his head in a platter without even reading his book properly. It is not new for people to receive rash but credible death threats because of the issues they raised against Islam. People like Monsur Al Hazzaz, Ali Dasti, Aziz Nesin, William Negard, Nagib Mahfuz, Taslima Nasrim, Dr. Younous Shaikh, Robert Hussain and Ayan harsi ali to name a few, have all been harassed to the point of being actually murdered in some cases, or forced to flee their countries out of fear for their lives.

·         In California USA 1997, a ‘UFO’ religious group called “Heaven’s Gate”, committed mass suicide in an attempt to cross over on to what they described as the “next segment” of life. The group consisted of 39 people.

·         In 2003, in an attack co-ordinated by Al-Qaeda on American soil, so the twin tower collapse after an aeroplane was driven straight at them. The attack saw the deaths of almost 300 American citizens and set forth a chain of events which shook the world.

·         After the BNP-Jamat coalition party came into power in Bangladesh in 2001, a series of hostile operations singling out Hindu families took place. Many women such as young Purnima Rani were raped in fact, 92 days after the results of the election had been announced a reported 228 accounts of rape took place and in the following three months, that number climbed up to 1000. 98% of the victims were either Hindu or of a related caste.

·         On the 27^th of February 2004 writer Humayun Azad, infamous for his writing against the customs and norms in Bangladesh, was chopped to near death by Islamic fundamentalists hailing from JMB. His injuries were grave enough to push him towards eventual death.  

·         In the year 2005 on the 30^th of September, a Danish newspaper which went by the name of ‘Gelends Posten’, published 12 cartoon caricatures depicting Prophet Muhammad. Their actions provoked the fury of the worldwide Islamic community who in turn resorted to extreme measures as their rebuttal. In Pakistan an Imam deemed a reward of 1 million dollars as price for the head of one of the cartoonists. Amidst all the chaos many innocent people wre killed in Syria , Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Muslims in Britain meanwhile led protest with banners reading – “Behead those who say Islam is a violent religion”.

·         The last time Bangladesh was presided over by a caretaker government, 21 year old cartoonist Arif was jailed because of his hand in the creation of the “Muhammad cat” joke. His indictment was followed up by more drama this time from the editor of “The Daily Prothom Alo”, who sought the forgiveness from the then Khotib of the Baitul Mokarram Mosque.

The events listed above are equivalent to just a drop of water in a vast ocean of incidents marred with religious barbarism. I’m confident that if an attempt to document all these events is undertaken, it will comfortably surpass the “Mahabharat”. I have already explored in length just how effectively the virus named “blind faith” is utilized to manufacture terrorism earlier in the book. Some seek to derive inspiration from the ‘good verses’ laid down in these various religious books and perform well in their lives. Some meanwhile seek to derive inspiration to commit terrorism from the more ‘violent’ verses of these books. And that is why I’d like to reiterate that these verses are nothing Trojan Horses waiting to implode – they’re disguised viruses!