Very interesting articles, both. Reminds me of the movie Vendetta. Perfect security can only be guaranteed in a world where humans do not exist. As long as they do, they will have dogmas. And every problem has its roots in some dogma.For religions, it is - there is one true god, our god. Every other god is false and those who follow them are heathen/ pagan/ infidels. And they need to be brought to book. And things go downhill from there, spiralling into an unending and uncontrollable cycle of violence, started by a few religious zealots, but whose after effects haunt generations to come. They will go to any extent to accomplish their megalomaniacal dreams. Islam is the current victim of such zealots. Christianity has been there previously.As far as hinduism goes, people were content with following the asinine caste system and insipid rituals till the RSS, VHP and similar organisations came up and tried to enforce the religion by fiat. Unlike islam or christianity, hinduism does not have a single god or prophet. It is a highly personal religion and no one has the right to tell a hindu what to do and what not to. If they think they can do that, they can go and f**k themselves (I can say this because I am a former hindu. Now I am an athiest - no religion, no god, no caste, nothing. Just me.) The RSS and VHP are hinduism's answer to the taliban. Taliban tore down the bamiyan buddhas and these b*****ds did the same to the Babri masjid. Who cares if a Ram temple existed there or not? If Aurangzeb destroyed it, they can go and settle the issue with him in heaven or hell. Why do it here?Another dogma is of the societal kind which lead to crackpot ideologies like communism and its various forms. Here, the individual is not subject to the whims and fancies of god, but of society. Private property, freedom and anything personal is bad. Anything done for the society is good. So the individual is chained to society and spends his entire life working without any personal gain. But since communism cannot work on its own, some individuals have to take control. They become more equal than others. And mass murder, lies, torture etc. are instruments of state policy because no rational person will work on such terms.The final kind, which the articles mention, is the dogma of preserving our way of life. The argument is - if we want to preserve the US/ UK way of life against attack from islamic fundamentalists, we have to give up more and more of our freedom. Terrorism is a problem. If the participants happen to be muslims, deal with it. Don't take it out on the entire community and don't expect apologies from them everytime something happens. Jurisprudence says that sons are not responsible for the debts of their fathers nor for their actions. The same principle has to be applied.Islam is an easy target because all major terrorists acts in the west have been accomplished by disgruntled muslims. The numbers are few, but if they think that killing innocent people will quell the fire in their hearts lit by actual and percieved assaults on islam by the west and even India, they are sadly mistaken. There cannot be any justification for the killing of innocent people.Knowing people, their irrationality and the ease with which they descend into any phobia, nothing can be done about the islamophobia sweeping the world. Irrationality cannot be argued with. Anyway, people seem to have forgotten that suicide bombings were invented by the IRA and LTTE. Al Qaeda and Co. are great copycats. What this does, however, is feed the security frenzy. Enterprising businessmen in US are selling bomb proof rooms, laws are being passed every day that will 'curb' terrorism, without considering what effect it has on civil liberties and every kind of shitty ideology is being propagated in the name of security.The day people can be lifted off the streets without any questions being asked, and burden of proof of guilt shifts from the state to the accused, that is the end of democracy and freedom. It all boils down to what freedoms are allowed to an individual by the state. It is the individual vs. the state, every time, and has been so for centuries.
