Fanatical Faith
Faith, like everything else, requires sensibly moderate reflection. Not that a believer needs to be tepid in his spiritual response to the ideology and ethos of the particular religion. But there is a need to be respectful of the religion in the sense that to divine from the precepts and teachings set out in that religion's sacred texts an urging that runs counter to all moral and ethical behaviours both inside and outside religion must be avoided by all reasonably intelligent adherents.Yet the fact is that believers of any religion are capable of violently anti-social reactions. We've seen that happening in Burma, and who would ever believe that Buddhists, those most gentle of religious practitioners could command viciously inhumane performances on the part of their rulers? The Taliban didn't think twice about destroying ancient and revered Buddhist statues.
In modern Christianity there has latterly emerged groups and individuals whose reaction to abortion goes beyond accepted Christian practise. Those infected by a severely impaired complex of having been conscripted by God Almighty to wreak revenge on "child killers" murder abortion-providing doctors.
The world observed the unsettling spectre of Catholics and Protestants forming terror groups to prey on one another, blowing up civic infrastructures, and private homes and murdering innocent people for what they represented; a sect other than their own and thus ripe and ready for pitiless slaughter.
Fundamentally Orthodox Jews have not been immune to the catastrophic belief among the faithful that God calls upon them to strike in His name. There are rare, but dreadful instances of late, calling to mind the assassination of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the murder of Muslim worshippers by a mentally unstable Jew, in Hebron.
Indira Ghandi's trusted Sikh bodyguard assassinated her in revenge for her having ordered an attack on their most sacred shrine, the Golden Temple at Atritsar to put down an insurrection. A similar tragic end was in store for her son. Sikh extremists set a bomb that brought down Air India Flight 182. Japanese Buddhist fundamentalists used sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway.
And, most famously of all in our common latter-day history, the airplane suicide attacks of 9-11 when Islamist jihadists wreaked their final deadly revenge on thousands of Americans, demonstrating breathtaking initiative dedicated to hatred and bloodlust in their searing detestation of the West.
We have not-too-distant memory of Pol Pot and his murderous regime, Stalin and his, although those were ideology-driven. The bloody turmoil between Bosnians and Serbians, the Muslim state of Sudan horribly victimizing their own citizens in Darfur. And the tribal, political, religious wars in Somalia, Ethiopia and elsewhere on the Dark Continent.
Finally, back to Islam, where terror-inspiring, death-delivering jihadists prey on their own in Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories. All religions somehow manage to breed fundamentalist malcontents, certifiable psychopaths all to eager to take upon themselves the dreadful hand of God's commands to kill.
Inspired by their vision of what God requires of believers, moral compass completely absent and replaced with a new version owing its morality to the interpretation of God's word that most suits their bloody purposes, they accuse, swoop and avenge in the name of Allah. And although some rare members of all the world's religions somehow manage to corrupt the original message, it is Islam that has produced and continues to produce the bulk of terror.
Righteously fundamental, rigid in their belief, they cling passionately to the conviction they do God's will. Their zealotry knows no boundaries, believing that God stands behind them, urging them on to do their duty. Theirs is a struggle of belief incarnate. They devote themselves to the divine message that they apprehend for the higher moral purpose fundamental to their belief.
All of which fits nicely into a predisposed fanatical worldview of personalities utterly without social conscience driven by a rigorous religious faith. Delivering death at God's command. For there is no higher power to command otherwise. And God responds handsomely, offering the divine gift of immortality to fevered martyrs.
These are rare, but horribly disturbing instances of a pathology peculiar to a mind on the cusp of disequilebrium, ready to commit atrocious acts of anti-social violence of the first order.
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, December 27, 2007
<< Home