Savita Halappanavar died after she was allegedly denied an
abortion in a pro-life Catholic country. Malala Yousafzai survived a near fatal
encounter with the Taliban bullet. Chris Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya
was killed by terrorists who attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi,
Libya. Dissimilar that these deaths may
be and dissimilar may be the circumstances that have brought them about, yet a
common thread links them together: death in the name of religion. While all
instances of death that occurred or could have occurred took place in different situations, it was religious fundamentalism that sowed the seeds.
Malala lived in the Swat province, a region that militant
groups controlled, and in her campaign for the rights of girls to be educated,
had written a diary on Taliban atrocities for the BBC Urdu service. The
Pakistan Taliban said it carried out the attack because Malala was 'promoting
secularism'. Savita, who was under immense pain and agony as a result of miscarrying
the foetus, repeatedly asked for her pregnancy to be terminated. Doctors, who
could have saved her, turned down her pleas because the fetal heart beat was
still present, and abortion could not be performed because Ireland is a
Catholic country. Chris Stevens, a career
diplomat whose humility, warmth and integrity won him friends across the Middle
East, friends who came to trust him even as they doubted his government. Stevens’ tragic death came as a 'spontaneous
response' and a 'senseless outrage' to an online preview of a film considered
offensive to Islam. Extremist forces
decried Malala's attempts to secure education for girls and women, for they
believed that "whom so ever leads a campaign against Islam and Sharia is
ordered to be killed by Sharia.”. So much said for the causes that have led to
the deaths and the attempted annihilation of lives that ought to be lived.
If one can make sense out of the analogies, one will agree
that Chris Stevens and Hallapanavar passed away because religion was placed
above their lives. Malala's survival, on the other hand, is hailed as God's
will. The question that arises is, whose will determines our lives: is it our
own, or is it the will of the fundamental forces around us that determines our
right to live; or further still, is it the will of the invisible force that is
believed to be the ‘sole custodian’ of life and death? While the latter seems a
matter of faith and thus abstract, the former are more concrete and thus become
the real factors that govern our lives in a world ridden with prejudices and
dogmas. While 'religious' doctors refused to stop a tiny, failing heart beat
that they knew was dying and thereby posing an enormous risk to a healthy
heart, they did not care to save the woman who had a right to live and to be
protected.
These examples may hardly be enough when one goes back to a
host of killings that have taken place the world over in the name of religion.
Graham Staines’ burning to death in Keonjhar district of Orissa, India, way
back in 1999 still gives one goosebumps as one thinks of it. Public protests
condemn Savita’s abortion death. A nation has mourned the death of its diplomat,
and the world prays for Malala's speedy recovery. What remain unchanged in the face of these
reactions are the dogmas that support these deaths. When Hitler defended his
rights to exterminate the Jews, he said, "Hence today I believe that I am
acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself
against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." The world stood shocked as the ‘great
emissary of evil’ leashed genocide against those held together primarily by
their religious beliefs.
It is paradoxical that religion, a set of beliefs that
unites people even as it polarizes them into secular forces, becomes the
underlying factor of one's right to live. The irony of religion lies in the
fact, that even as it is created to uphold life and provide a sense of
direction to righteous living, it increasingly becomes a weapon to exterminate
life. How right is the self-righteousness
that we practice in the name of religion? How does a false sense of
guardianship and the consequent security that religion extends to its
believers, stand vindicated? Furthermore, how just is the fanaticism that comes
with a blind adherence to religion? Why doesn’t intellectual responsibility
triumph over religious faith? Is human life so fragile that it should crumble
under the force of someone else’s belief? If this is what religions stands for,
why does the religion of humanity not raise its head?
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