Friday, September 17, 2010

Blind Faith - Prohibition

I will start the first part of trilogy on the blind faith. Trilogy will be composed of the essay on Prohibition, Denialism and Irrationality. This is an attempt born out of my anger on the ignorance, intolerance and indifference surrounding us. The need to confront violence and injustice began through questioning taboos and rituals. Overall, I am not here to worship what is known, but to question it.

Prohibition

When a small authorising groups such as state, businessmen or priestly class of a given population disapproves of and/or feels threatened by an activity in which a smaller group of that population engages, and seeks to render that activity legally prohibited. Most of the Blasphemy Laws, censor rules on piece of art like books, movies or music form in this category. Prohibitions are used as a tool to maintain status quo of the authority in the power.

Authority wants everything to be governed and monitored by too much closeness. It is all done in name of protecting the weakened from external harmful elements. They put prohibition by depicting falsely to inception of 'alien idea'. The deep belief that everything — especially anything open and external is already and by definition an intervention is part of the very identity and ideology of the image of the authority (state or religion).
Religion and state has always used prohibition masked as social customs to the majority. These victims of prohibition are mostly society's marginalized or uneducated working class member.  Legally disadvantaged position of women, poorer sections and religious minority helps authority to put violence, oppression and discrimination against them.

Let us take example of Islamic theology. Today, Islamic Prohibition is not solving any problem of the Muslims. Millatfacebook &  halaalsearch.com are way to grow in isolation than to confront others with reasons on world wide web. There is dearth need to question hypocritical religious laws that prohibit a wide range of normal human pleasures. Curosity of human nature is irrepresible by any laws. Take case of war on drugs. And only legalizers are the people who can bankrupt and destroy the rackets of prostitution and illegal alcohol and drugs. Only the prohibitionists can keep them alive as they try to repress the need of others. Demand and Supply principle is the axiomtic principle of the human nature.

The affinity for bans suggests the increasing prevalence of a worldview that wants to eliminate perspectives that are repugnant, rather than develop intellectual arguments against them. It is always more productive to engage with, rather than censor. Prohibitionism based laws have the added problem of calling attention to the behavior that they are attempting to prohibit. This can make the behavior interesting and exciting, and cause its popularity to increase. These prohibitionists made a serious miscalculations: they reacted to their failure by demanding the laws be tightened even more. When trying to block information backfires, it gives rise to the Streisand effect.

A conscious individual in this society has to constant tightrope walk between tradition and emancipation, between freedom and censorship. Today, there are many people that have been killed or persecuted, through bigotry, intolerance and iniquitous blasphemy laws. Hence,I am raged to ask this question: Is all and anything justified in the name of faith ?

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