In response to : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/4863

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I slightly disagree with the post of Lopa in certain aspect. Before proceeding further I wish to mention two quotes from famous free-thinkers that sum up my position about religion perfectly. I would like to share them with you.

1) "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -Pascal

2) "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."-- by Nobel Laureate physicist Steven Weinberg..

Your sound logic about Jamaatees and extremists are well accepted. I completely agree what you said - " We should be equally cautious of the extremist people who have the power to destroy anything they want." Yes, I whole-heartedly accept. However, it seems you have either missed or technically escaped one vital point. Have you ever asked yourself  why a person become a jamati or why a person become a extremist ? It is just because of religious conviction. Not that a jamati is born as a culprit. A jamati becomes jamati because he thinks that in this way he is serving Islam. In 1971 many Razakars who were even by profession Professor, engineer, Doctors had their collaboration with Pakistani soldiers and thereby involved in indiscriminate killing, burning, looting and raping directly or indirecly. You know, thousands of hindu widows were burned out in the past because of religious conviction- SATI. Still today many of the muslim women are stoned to death. Dr Younous Shaikh was accused of blasphemy in Pakistan and put into death. Do you think rulers are regretful for such misconduct ? NO ! They are quite happy and cheerful to get rid of those apostates and non-believers! They are not even ashamed of their misdeeds ! Why ?  Read again what Pascal uttered - "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

I, however,  do not disagree there are a vast population who are religious but not committing any crime. It is because they are using commonsense, not the divine rule that they ought to follow written in holy books. This is the "common sense"  we mukto-monas have to emphasize  cause this sense is not "commonly" available to the common people. We have to understand that in spite of the primitive uses of explaining  the meaning of phenomena and providing a sanction of moral conduct, the faith in god and religion corrupts life in the long run, since god and all religions are fundamentally false. The immense ignorance of the vast masses of people end the wide inequalities, fanaticism and extremism  are direct results of the theistic/religious faith. Therefore if knowledge should be real and morality should be sound, the faith in god and belief in outmoded religion should be obviously replaced by scientific method and social consciousness for acquiring knowledge and sustaining morality respectively. The change entails a revolution in the outlook and in the ways of life. But, the revolution is necessary to save mankind from superstition, fanaticism, dangaa (religious war) and  Prejudice which we have inherited through ages of faith in god and vicious religion.

"Let another name of the religion be Humanism" (- Taslima Nasrin)

Avijit