Sacrilege Or Blasphemy - Can A Dead Book Be More Important Than A Living Human?

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 7 May 2024 A 19-year-old youth was beaten to death by a mob for allegedly committing a sacrilege at a Gurdwara in Punjab’s Ferozepur district, the police said, PTI reported on Sunday. The police have registered a murder case against the mob. The teen, identified as Bakshish Singh, allegedly tore up the pages of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of Sikhs, at the Gurdwara Baba Bir Singh in Bandala village, the police said. I wonder, how can a few pages of a so-called 'holy' book be more important than the life of a human? Is a dead book more important than a living human? Sacrilege or blasphemy, which has been integral to Islam right from its inception, was alien to other faiths until a few years ago. But now, all religions have become morbidly touchy and pathologically sensitive. Followers of Sikhism and Hinduism are ready to lynch anyone daring to 'insult' their 'holy' books. Killing a person in 'modern' times just to protect the sanctity of one's faith, god and book/s is not just fanaticism, it's sheer primitivism and a throwback to our prehistoric existence. Who're we to kill someone for alleged blasphemy? Who has given the right to these zealots to lynch a poor soul? Salman Rushdie recently wrote on the reasons for decline of reading, "When the 'holy' books start dictating lives and minds of people, the classics written by Tolstoy, Proust, Sartre, Nietzsche, Camus among others become secondary. People begin to follow the skewed, violent and jealous teachings of these religious books and ignore the humanitarianism of the great minds who wrote ennobling books and classics." You cannot disagree with Rushdie. This is happening all over the world. We all seem to have become disturbingly religious. This is a sign of devolution. Yuval Noah Harari wrote a couple of years ago, "Humans will take crores of years to evolve but human civilization will have ended by that time. So, we all, without an exception, will die unevolved reading our dead scriptures, following our anti-life religions and praying to a non-existent god." There cannot be two views about the profundity of Harari's statement. We're already Nikolai Gogol's dead souls. Humans are doomed. ----- A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URL: https://www.newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/sacrilege-blasphemy-dead-book-living-human/d/132271 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism