From: sherwani@sol.cs.wmich.edu (Naveed Sherwani)
Subject: Re: Contradictions in Quaran
Summary: If religion is not personnel then what ?
Organization: Western Michigan Univ. Comp. Sci. Dept.
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 19:51:58 GMT

In article <l8ia1hINNapu@pageboy.cs.utexas.edu>, hyder@cs.utexas.edu (Syed Irfan Hyder) writes:
> In article <1992Aug11.014441.925@sol.cs.wmich.edu> sherwani@sol.cs.wmich.edu (Naveed Sherwani) writes:
> >
> >Both of you can only talk on your own behalf, since neither one
> >on you have any democratic (or otherwise) authority to represent
> >any religious groups.
> >
> >This brings us to one important point about religion: It is personal, nobody
> >represents nobody, you and your god is all that matters.
> 
> This brings us to the fundamental basic of secularism. Religion of
> secularism decrees that henceforth life of man has been divided
> between "personal" and "collective" spheres. It has further
> been ordained that henceforth any thing to do with god or religion
> will be constrained to fit into the "personal" sphere!!!!!!
> 
> Would any one illuminate us as to which god or gods have made this
> demarkation? Is this god the god of logic, rationalism or 
> utilitarianism?
> 
> 

The fact that life has two parts has nothing to do with secularism.
We do have personnal lives (relationships, attitudes in sex, etc),
that we dont want to share with others and then we have activities
in which we do want to work, think, discuss with others.

The way the collective things work is by mutual agreement. You cannot
make me work with you. You can only hope to convince me that it might
be better for me to work with you. Suppose I want to convince you 
that you must sex in a certain manner, because I have done some
research and I have found that for tall men, it is better to have
sex in a certain position. You are going to tell mw, get out of here,
it is none of your business. I would reply, Sir, it is my business,
since I am the foremost authority on this subject. But you will agree
with me that still it gives me no right to butt into your sex life.
Even if I show my holy book, which has a verse in it, which shows
that I have authority to tell to how to have sex.
Similarly, if I dont want any interference in my religious life, no matter,
what type of expert you may be, I will tell you to butt out my religious
life. 

Religion is a very volatile subject. It has caused many million
deaths and continue to cause more. It is because, people take upon
themselves to prove to others that their religion is the best and 
they ought to believe in it. They cite all kinds of authority (usually
devine) and claim that they are on holy missions. They claim that
everybody cannot choose their religion because religion is collective
and we ought to have some say in what religion everybody adopts.

The simple fact is life would be very peaceful if we acknowledge
that there are thousands of religions in this world. All of them
are diffrent is some ways but similar in most. We should let
people believe in whatever they want to believe in. When it comes
to sharing things and working together, then we have to have some
kind of agreement. That agreement cannot be based on race, ethnic
background, religion, gender, etc. These collective agreements are
necessary so that people with diverse backgrounds can work together
and be productive, without having to first adopt the religion, learn 
a language, wear a certain cloth, etc.

We should be in business of breaking down barriers not creating new ones.
We should let religions from meeting and working with others.
Religions are important to some people and we must respect that, but
we must never let one person to impose their religion on others no matter
what authority they cite. In that sense, religion is very personnel.

Let hindus be hindus, let muslims be muslims, let christians be christians
etc and let there be peace. 

regards,

-Naveed

Newsgroups: soc.culture.bangladesh,soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.pakistan