Religious Zombies

Christopher Hitchens once wrote in his book that if he saw a group of men coming from a religious observance approaching him in the street, he would feel threatened. His immediate fear came from his different experiences in different cities. As an example, in Belfast, he observed streets burnt down by Christian groups and interviewed people whose families were killed by Christian death squads. I see his point and I would feel the same.

It isn’t hard to make a list of all the crimes committed by a mob of religious zombies. Roman empire gave rise and sponsored Christianity to unify the whole empire against other monotheist or polytheist threats like Persians. Early Arab Muslims invaded Persia, North Africa and Spain, believing that there was only one God, Allah, and there was only one book, Quran. They burnt down libraries, intellectual centers like Gundeshapur, churches and temples, killed and raped people and forced them to submit, hence the name of the religion. 400 years of Crusades, Spanish inquisition, massacre of native Americans, Sunni and Shia battles between Ottoman empire and Persian empire. More recently, Holocaust, Muslim genocide by Serbs, 1982 massacre of Palestinians in the camps of Sabra and Chatila, Terrorist groups like Hamas, Taliban, ISIS, tragedy of 9/11, Islamic revolution of Iran in 1979 and its consequences, Saddam Hussein’s war on Iran to kill Shias and Ayatollah Khomeini’s obsession with Karbala and Najaf which prolonged the war to eight years, Khomeini’s fatwa on Salman Rushdie, KKK, Rohingya crisis, Charlie Hebdo’s attack  and thousands of other examples.

Recently, in Iran a 16 year old was arrested on charge of murder of a woman. While, he must face trial by judiciary fairly, the people of that city have signed a petition for a public hanging requesting Qisas which is retaliation in kind in Islam. A religious mob in the streets. Asia Bibi was dragged out of her house and beaten for blasphemy in Pakistan. but Why? All of the things listed above share one thing! People with religious beliefs acting like zombies. I would be afraid just like Hitchens. A group of people with the same agenda, no critical thinking, just following orders from their religion, following faith.

Faith blinds people. It requires you to stop thinking and believe what it claims to be true without questioning. Even if you want to question it, you have to believe first and do an obsessive deduction which will certainly result in your answer agreeing with the claim of the faith. As an example, Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa on Rushdie wants Muslims to murder Salman Rushdie to win the prize money and go to heaven, the fatwa is still there it doesn’t expire! So if you want to approach this inductively, you should go read the book first, come up with a rationale, question the fatwa, look at it from different angels and come up with a conclusion. However, let’s deduct it obsessively. Khomeini forbids you from reading the book, and tells you that it’s apostasy and against Islam. You instantly deduct that it’s true, you won’t read the book, you will hate Rushdie and maybe even try to follow the fatwa. This is what religion does to your brain. It makes you a zombie. It forbids you any critical analysis and thinking, doesn’t let you question and induct based on evidence and rationality. It makes you follow impulsively and blindly.

Religion is a system of mind control. It makes you attack a small publication office and kill everyone there, it makes you fly an airplane into a building, it makes you raid a hardworking farmer’s house and beat them for not believing in your religion. It makes you murder people of colour while wearing white masks. It makes you sign a petition for fucking public hanging without a trial. Every time, I read a sci-fi book or watch a sci-fi movie in which there are epidemics that make people stop thinking or turn them into zombies I think of religion. I used to be one of these zombie when I was a teenager.