The Word That Means Peace

Just yesterday I heard this shocking news and it took me a while to actually believe it. Aren't we creating another Gujarat at home? The event we detested so angrily?

Christians are the most underprivileged people of this country: 99% live below poverty line and do the dirtiest jobs imaginable. Actually the jobs no "sane" Muslim would like to do, yet they do that honestly and we take that for granted. I even know people who treat them in a subhuman way. We get kicked in the ass all over the world and then we have them to spit on. And guess what? All in the name of The Word That Means Peace: Islam.

If I were to listen to any talk show on TV right now, I would get lectured on how greatly Islam treats minorities and how blah blah Khalifah did something good to minorities. But, I ask, do we ever look at the dark side of religions? Don't they all promote hatred for each other in an implicit way? Don't Muslim clerics, and pretty famous ones, promote hatred for non-Muslims? I was raised in a rural and conservative family and all my life I heard clerics in mosques calling each other non-Muslim. And then when they would get tired of calling each other Kafir, they would take on other religions and promote Qataal (killing) while directly quoting Quran.

I happened to study at a missionary school. Not by choice but by the lack of it. The most famous school, aptly named, Muslim Model School wouldn't take me in since I wasn't one of the best of the pack. My mother and grandmother actually did a little protest over it. But my dad was too concerned about my future, so, he had to do it. I studied among Christian fellows and it opened another world for me. Hitherto, I had been looking at just "Islamic" side of the picture and never even considered Kafir people to be humans like us. The thing that shocked the hell out of me was that they would actually recite Quran and memorize Surah's in Islamiyat class. They could have gone for some Akhtiari (optional) subjects but they didn't. And what shocked me further was that they would take care of Quran just as we did and used to perform Wudu (The Washing) too. All that Islam in a Christian school.

Now let's imagine for a moment that Pakistan is a Christian state: 96% percent are Christians and about 4% percent are Muslims. All the Muslims have to study Bible to get through the school. Would we? No, we could create a hell of riots but we wouldn't just touch the Bible. In fact, if you look at all the fucked up countries of the world, you would see a similarity: Muslims would be in majority. Just do a little analysis and you will find out yourself.

Coming back to the point of Quran and how Christians handle(d) it. All my time at school I carefully noticed every move of my fellows when reading or just handling Quran. Never did I notice anything that could qualify as "disrespect" even by the most rigid Islamic standards. So, the riots above in the news, started because someone from the Christian community desecrated Quran. Let's say this happened, which I doubt it did, isn't there a law already for such things? Isn't the State and courts are supposed to handle this? How does this justify burning seven people alive? How would I explain to someone that Quran promotes peace, because this news says it caused some deaths?