[Reader-list] "Stand up to the mullahs" - Vir Sanghvi

[Rakesh Iyer]

Dear all

I think one also should make a basic distinction between faith and religion
here. This is very important especially in today's times, when a kind of
'religious homogenity' is being constructed across different religions,
among people who have lived in diverse regions, practiced different ways of
life, belong to different strata of society socially and economically, and
also differ in many other ways.

Faith is basically complete trust or belief in something, be it religion or
something else. A religion is an organized approach to human spirituality which
usually encompasses a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices,
often with a supernatural or transcendent quality, that give meaning to the
practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or
truth.These are definitions and meanings I got from different sources
online, which can better explain these words.

What they don't specify explicitly, but is understood implicitly, is that
faith is quite a personal thing. Religion on the other hand, is a political
thing. By political, I mean that more than one individual is involved in the
process; in fact, religion is a field where there are hundreds and thousands
of people who are involved in debating and discussing about various aspects,
customs and beliefs, their validity, their manner of observation and so on.

I am somewhat confused by Shuddha jee's views regarding faith, when he says:
' *Every faith has been intolerant, and at the same time the adherents of
every faith have been open and understanding and tolerant.*'. The point is
that faith is a personal thing, so whether it is tolerant or not is a
personal question. And if you mean that religion is intolerant or tolerant,
then the point is that every religion has different followers, and how they
combine their own faith with the 'true' religion (whichever they feel is
true), as well as their personal nature, determines the kind of path they
follow.

So, if religions like Islam are perceived to be intolerant, it's because of
the politics associated with them, whereby a group connecting itself to the
religion has propagated it's own path to be the true one, and it's
projection by others in the way that even others start taking that to be the
truth. After all, it has to be an organized projection of all customs and
beliefs mentioned in religious texts, not with the kind of practices typical
of local regions, to gain 'legitimacy'.

So, for me, faith can be tolerant or intolerant depending upon the nature of
the person.

Religion can be tolerant or intolerant depending on one's reading of the
religious texts, one's own faith and nature, as well as the kind of
arguments one gets to hear generally, for propaganda does fullfill it's role
to a certain extent. In other words, which side you wish to believe.

Regards

Rakesh