Us vs. Them

April 23, 2009, 11:14 am by dc-agape.

Surāh 85 – Al-Burūj: The Stars

I will start each post on the Qur’an with a link to M Mohammad Ali’s translation of the Qur’an with his commentaries. 

I have put off posting the experience that I received from reading this surāh because it has left me quite shaken.  The “us vs. them” theme within this surāh was so overpowering to me that I could not focus on the other more subtle nuance within the surāh.

One overwhelming thought reaches me as I read this surāh.  Simply by changing the meaning of the word “believer” this entire surāh can be applied to Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Agnostic Christian, scientist, or Atheist.  This becomes very easy when the commentary of M Ali describes the “Promised Day” not as the Day of Judgment but the day that Truth is victorious.  For each group has a different perspective on the “Truth”.  And when M Ali uses the fires of verses 5 as war the entire surāh becomes historically accurate for each group.   Unfortunately for the Atheist (and some scientist) there will be no punishment for the unbeliever.  We (the Atheist and scientists) must watch those that believe other “truths” die for unjust reasons.  These unjust reasons include religious warfare, denying scientific truths, and unrealistic dogma.  In that same concept the Gnostic Christians were persecuted to the point that only a hand full of their Holy Texts survive.  Worse is that it does not have to be supernatural vs. natural beliefs, nationalism also has the same attitude.  The attitude “We are better than you, because…our god is stronger, our nation is older, our nation is stronger, etc, etc” is identical to this Surāh.  What an Atheist like me finds the most ironic is that neither religion nor nation will survive time itself.  Even the governance of a single nation will change over time.  Science itself will be barely recognizable in 100 years.  How will the national boundaries look in 100 years?  What did they look like 100 years ago?  What will be the major religions in 100 years?  What were they 100 years ago?  Multiply the years in those questions by a factor of five and what are the answers?  Hopefully we humans are headed towards a unified Truth.  But without significant bloodshed will that unification ever occur?  As the 8^th verse says:

85:8 And they punish them for naught but that they believed in Allāh, the Mighty, the Praised.

All you have to do is change that last from Allāh to Jesus, YHWH, The Father of Light, science, or Atheism, and it fits any condition of the minority.  Until humankind has compassion for all, we will never find the Truth.  As long as there are “us and them” there will be no Truth.  This is because as we eliminate each individual group, that opposes the “Truth”, we just might be eliminating the Truth.  But a compromise cannot be reached either, for only one group can have the Truth, or at least that is what the Holy Texts and the religious leaders tell us. 

Christians will never be unified with any other group unless that group agrees that “Jesus is Lord”.  Muslims will never unify with a group that does not believe the Qur’an.  Some small groups from both religions might grudgingly accept others, but once one group has major dominance human corruption will replace religious tolerance.  One only need look at Marxism to see how that perfect utopia of equality can never be reached due the fact that power corrupts.

What scares the Atheist more than anything is the thought that one human, with the will of “God”, takes action to unify the rest of humanity.  It matters not which religion, or for what “human good” the action starts with…in the end a bloody war will ensue that will make life on earth a living hell.  Hopefully the cockroach, the rat, and a few plants survive.  The religious believes that “god will sort out the dead”, and with that thought every living being has something to fear.  That concept alone short changes the value of human life.  With that concept, the “us vs. them” theme brings the value of human life only to the group “us”.  As an Ethical Humanist I have learned that the value of human life is not scared, it is much more than that.  Each human has the right to pursue dreams, pleasures, and liberty.  Unfortunately, some of these “Rights” conflict with the “Rights” of other humans beings.  Religion does not solve this problem, when religion invokes the “us vs. them” concept the “Rights” of one group are compromised.  Only by recognizing that all humans deserve the same treatment can the “Rights” of individuals be protected.  Some individuals believe they have the “right” to subject other humans to hideous treatment.  What I have seen is that religion sits there and watches, either encouraging the evil-doer, waiting for “God” to intervene, or worse claiming that the martyr will have glory in the afterlife.  To an Ethical Humanist, this is horrific!  We must work together to rid this planet of any such acts of tyranny.  Some we may seem powerless to change, but that does not mean that we should not try (peacefully) to change the collective worldview that such actions are evil. 

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