Religion is the steroid for the masses

Religion has always been integral to people’s lives and has played a pivotal role in shaping the world we live in today. The need for religion or religious belief often arises from the desire to answer existential questions and find a purpose in life ordained from above. Religion also binds communities together, providing harmony during conflicts and solace in times of despair. However, this pacifying aspect of religion has also been misused, propagated through violence in the name of peace and God’s word. History bears witness to wars and bloodshed committed to spreading religious teachings and asserting the supremacy of one deity over another. Men were killed, women raped, and children enslaved to prove the superiority of one clan’s god over another’s.

Pakistan was founded on religious separatism, establishing a Muslim identity distinct from the South Asian Indian heritage that spans thousands of years. Although the country was intended to be a haven for religious minorities, things quickly deteriorated after the partition. Successive state leaders, feudal lords, and military executives have exploited religion to cling to power. They live in mansions, wear expensive clothes, own vast properties and businesses, and educate their children abroad, while urging the common people to live modestly following the examples of the Prophets. Pakistan has become a place where Islam is preached constantly but not practiced sincerely, an oligarchy where clerics, the military, and the wealthy elite have formed a kingdom of their own.

Amid this, the masses have been deceived by religion. As Karl Marx aptly stated, “Religion is the opium of the masses.” In today’s Pakistan, religion acts more like a steroid, inciting people to lynch or blaspheme anyone perceived as not being a good Muslim or even questioning their Muslim identity. The most vulnerable victims of this fanaticism are religious minorities and women, including Muslim women, who face double oppression. This overemphasis on religion stems from a deep-seated insecurity and a sense of religious entitlement, leading Muslims to believe it is their mission to correct others. This insecurity underpins blasphemy laws, which favor the majority religion without protecting against false accusations of blasphemy. The law provides no protection through the courts, leading to mob justice, as seen in the case of Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, who his bodyguard killed for supporting a falsely accused Christian woman.

A recent incident in Lahore’s Ichra market highlights this issue. A woman wearing a kurta with Arabic calligraphy was accused of disrespecting Islam and the Quran by a religious zealot. A mob surrounded her, demanding she remove the shirt, some calling for her death, others wielding knives. They harassed her and called for an imam to issue a fatwa and for the police to arrest her. Fortunately, ASP Sheharbano Naqvi intervened, covering the woman with a burqa and niqab and escorting her away from the mob. Upon investigation, it was revealed that the woman’s kurta had the Arabic word “halwa,” meaning happiness, which the illiterate zealots had mistaken for a Quranic verse. This incident underscores the ignorance of those who claim to protect religion and their audacity to publicly harass a woman for her choice of clothing.

The victim was later forced to release an apology video, expressing shame for her ignorance and professing her love for the Prophet and her religious sect, promising not to wear such clothes again. This reflects the state of Pakistan, a country economically doomed, lacking a legitimate government, and ranked among the worst places for women to live.

This incident is symptomatic of a deeper religious rot at the core of Pakistan’s problems. The issue is not religion itself or what Islam teaches. Rather, it is the hegemony of clerics and power-hungry leaders who manipulate religious narratives for their own gain, stirring people’s sentiments to label each other as infidels and blasphemers while exploiting their rights and resources. They make people focus on religious symbols rather than questioning why their children have no food, no schools, and no clean water. Meanwhile, their own children study abroad, eat well, and drink bottled water. The true challenge is to hold politicians and the military accountable for governance, not religious preaching, and to ensure that clerics spread peace rather than inciting division. Only then can the steroid of fanaticism be redirected towards constructive change rather than destructive violence.