Are They Really Religious Yes Im Afraid They Are

One problematic phenomenon we see so much with religion is the existence of religious believers who loudly proclaim a right or need to follow particular religious rules (usually rules that prevent them from following civil laws) either at the expense of justice and compassion or alongside the defense of injustice and harm. This leads some observers to ask "are these people really as 'religious' as they claim?"

One such observer is Alaa Al Aswany, an Egyptian author who has documented this behavior occurring in unusually extreme ways in Egypt.

Alaa Al Aswany writes:

Last summer a friend of mine was driving his elderly mother from the north coast to Cairo and on the way his mother, a diabetic, suddenly felt ill. He looked for a pharmacy and when he found one he went in and found a bearded pharmacist. My friend asked him if he would give his mother an insulin injection. Amazingly, the pharmacist answered, "Sorry, but I don't give injections to women because that's against sharia. Go find your mother a female doctor."

My friend tried his best to persuade the pharmacist, telling him they were in a remote area and it would be hard to find a female doctor, and that his mother, more than seventy years old, surely would not represent a sexual temptation to the pharmacist. Still, he refused to administer the insulin.

Another incident: A while back the newspaper Al Masry Al Youm published an article about hospitals in Ramadan where employees working in the intensive care, emergency and accident units left work after breaking their fast and wouldn't return for two hours, so that they could say the taraweeh prayers in the mosque. They left their poor patients alone during this time. They considered performing the taraweeh prayers much more important than anything else, even the life of an innocent patient for whom they were responsible. The patients' conditions might deteriorate and they might even die while the doctors and nurses worshiped in the mosque.

Source: Huffington Post

An even more extreme example comes from the police. In Egypt, the police have for decades been an instrument of brutal oppression. They have actively taken part in horrific crimes against dissidents and critics of the Egyptian government. Now, though, some want to grow beards in accordance with religious rules. They are revolting against leaders who are telling them "no". They didn't revolt, though, against a system which had them engaged in murder, assault, and sexual abuse against other Egyptians. Are they really, genuinely, and sincerely religious?

To answer Al Aswany's question: yes, they are religious. Just because their form of Islam is different from yours -- less just, less compassionate -- doesn't mean that it isn't "real" religion or even "real" Islam. It might be a bad form of religion or a bad form of Islam, but it's still real.

If Al Aswany looked more closely at some of the examples he provides, he'd notice that many have something very important in common: pleasing God and following God's commands at the expense of everything else. Sure, the idea of sacrificing the health, safety, and even lives of fellow human beings in order to please some petty demand of a god (and in comparison to saving lives, prayer is about as petty as you can get) may sound insane to a mentally normal adult. But it's a fact that such an attitude is ingrained in a lot of religions.

Any religion that can convince followers to kill fellow human beings in order to fulfill some need or demand of a god (and just about all have -- including Al Aswany's) can easily convince followers to allow fellow human beings to suffer or even die through neglect in order to fulfill some need or demand of a god. It's terrible and tragic, but it's hardly surprising and not at all evidence that they aren't "really" religious.

Nevertheless, I don't want to criticize Al Aswany too much because he is describing an interesting and important phenomenon: sacrificing the well-being of fellow human beings for the sake of imagined needs or demands of some deity. It's a huge problem when it reaches the level of terrorism, but maybe it first starts with little things like refusing to deliver proper and reasonable medical care. If so, maybe doing something about the latter when it crops up might help prevent the former from developing?

Ultimately, though, you'll never get rid of it so long as you keep teaching people that they need to do things simply because a god demands it and forbidding them from doing things simply because a god demands it. Even telling them that they need to provide more justice and compassion because a god demands it is, in the end, feeding the problem rather than solving it. You have to get people to care about fellow human beings simply because they are human beings and regardless of what any gods do or do not want.

So long as the demands of a god are the most important thing, the needs of real human beings will always be secondary and situations like the above are inevitable. The same happens when the demands of an ideology or political party are made the most important thing.