I write this blog as I think about an apathetic friend of mine. She is content with letting people believe whatever they want to believe. I do not share her opinion. We both draw a line. She draws it at the point when another person’s beliefs are openly causing harm to somebody else (a suicide bomber for example). However, I draw the line when another person’s beliefs start to change the way I have to live my life and how I am treated.
For instance, I do not want my potential children to have to take Bible (or the Qu’ran if Islam takes over the world) Study in school. Nor do I want to die because the possible cure wasn’t researched due to people’s objections to stem cell research. These concerns are very distressing to me at times and I would like an equal amount of freedom for everybody. It is not an easy task to accomplish and I believe our current democracy is doing pretty good.
I do not want to control other people’s thoughts. But when a belief, which I think is irrational, starts to change the way I have to live my life, I will challenge it and try to put an end to it. I lived in Saudi Arabia for two years. I could be apathetic to the point where I do not care what happens to people in Saudi as long as they do not bother me. But this isn’t the case; besides terrorist threats being spawned in Saudi, I care about human rights. If the women in Saudi Arabia had been brought up in a rational world without their theocracy, they would rebel instantly against the society they are born into.
Another example of infringement of rights was the cartoon incident. It was irrational on the part of America and Britain to back down. This is not the direct we want to be heading in, which was the appeasement of a religious majority where we gave up one of our most important rights. Overall, I believe that a person who is content with the world as long as it poses no obvious direct harm to them, will not send the world in a good direction. We have to be active and be aware of current situations which might have dire consequences later on. And currently, one of these is the recent growth in radicalism and at times, the overwhelming religious beliefs in America and especially the Islamic world guiding us in some very wrong directions.
Voltaire – “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
