Recently another young freethinker, Washiqur Rahman, was hacked to death by a self-appointed religious thought policeman in Bangladesh. The power of the blade is always there, to stab and sever all that conflicts with the vigilante’s dogma. True too that the Bangladesh police arrested someone for the crime, and justice may yet be done.
But there is a more important matter here that will not change no matter what the legal outcome regarding the perpetrator. It is that swords seldom change people’s minds or hearts, however many bodies are hacked to pieces, and testify only to the pathetic impotence of any philosophy that depends on that sword to enforce its orthodoxy.
What belief is it that is so feeble that it cannot persuade by honest argument but only punish by violent murder? What deity being lauded is so indifferent and useless that it fails to do its own dirty work, and depends solely instead on the sword-swinging flunky to carry out its vile enforcing intent?
The killers who think to defend their faith by slicing and chopping will exist and occasionally (and sometimes not only occasionally) shed blood, but the one thing they can never do is to make the ideas they object to go away, not even in the minds of those they slay.
No religion or belief that thinks to defend itself by such means can be considered true or worthy of belief, at no time for anyone ever anywhere through all time and space. That is the reality that remains unchanged no matter how sharp the blade or how wide the rivers of blood spilled.
