Emad Barsoum writes: Lost Humanity in the Theocratic State
History and literature are filled with stories about how humanity suffered under the control and oppression of theocratic regimes during medieval times. Stories that could be used in making horror movies, and still, the audience will wonder what disturbed mind wrote these scripts!
Most religions have been, at a particular stage in their history, adopting savage and merciless ways to protect the status of power and fortune of monarchies and their clerics. The power and wealth were fueled by abiding believers and followers of the religions.
Even with the rise of the enlightenment and the progression of art, literature, humanities, and science, the world still did not abstain from savage acts toward humankind. A new method of human oppression arose to the surface, slavery; although it existed much earlier in human history, it took a different form to sever the expansion of great powers and imperialism; even more, it was coated with the deceitful words of religion and the work of missionaries.
Nonetheless, after all that modern humanity has been through to establish the fundamentals of human rights, abolish slavery and racism, and condemn all forms of discrimination and segregation, we are yet witnessing severe violations of human rights practiced by the religious fascism of the modern world.
What is happening in Iran and Afghanistan is a massive disgrace to humanity. All kinds of oppression, repression, and torture are committed by their theological regimes in the name of religion, primarily toward women.
Extreme violence that can only be referred to deep psychological disorder and a sense of inferiority among their para-men. Men who wrongfully observe women as the origin of sin, forgetting that “a” religion must be a way of life, respect, tolerance, acceptance, and equality.
The revolutionary guard and acting as religious police who are forcing women to cover their heads in Iran, otherwise they break their bones, torture them, and some may disappear.
Taliban in Afghanistan just announced that women could no longer leave houses without a man, completely covered, no education for women, no life for them.
Both fascist theocratic regimes are deliberately forming their own version of human rights, while the defenders of democracy and human rights in the world, the free world, are watching mutely, thus, becoming partners in such crimes against humanity.
The knights of democracy and freedom are only the guardians of wealth and the paths of oil and gas. Even Iran, under sanctions, had its oil passing through to the international markets, asserting that the last concern of the free world is human rights.
In fact, there is no difference between theocratic states and free democracies of the new world. While Iran and Afghanistan explicitly show and exercise violations of fundamental human rights, we witness many countries applying laws of intangible and non-founded or disputable offenses, such as hate crimes, antisemitism, blasphemy, and contempt of religion. However, those lawmakers of undefined charges cannot protect abused, tortured, helpless women with broken bones and shattered lives.
