22 October 1999, 893 words
Every day next week, devout citizens are supposed to pray for violence to end in Trinidad and Tobago. Since I'm going to be very busy next week cutting my toenails, I'd thought I'd get an early start. (Yes, I know I'm an atheist but, hey, I could be wrong.)
The week of prayer is titled "Inner Beauty is our Duty", so the first thing I'd like to pray for, dear God, is that IRO to gets a competent copywriter. I also pray that God to do His bit to prevent violence, especially against women. Frankly, He really messed up in that department - and that's true no matter what religion you belong to. Even Islam, which actually has detailed injunctions about treating women kindly and giving them property, says in the Qu'ran, "Men are in charge of women." (Surah 4, Verse 34). This might be okay if all the Qu'ranic injunctions talked about treating women kindly. Unfortunately, there are texts like 4:34, which says, "As for those from whom you fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart and whip them."
So today I pray to Allah to erase such verses from the Qu'ran. I also pray that He make Surah 2, verse 256, an absolute law: "There is no compulsion in religion." Perhaps then His followers will stop trying to find excuses to marry 12-year-old girls. And I pray that He transfer some of the Prophet Muhammad's wiser sayings from the Hadith into the Qu'ran, like, "One learned man is harder on the Devil than a thousand ignorant worshippers" and "The ink of the scholar is worth more than the blood of the martyr". Maybe then we'd be having a week of research, instead of a week of prayer, or corporate funding for social programmes instead of 30-second prayer spots on TV.
But since that and God's face I'll probably never see, I'd also like to offer prayers to Bhagavan. I pray that He, too, will change some of those laws which encourage men to abuse women. The Manusamhita, for example, categorically states that a woman must never be given freedom, but must be "protected" by her father and then her husband. Perhaps Bhagavan could pass a law saying who should protect the woman from her father and her husband when they are beating and/or sexually abusing her.
I also pray to Bhagavan to strike out the following verse from the Bhagavadgita: "When irreligion is prominent in a family, the women of the family become polluted." Blaming the woman is half the reason for killing the woman. The other half is exemplified by those gurus who promote contempt for women, such as Hindu sage Canakya Pandita, who opines that "Women are generally not very intelligent and therefore not trustworthy".
And I pray to Bhagavan to make people practise medha (the intelligence to read many books on different subjects and apply the knowledge). This would certainly be more beneficial than deep breathing. We have a glut of gurus; what we need are a kind of kavis (persons capable of thinking thoroughly on any subject matter). Of course, if we had more of them, we'd be having a week of thinking, not praying.
But I'll definitely have to direct the brunt of my prayers to Yahweh or, if He's not in, His son. That boy really made life hard for the gentler sex. For one thing, he was completely contemptuous of the family. "If a man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sister, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple," he declared in Luke 14:26. I'm a pretty talented writer, but I'd be hard put to come up with a more succinct rationale for murder-suicide than that!
Jesus, however, made no bones about wanting to destroy the family. "I am come to set man at variance with his father, and the daughter against her mother...And a man's foes shall be they of his household...he that loveth son and daughter more than me is not worthy of me," he said in Matthew 35-37)
Everyone knows that it would be almost impossible to eradicate violence without strengthening the family. But how can any devout Christian do so when his Lord offers this seductive bribe: "Every one that hath forsaken house...or wife or children for my name's sake...shall inherit everlasting life." (Matt.19:29)
I therefore pray that the next son Yahweh sends down has a bit more sense. In the meantime, I'll ask only that He eradicate this obtuse verse from His book: "Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod he shall not die" (Proverbs 23:13), since I don't know of any single injunction that has caused more human misery.
I also pray that, while Yahweh's at it, He could perhaps put in a few more verses like the ones from Proverbs 14:17-18. "Impatience runs into folly; distinction comes by careful thought. The simple wear the trappings of folly; the clever are crowned with knowledge."
But again, if more people attended to such verses, I don't suppose we'd be wasting a week on prayer in the first place.
Copyright © 1999 Kevin Baldeosingh