your-god-is-too-small May. 2016 | Page 18

during the whole month of Ramadan so that Muslims around you do not feel uncomfortable and you do not become the reason for them to break their fast unlawfully. Again, it is not concentrated only in Pakistan, the same absurd events take place in Saudi Arabia and Morocco. You may also get beaten-up in public for being offensive towards the holy month by simply eating in public! A Thought Worth a Thought We are social animals: we are the organisms with the most enhanced brains on earth. We think, doubt, make and ask questions, research, explore and innovate. That is the way we progress. But, what if you are told not to think? What if doubting or questioning could lead to death? What if your tendency to research and discover is labeled as immoral and offensive? What if innovation is considered to be unlawful? What if people around you do not wish to progress, rather, they wish to go back to the 7th century? If you are a brother, you cannot help but remain in a constant state of fear – what if the next time you get to see your sister is when she is hospitalized – wounded on every part of her body with slap marks on her face, her clothes torn, and her eyes telling you that she regrets being alive? And when you reach the courts, your sister is asked to present a certain number of witnesses who saw her getting molested only because she was not wearing a cloth-bag and if she doesn’t present the witnesses, no case will be filed, no rape committed! Would you go around asking people, “Excuse me, you see this girl? This is my sister. Did you see her getting raped? Please, I need witnesses!” or would you stay silent and never be able to show your face to your sister ever again as a brother? If you are an elder sister, what if one day your little brother comes home with one of his fingers broken for picking up a piece of bread, or his jaw displaced just because you committed the blunder of sending him to school with lunch during Ramadan? Living in such a place with no respect, or even concern, for rationality and evidence, having such insane people around you, what can you do? How can you live? That feeling of being a slave, bound to pretend to be what you are not, forbidden to express yourself and required to do as told, cannot be described in words… Original article URL: http://www.atheistrepublic.com/blog/abbassyed/lifeatheist-islamic-republic P a g e | 18