POVERTY AND MORALITY According to religious apologists there is no morality outside the boundary of a given religion. For example, the Muslims attach all good deeds and morality with Islam. Therefore, whenever our Muslims brothers see anything good with western, they jump to the conclusion that the western have adopted the teachings of Islam. The simple fact is that Islam or any religion hasn’t got anything to do with the morality of western. If it were true then the morality of Nigerian Christians or Indian Christians would have the same qualities as do the Christian in Ireland or UK. Morality appears to be a complex functions of many variables such as prosperity, law and order situation, and duty and care of the nation; inherited and learned behaviours of individual from ancestors and society etc.; and well defined social and cultural values. We do accept the role of religion on the characters of individual as it establishes its own criteria of measuring the morality but what we are stressing is that an atheist can be morally more strong than a religious person. Social and cultural values play the role of religion in the western countries to a certain degree. Many researchers and philosophers believe that no food no morality. However, religious scholars usually emphasise on faith and religious belief, and give very low weightage to the righteous deeds which in fact establish a strong society. For an orthodox religious scholar, the righteous deeds are to pray, pay Zakat, and do no harm to Muslim of their own sect only, which is utterly wrong. Thus the good deeds of unbelievers have got no meanings in the eyes of Islam i.e., all the unbelievers irrespective of their deeds will go to hell. A country or an area will never develop with a strong Islamic faith alone, the morality, as mentioned earlier, is a relative term, of the people mainly depends upon their worldly requirements and the learned behaviour they have adopted from their parents and society. Person’s perception of good and bad is the source of morality. A person is good only when he chooses to be so; when he is coerced into doing something, no matter how good, his deed ceases to be a moral action for lacking the element of Free Will (Skaikh, 1995). Religious scholars believe that Honesty can only comes through religious belief, but this claim is totally fictitious against the existing reality. A survey of honesty was carried out by the Reader’s Digest in Europe and there results revealed that that there was negligible effect of religion on the people’s honesty. Jack Crossley (1996) reported that “We dropped 80 wallets with real money: ten each in four big cities and four medium-sized towns in England, Scotland and Wales. We left them in shopping centres, train and underground stations, supermarkets, car-parks and on pavements. Then we watched to see what would happen. This was not a rigorous scientific survey, but a real-life test of integrity. Would the old return more wallets than the young? women more than men? Every wallet drop sparked a story of straightforward theft, a struggle with conscience, or refreshing honesty. The brief detail of the above survey and the one which was carried out in Europe are given in Table 1. Out of 80 wallets in UK, 52 (65%) were returned. In a similar Reader’s Digest survey of 12 American cities and towns, the figure was 67%. In a test of 18 EU venues, it was 58%. Women out performed men. Of the 32 women who picked up wallets, 23 (72%) returned them intact. Of 48 men who found wallets, 29 (60%) returned them. The figures for the USA were almost identical 72% of women handed wallets back, 62% of men. More than 30% of those who returned wallets said they did so instinctively. “It never crossed my mind to keep it,” said one person. The religious scholars especially of Islam are requested to justify the above act of non-Muslims and compare it with themselves. The plain truth is that the majority of western are honest and have no problem of food and shelter. While the huge majority of people in Pakistan and other Islamic countries are living below the poverty level. This is one the obvious reason why there are cases of theft in the mosques. For example in Pakistan if one leave a wrist watch in mosque unintentionally, then it is very unlikely that it would be returned back. One of authors have lost his three wrist watches in the mosques while the new pair of shoes of other author was stolen by a Muslim brother in the mosque: as the shops were closed, therefore, he had to walk bare footed to the hostel after attending SHAB-E-JUMMA (religious gathering on Friday night). Table 1. UK, European Wallet Test to Check How Honest Are They? Major Cities Wallet Returned Wallet Kept Major Cities Wallet Returned Wallet Kept UK Wallet Test Suburbs Cardiff 4 6 Oslo 10 0 Glasgow 8 2 Stuttgart 7 3 Liverpool 6 4 Vienna 7 3 London 7 3 Paris 6 4 Exeter 5 5 Medium Cities Warwick 8 2 Odense, Denmark 10 0 Basildon 7 3 Burgos, Spain 7 3 Pontefract 7 3 Ravenna, Italy 3 7 European Wallet Test Lausanne, Swit. 2 8 Major Cities Small Cities Stockholm 7 3 Lahti, Finland 8 2 Lisbon 5 5 Leeuwarden, Neth. 7 3 Brussels 5 5 St Gallen, Swit. 5 5 The Hague 5 5 Viseu, Portugal 4 6 Milan 4 6 Weimar, Germany 2 8
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 03:57:49 +0000