Conscience - something that is thought to be present in everybodies mind. Which is there with a person at any moment and with every action he does. Its there to judge whether something said or done is right or wrong. Which compells you to do the right thing - the right thing? What is the right thing to do? How can one know what the right thing is? Something that is quite fine with one may not be acceptable for the other. Fortunately, we have people around us with their specific humane faith beliefs. The beliefs and teachings the majority share and respect become the acceptable 'right thing' to do. Having these rightful teachings, one can compare them with his gut feeling- the inner conscience of man that is by nature peace loving.
As a Pakistani or more importantly as a Muslim we aspire to the beautiful teachings of the Holy Quran and The Holy Prophet PBUH. The majority of people follow these teachings - even if they do these in there own way. But there are moments when faith and belief get sidelined just because of a certain minority faction of the same society from which they belong want to impose their belief on the majority. These people, even knowing at heart that something said is wrong would admit it to be right just because they would not want to be harassed by this faction. Extremism, they call it.
Now, one could argue that 'how would you know that this faction of the society is doing something wrong - when there are thousands of people who belive in in the same thing'.
As said before, we are extremely fortunate to have this vast treasure of the teachings of the holy quran. But, it is extremely heart grieving to know that not everybody does understand the holy book- far from even reading it. We normally say that if you want to succeed in your studies, want to be successfull in your exams - craming the whole material is not the right way. Understanding what is written is the way to success. Now with respect to the holy quran which is written in arabic, how many people are there who understand the arabic language? Ultimately we are left with the explanation of the holy quran from our local clerics. Which in itself is not bad, but with so many factions - all with their own explanation of the holy book, who makes the right explanation?
With this in mind, isnt there the need for those who seek the truth to explore themselve the holy quran, the various versions of the explanations and decide themselve what is right and what is wrong. Why is it that from childhood to becoming an adult we just take the teachings of clerics as the defacto truth? Why are we ready to do violent acts by the clerics order- without even thinking why we are doing it. Are we really deprived of a conscience of our own? Is there any harm to explore the holy book and the sayings of theHoly Prophet PBUH at our own?
As an example, if you slap your child - even for the sake of teaching him something and compelling him to do something the right way, you are innert prone to your conscience telling you that you did the wrong thing. This feeling will haunt you till you havent expressed your sorrow to the child and taken him to your arms.
What if you were to murder someome in the name of god- because the cleric said it to be the right thing to do to attain eternal heaven. Even if you did it, what does your conscience tell you thereafter? "That was the right thing"? If it was this - there is really something wrong - either your holy book is wrong which says "killing one person is like killing the whole humankind", or your conscience is really manupilated.
Think about it.
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