Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Dawkins made it to my Sociology class - Omer Kamal Bin Farooq - The Express Tribune (Pakistan)

and Ahmadi students are shunned out of school for their beliefs.

So, showing a Richard Dawkins documentary which ascribes religion as the root cause of all evil is simply overwhelming. Now, whether one agrees with what Mr Dawkins believes (or rather disbelieves) is an entirely different debate. But for a Pakistani teacher to be able to show his class something this controversial is a gigantic step in itself.

We all have different views on religion and most don’t agree with Dawkins. But what’s worth noticing is not that students were shown something that was sacrilegious, it is something else. It is not about Dawkins at all.

This is about the freedom and tolerance that our society and educational system has lost or rather, never had. It’s about people being empowered to ask questions about centuries old religious and cultural dogmas and to challenge the relevance of medieval practices in the 21st century.

This is where that documentary comes in. It allows us to think out of the comfortable narrative that has been concocted for us by the state and its right-wing allies. Watching it allows us to digest opinions wildly diverse from ours and still give them their due consideration and appreciation. This is what made me happy.

Read on

TAGGED: BLASPHEMY, EDUCATION, ISLAM, RELIGION, RICHARD DAWKINS, SOCIETY

Tweet RELATED CONTENT Creationist School Bill Looks Doomed in...

Jeffrey Mervis - Science 34 Comments

Legislators in Indiana appear to have fallen short of their goal of injecting creationism into U.S. public schools.

U.S. State Science Standards Are...

Anna Kuchment - Scientific American... 25 Comments



View the Original article

2 comments:

  1. Very interesting blog. A lot of blogs I see these days don't really provide anything that attract others, but I'm most definitely interested in this one. Just thought that I would post and let you know.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I will probably be back again to browse more, many thanks for the data.

    ReplyDelete

What's your opinion?