Religion as business and ruling tool in Islamic world

It is  difficult  to comprehend the wide field of Religions of world and its philosophies but in very summarized way  this term is  derived from the Latin religio (respect for what is sacred) and religare (to bind, in the sense of an obligation). The term religion describes various systems of belief and practice concerning what people determine to be sacred or spiritual.

Karl Marx viewed  in his opinion that religion as a tool used by capitalist societies to perpetuate inequality.

From ancient to still conservative nations one can easily conclude that religious society of the world are considered as societies those can be spread along a spectrum of how tight their social control or we can say that tight nations are more likely to have autocratic governing systems that suppress dissent, to have media institutions (broadcast, paper, Internet) with restricted content and more laws and controls, and to have criminal justice systems with higher monitoring, more severe punishment (e.g., the death penalty), and greater deterrence and control of crime.

A team led by psychologist Michele Gelfand (University of Maryland) surveyed people from 30 countries to assess how tight each country was. They were asked to rate statements like:

• “There are many social norms that people are supposed to abide by in this country”
• “In this country, if someone acts in an inappropriate way, others will strongly disapprove,”
• “People in this country almost always comply with social norms.”

What they found fully  supported their theory in Islamic world too  that tight societies develop in response to either securing personal interests of rulers and external threats  which are broadly defined and include  both environmental and artificial threats. Here  Tighter societies usually  means those  have higher population density, fewer natural resources or if rich in natural resources these are controlled of specific ruling groups, lower food supply, more pollution, more natural disasters, more disease, and more threatening neighbors.

History reveals that rulers wanted people to believe in religion so the focus of population will  deviate from their performance and reliance of God’s action will be more  them and onto religion.The statistics shows that less religious  people are the more they  will ask questions and try to find out information, the more religious groups are means that society believes that things are the way that they are because God made it like that.In history “God” was used for a lot of reasoning, and it was believed that  people would not question it and that helped building the ruling high-class in untouchable status.So in tight societies usually under control of family or religious groups, rulers want people to be more religious because then they would not get questioned by anyone especially when they themselves brought God into the matter.

Like Islam all religions  strongly convince people to accept and endure the suffering and injustices in this life because heaven awaits them after death where they will be awarded with comfortable like and justice.It was crystal clear that Islam and other religion highly prohibited family rule etc. but majority of Muslims states strictly following  this supremacy and convince people through all means that they are superior human beings considered by God so they all have to accept them spiritual leaders.

This is completely contrary to orders of Allah and  teaching of Prophet . So Islamic countries are recognized by their  autocratic  or monarch governments and less press freedom, fewer political rights and civil liberties, more police and fewer crimes reported on official papers.

Generally Religion could act as a sedative for the people it makes them feel better, it calms them down, it essentially dumb  them in low profile of aggression toward state so they stop asking questions and just accept whatever they are fed to them by some state sponsored clerics. Religion can be seen as just a means of social organization to set a direction of any nation just in favor of ruling groups. Basically the following quote by Seneca goes hand in hand with these ideas

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

After Seeing such kind of dominant phenomenon the public living under such religious autocracy  also tries to copy this hypocrite living, having camouflage of religious themes ,disguise differently to show their affiliation with religion and its norms.In Pakistan more criminals would turn to be hajji, charity lover, and projected to be big social worker.Here business on the name of Allah and  Mohammed ‘s name, Quranic words are very popular theme to show their affinity with Islam but no one can deny that under these names lots of frauds and cheating plans were/ are executed to get profit by all hook and crook ways.

In today’s urban  society rulers and governments cannot really do that because people are all more intellectually advanced, and not as gullible, but creating such conditions under strict religious laws and blasphemy constraints, it is noted that the whole nation is  wasting their productive time to such discussions  i.e  who does and who doesn’t deserve to live, while conveniently ignoring the sheer hypocrisy of  rulers and scholars whose only qualification is  blame games to others.