Religion - Hands off People’s
Lives
Koorosh Modaresi
When Marx said 'religion is the opium of the people,' he had not
witnessed religion and Islamic rule at the end of the 20th century.
At that time, the French revolution had confiscated the churches'
wealth and curtailed church interference in social life. Napoleonic
laws had just re-authorised priesthood as a profession under the control
of the secular state. Religion was not a tool of direct oppression
then but rather 'the general theory of an inverted world,' 'the sigh
of the oppressed creature,' 'the heart of a heartless world,' and
'the spirit of spiritless conditions.' It was the 'opium of the people.'
Today, however, religion before anything else is a political rule
and movement under the banner of Allah. It is an absolute rule of
laws not to be questioned. It represents the governing of a humanity
without rights. Today, religion stands for the violent imposition
of inhuman and medieval laws and decrees in every aspect of people's
social and personal lives. Religion stands for the brutal violation
of the most basic individual and social dignities, sexual apartheid
and the suppression of half of society for the 'crime' of being women.
Religion is the machinery of wage slavery from the Middle Ages helping
to fill the coffers of Islamic capitalists. It is the fascist rule
of reactionaries such as Khomeini, Khamenei and their seminaries.
Today, it is the courts of unrestrained tormenting criminals such
as Khalkhali, Gilani, Lajvardi, Rafsanjani and the herds of Pasdaran,
Basijis and Hezbollahs. Today, religion stands for the Islamic Republic
of Iran, the barbarity called Taliban in Afghanistan and the murdering
coalition of religious-terrorist organisations in Algeria. It represents
the accord between the Pope and the US government, the rule of Saudi
Arabia, Pakistan, and the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Mojahedin Organisation
and the Mojahedin Enghelab Eslami. Religion stands for the darkness
imposed on the lives of the youth; it stands for the most barbaric
and brutal physical and psychological suppression of happiness and
laughter.
In his opposition to religion, Marx correctly stated that the only
practical possibility for liberation is that the individual implements
the theory that human beings are the highest beings for humans. If
Marx were alive today, he would say that religion is not only the
opium of the people but also the machinery of the most repulsive gangsters
of opium.
Beginning the process for the emancipation of humanity is impossible
without ending the interference of religion in people's lives. Along
with today's Marxists, Marx would undoubtedly have said that religion,
like fascism, is an inhuman political and social organisation and
the murderer of people.
This article was first published in International number 28 dated
August 98. Koorosh Modaresi is a member of the WPI’s Executive Committee
and Political Bureau.