Editorial
M. Rezaie
Religion in the course of history has been a means for creating, strengthening and institutionalizing the tyrannical governments. The ambitious and tyrannical persons, who have always sought to establish autocratic governments, have the most abused of religion to realize their inhumane dreams. They have recruited those who are at the top of religious institutions and have granted them unique privileges in order to use religion to suppress the masses, to silent the objections and justify their crimes.
In addition to that, religion gives spiritual motivation to those who stand with the tyrants to realize their dreams. These people pave the ground of any kind of cruelty against their oppositions using the religious teachings. With the support of religion, horrifying crimes changes to unique historical honors for the historical criminals.
In the context of history, the autocratic people have claimed that they want to make the government ethical through autocracy and authoritarianism and exclusivity in order to develop piety in the government. But, in the course of history, such approach only has led to fake pride and selfishness of the rulers. This approach, had no outcome but producing and reproducing violence and hatred in the society.
In addition to that, tyrannical rulers have only misused religion to oppose reform and bringing positive changes in the lives of the people in the society. The autocratic rulers have always been supported by the corrupt religious leaders because these two only through supporting each other can chain the mind and body of the people.
From the sociological perspective of tyrannical system, is the political reflection of a tyrannical society. Such a system and society, is the product of dogmatic religious thoughts and beliefs. The thoughts and beliefs which are focused on a specific part of religion to enable specific interpretations to serve the autocratic rulers. Tyrannical rulers, from Iranian Kings to Roman emperors, Pharaohs of Egypt to the tyrannical rulers and kings of Afghanistan including Abdul Rahman Khan, have ruled thanks to the misuse of religion and fatwa of religious leaders in the course of history and enabled them mass killings to build minarets by their bodies and heads.
How ethnicity Supports a Tyrannical System
One of the main demands of ethnic oriented strategies is monopolizing the resources and opportunities. In a tyrannical system which all the resources and opportunities are held by one person, they guarantee the absolute power of the tyrannical person, and to stay in power, the tyrannical ruler distributes nearly all the resources and opportunities to their ethnic group.
Marginalization of other religious and ethnic groups is a must in a tyrannical system. Because strengthening and continuity of such system depend on the support of the religious institution and ethnicity. As a result, the tyrannical system must ransom these two institutions.
The Opposing Thought; as the Arch Enemy of a Tyrannical System
A tyrannical only can survive when there is not opposing thought on its way. As a result, the tyrannical system, expressing any kind of opposition is considered as revolting against the system. In a tyrannical system the centrality of one person means guaranteeing the system because such a person who monopolizes all the power must deny accepting any reality in order to reproduce tyranny under the cover of politics.
Irreconcilable enmity with a different thought leads to strengthening the tyrannical system and its beneficiaries. And they misuse as much as possible the religion and ethnicity to realize their demands and ideas. Such approach is aimed to all opposing talents in the society to strengthen the power of the tyrannical ruler.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is the perfect symbol of a Tyrannical system thanks to religion and ethnicity have seized Afghanistan and attempts to strengthen it using these two institutions. In the Emirate system, all powers rests in the hands of one person; Amirul Momenin. The mandate of Emirate is institutionalizing the dominance of Pashtuns through misusing the religion and ethnicity in Afghanistan. The Islamic Emirate overall strategy is allocating all the resources and opportunities to Pashtuns in order to prevent systematically the development of other ethnic groups and religious groups. Such goal can’t be realized but by suppressing harshly the political and military opposition groups in Panjshir, Balkhab and other parts of the country as the common approach of all the tyrannical systems. In terms of education and gender equality, continuing the closure of girls’ schools above 7 grade and marginalizing women from the public sphere are considered as the strategies to institutionalize tyranny in Afghanistan.
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