Ishani's Pen

As most of us are a “Google friendly” group now, I googled the word “taboo” and this is what I came up with: “ a social or religious custom prohibiting or restricting a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or thing.” At the onset, I would like to simply pose some questions: How exactly do we decide that something is a taboo and most importantly, who actually decides that?? Is it our religion, our caste-creed or our race/color? In this whole myriad of “Dos and Don’ts” (specifically don’ts) that we grow up with or rather are raised with, what we don’t give importance to or rather forget is what is “rationale or logical.” Yes, we are not always right; obviously we cannot be always right but we are all gifted with intellectual minds – minds that can think of their own, decide on their own. Isn’t this the reason why we, human beings, are placed on the highest point of creation? These minds get nurtured with and flourish under education – edu

“We are all equal, have equal rights”…but do we really? We live in a world with more than 7 billion people and we all have the same rights everywhere as it is proclaimed- same right to speech, to dress, to practice etc. If so, then why is it always observed that a particular group of the society called “muslims” face hardships when it comes to assessing one’s rights? From my very childhood I had observed people everywhere glance very disapprovingly at a muslim. Is it because how most muslims dress, how they look and what they practice? A general notion that prevails in the society even today is that “Muslims are bad and Islam teaches them to do so” but my point is - can any religion teach its followers to be bad? And the saddest part is this notion is inculcated among children from the very childhood. The Arabic word ‘ Islam ’ is “submission of one’s will to The Almighty God.” This religion, till today, believes in monotheism and preaches the concept of “ONE, INCOMPARA