A Good Way to Get People to Die for You. (Revised)

How many wars and subsequent lives have been sacrificed by the hand of organized religion? Does G-d really want us to be killing each other in His name? The French Wars of Religion, the Crusades, Reconquista, the list goes on and on. What is man’s problem with forcing religious beliefs upon others with the blade of a sword or barrel of a gun? I think that religious beliefs are sacred and should be kept to ones own 'temple', your own body and mind. I don’t think that our ideologies should be taken out and pressed on the populace. History paints a gruesome and painful story when religion is welded by the wrong man outside of its proper place.
A very interesting writer by the name of Salman Rushdie, author of the infamous ‘Satanic Verses’, wrote a short story called “the Prophet’s Hair” which is a parable about what happens to people when religion becomes the most important priority. The story revolves around a radiant silver vial that contains a hair of the prophet Muhammad. A local family man finds this sacred treasure and instinctively convinces himself that it would be better for the community if he kept it. Upon keeping it the family of the man finds themselves prisoner to a man they never known; he had turned into a religious fanatic. “He began to pray five times daily for the first time in his life, and his wife and children were obliged to do likewise.” The family servants were then seen “constructing a great heap of books in the garden and setting fire to it.”(46) The only surviving volume was the Qur’an.
Because of the obvious role the vial played in the fathers’ abuse of his family, Atta took the vial from his father safe with the intention of returning it to the shrine. Upon returning home Atta realized that due to a hole in his pocket, the vial had fallen out and again and was rediscovered by his father. With Atta’s failure to return the vial Huma, the daughter, came up with the idea of finding someone to steal the vial for them. Huma ventured out into the city to find a thief brave enough to steal the relic. She found such a man and in the short amount of time that the thief possessed the religious relic, events for his own family turned dark. The thief’s four crippled sons had their legs miraculously restored “as they might have been if their father had not thought to smash their legs in the first hours of their lives”. One might think this as a blessing if not branded to a life of begging. "The miracle had reduced their earning by 75 per cent....so they were ruined men." (58)
Rushdie uses the father to show how a normal person who is at peace with himself can turn Malevolent at the influence of religion (the vial). Displaying the symbolism that follows the vial out of its proper place, the shrine (or ourselves), until its return is the point Rushdie makes about the fallibility of organized religion.

Throughout this short story we see the pitfalls and consequences that are associated with organized religion and the effects it has on people. Everyone has their own personal beliefs, no two are the same and it is our free will that allows us to believe as we like. Organized religion obtains its negative reputation from higher civil powers that remove the proper place of spirituality and use it to wage wars or to gain power and money. I believe that Rushdie is telling his readers that spiritual beliefs or religion (the vial) should not be taken out of the mind or body (the shrine). Through history and events unfolding everyday we see that organized religion bring a lot more death and destruction then comfort and peace of mind.