Iraqi sociologist Ali al-Wardi said, “I am not afraid of the atheist who rejects the existence of God ... What really frightens me is the one who kills and slaughters, with all faith to prove the existence of God.”

I say: He who does not understand does not grieve for a day will come and he will understand, but I am saddened by the one who understands but refuses to accept the slightest possibility that he is wrong and believes that his ideas represent the right and everyone who opposes him is wrong.

I was saddened by the death of the thinker Sayyid Al-Qimni, as I had previously mourned the death of other thinkers like him especially those who struggled, sacrificed and risked their lives and risked their money and the reputation of their families to push this nation to wake up from its old delusions and to urge it to catch up with the advanced countries, and to work for its world as it works for its afterlife, therefore they paid a heavy price, and besides that only a few felt the reality of their suffering as they were subjected to a lot of harm and attacks from semi-educated and often from those who benefit from the persistence of belief in religious delusions especially after their death for their inability to respond to the slanders directed against them.

I am not a social reformer and I will not be, but from time to time I send messages which I consider to have educational content to the only group I participate in.

I often find opposition from some with arguments such as: What has humanity benefited from the discourses of the enlightened? What is the use of these conflicts between the traditionalists and the progressives? It is a lack of prudence to clash the beliefs of billions of people with the arguments of enlightenment because this stirs up grudges, and generates crime, terrorism and liquidations among humans and the enlightenment process is nothing but a waste of time and development efforts, and it is a futile war because religions in the end will not be canceled or disappear, and the advocates of enlightenment should not waste their time and respect the beliefs of others, and focus on what benefits people and not on what provokes their feelings and ridicules their beliefs and opinions.

This may seem logical to some, but we have to imagine the situation of humanity: if every individual or nation clings to its previous beliefs and refuses to change or reform them, will we have a religion other than the one known to humanity ten or five thousand years ago?

The enlightened believe that a large part of human beings, although they are free, are happy to remain minor in life, choosing to live in idleness and cowardice for lack of courage or desire to look for the truth, therefore, they seek to protect and educate man to become mature and able to rely on himself, and to use his mind to free himself from instinctive beliefs in the given facts, whether those innate formed in the field of knowledge or those inspired by religions.

The Enlightenment age, which began in 1685 and ended in 1815, was never hostile to religious beliefs, and the evidence is that the Christian religion, for example, is still dominant in Europe, the cradle of the Enlightenment movement and will remain, but the Enlightenment opened the door to the Renaissance, which did not stop from that day on, change is the norm of life, and man always strives for the best.

On the other hand, and from a purely liberal standpoint, no sane person accepts to belittle the beliefs of others, or to underestimate them and their mentalities. This does not mean that the texts should remain static, this has not happened throughout the history of any religion, but the problem is that the one with the weakest argument and the shaky faith resorts to terrorizing the other, silencing his voice, and avoiding discussion due to his weak knowledge.

If we review the punishments stipulated in many faiths, we will find that their followers have abandoned them for one reason or another, and devised laws and punishments that are ground and man-made, more in line with their living conditions, but this does not suit the men of the religious establishment, and it is not in their interest, and for that they expiate all attempts to develop and civilize, and the painful fate that modernists, Christians and Muslims, have faced throughout history, at the hands of the clergy.

The Age of Enlightenment is known as the Age of Reason, during which Europe was dominated by new ideas. The Principia Mathematica of Natural Philosophy, written in 1687 by the greatest genius in human history, Isaac Newton, is considered the first major Enlightenment work.

In the Age of Enlightenment, philosophers and scientists spread their ideas on a large scale through scientific meetings in academies, forums, literary salons and cafes, and through printed books, newspapers and publications.

As a result, the ideas of that period undermined the absolute power of monarchies and churches, and paved the way for political revolutions, and the emergence of liberalism.

The Islamic world had a role in the history of Enlightenment thought, as scholars such as Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sina, with their works and translations of Greek ideas, contributed to the development and creation of new scientific fields, and the introduction of rational critical thought to Europe.

The theses presented by Ibn Rushd were taught in the first European universities such as Paris, Bologna, Padua, and Oxford, however we still to this day denounce Ibn Rushd, Al-Razi and others, and the evidence is the scarcity of governmental or private institutions that have been named after them.

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By Ahmad alsarraf