Young Iraqis are finding it difficult to cope up with their political and religious condition. More and more youngsters are losing faith. They are ignorant about whom to turn to and whom to trust. A country battling with extremism and dictatorship, the countrymen caught in a web of religious outrest; what can such a country and its countrymen teach to its young generation?
I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us. Most of the girls in my high school hate that the Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.
says Sara Sami, a high school student in Basra.
Another young man Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, blurts out with equal contempt:
The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys of my age are not interested in religion anymore.
Severe discontent towards the religion is a result of the Iraqi extremists. Fingers of smokers were broken down to pieces, long hair cut down, prayers made compulsory, and many more such forced policies have resulted in the growing hatred in the youngsters.
Times are changing and it is quite evident. Professors have reported difficulty recruiting graduate students for religion classes. Attendance at regular and weekly prayers has been recorded to be down, even in the areas where violence has largely subsided, according to worshipers and imams in Baghdad and Falluja.
If this continues, a new kind of terrorism would grow in Iraq. A terrorism of intrinsic kind. Iraqis fighting against Iraqis. The youngsters want to lead a new kind of life with modernism embracing them but the religious ideals won’t let them. They are hence revolting against it in any and every possible manner. To sum up, in the words of a young Iraqi journalist : ‘It is a fight to prove our existence. We were embracing our existence, not religion.‘
Source: IHT
