It is up to us to create a heaven right here on earth

For all the non-believer that I am, I consciously think about my existence, and worry about what it means to be human.  When bad things come my way, whether it was the refrigerator that died thanks to which I had to buy a new one with money that I don't have, or when people who are near and dear to me say awful things about me right to my face, I do not need a god to turn to.  "Shit happens" I tell myself.  After all, it is not as if the entire cosmos exists only to serve me!  The cosmos is.

Whether it is Lent, or Ramadan, or whatever, I am not ever sure that most of the believers really use that designated time in order to reflect on our fleeting existence on this "mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam," as Carl Sagan so poetically put it.

In fact, the disconnect between such need for introspection versus the believers merely reciting the Vishnu Sahasranaamam and the Bhaja Govindam and more was the point of departure for the young me questioning the idea of god and religion and belief.  I was convinced then, and even more convinced I am now, that living a morally sound life has nothing to do with god and religion.

We are well in to Ramadan.  To some fundamentalist believers, apparently this is also the best time to kill!  Who the hell are the religious leaders who provide such twisted interpretations of the human condition?  One of the many casualties of this madness was a Sufi musician in Pakistan.

One of the most prominent Pakistani singers of Sufi devotional songs, Amjad Sabri, was killed by gunmen who fired into his car in Karachi on Wednesday, raising a new outcry over sectarian and extremist violence in Pakistan.
A faction of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, accusing Mr. Sabri of being a blasphemer.

Only sociopaths can kill a human all because he sang Sufi devotional music.  And why was Sabri considered a blasphemer, in the first place??

Mr. Sabri, 45, was one of the foremost singers of qawwali music — the devotional songs of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam — and was part of a family of noted performers. In 2014, Mr. Sabri was embroiled in controversy after a morning news program played his version of a traditional qawwali song that referred to the Prophet Muhammad. A blasphemy case was registered against the show hosts and the television network, Geo, and Mr. Sabri was named in the complaint.

Bloody sociopaths!  May they be tortured to the nth degree in the hell in which they believe!

I had no idea about Sabri until I read that news and, therefore, will leave you with this by another Sufi qawwali singer, the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.