Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power…. which I believe holds true for those who call themselves idealists and believe that a world with no dissent, no opinion and forced submission to the beliefs of a particular sect is the elusive utopia. However, what they fail to realise that any kind of addiction is bad whether the addiction be to narcotics or idealism and problems in this world arise when people are too deeply immersed in their ideas and beliefs to consider whether what they are doing is right…and they carry it too far….
The largest and most prominent group of idealists is those who believe that they can achieve utopia by establishing a particular religion all over the world and these are the people who are responsible for most of the destruction and terror in this world because when they fail to accomplish their dreams by persuasion, they resort to force and terror and in doing so they undermine and often forget the basic principles on which their religion is based…
The example that comes immediately to my mind is that of the terror groups like Al Qaeda, Islamic State and Hezbollah which believe that a world in which Islam is supreme is the perfect world. But what I fail to understand is, how can a society devoid of happiness, contentment, opinion, dissent, and full of violence and terror can be the perfect one? People believe that dissent is the cause of all unrest in this world…. this is true to an extent but without dissent we would stray from our intended path very soon and we would never know when we unconsciously switched over from the right to the wrong. It is dissent which gives us a heads up every now and then and helps us get back on track….

Idealism is an idea that gives crucial importance to a religious concept but this definition is true no longer. It can be any idea which we believe has the capability to set things right…but if we start believing in it too much, then we fail to acknowledge its shortcomings. Communism was considered to be one of the most prominent idealistic concepts… The leaders of Communism believed it to be the solution to all the world’s problems, a society in which everybody was on the same plane, nobody was in absolute power and in which everything was in the hands of the state which ensured fair distribution of wealth and goods but they failed to consider its many shortcomings. It was a society that suppressed dissent, individual opinions and destroyed creativity and the spirit of scientific enquiry…
Terror groups pride themselves on the belief that they are devout followers of the ideas and principles set out by a religion or a sect…. But when terrorists wage Jihad or Holy War against so called “infidels”, are they following any religion? Does Islam say the path to Heaven involves killing innocents, releasing disgusting and disturbing videos in which they burn people alive and slit the necks of non-believers? No, it doesn’t……They simply twist the meanings of various sermons and principles to make them fit their twisted beliefs. In this, world there is no religion greater than love for all human beings and harmony, and because it seeks to destroy these sacred principles of life, terrorism can never have a religion……After the Mumbai attacks in India on 26th November. 2008, the caretakers of the kabristans (Muslim cemeteries), refused to allow the attackers to be buried there even though they were from the same religion, showing from their resolve that terrorism truly has no religion and nothing which spreads destruction and fear can ever be holy……

Hitler was an idealist as well but his ideals were fundamentally wrong…. he believed that a world in which the “great” Third Reich ruled, in which the Aryan race was dominant and “scum” like Jews didn’t exist was perfect…..In order to achieve his dreams, he started the Lebensborn  program, one of the most terrifying of Nazi projects, in which German SS officers were encouraged to breed with suitable, pure Aryan women in order to create more “pure bloods” and children from conquered countries who satisfied their criteria were kidnapped and handed over to German households or made to live in special nurseries deep inside Germany. At the same time, Hitler along with Heinrich Himmler carried out the Holocaust in which approximately 6 million Jews were killed and countless others maimed for life….is this the way to achieve heaven on earth? Ethnic cleansing? And it is even more shocking that they might have succeeded in their goal if America had not joined the fray!! Are people in this world so indifferent? America didn’t join the fight in the beginning because it wasn’t being affected……Does this mean that if we know that somewhere in this world something wrong is happening, but it doesn’t concern us, we shouldn’t do anything about it? Idealism and Idealists, specially of the harmful kind, should never be ignored. The biggest mistake that humanity can make is to ignore small idealistic groups, dismissing their beliefs and members as rubbish, because more often than never, we have to pay the price for our arrogance…..When the Islamic State started with its plans to establish a Caliphate, most of the world ignored them, calling them just another group of madmen from Iraq and Syria…..They weren’t afraid because they believed that they were too far away for the IS to cause any harm to them…………but we did pay the price for this, didn’t we? Look at it now, the biggest terror group in the world, with the ability to radicalize people around the world, to make them turn against their own people….and there is very little we can do to stop these attackers, because they rise from amongst us…………. It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. The world gets into trouble when men take their visions and hallucinations too seriously……….

Idealism however can do a lot of good as well if employed in the right way. These idealistic ideas are generally not based on religion, they are common ideas and desires to make the world a better place…These generally develop in the minds of people who are dissatisfied by the way in which things are run in their time, they are disgusted by the blatant corruption and violence in today’s world…. The way in which people are often hounded for standing up for what is right or saying something that goes against popular belief. Right now, in India (where I live), there is a lot of intolerance despite what the politicians may say, Hindus are starting to dominate, Muslims are being persecuted…. from a secular country…., under the present Government, we shall soon become a Theocratic state…. people are being lynched for having beef  even though it is still not illegal to consume beef in many states….Even educated people are supporting this saying Muslims need to be brought in hand…People who have many Muslim friends find nothing wrong with them and it is up to to the  idealist youth to do something about it, establish a society where none of this exists anymore, where people from all beliefs live together in harmony, a society in which people are honest and truly wish to do something to help their country progress…..this often requires extreme measures because the only thing people seem to fear is severe punishment and hefty fines…but we must know where to draw the line and this is what separates harmful idealists from the good guys……

No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it……. but Idealism detached from action is worthless, People who hold lofty views about how the world should be but don’t do anything about it cannot be called idealists… Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism. In their case, it is apt to say, Wishful thinking increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem…. But idealism, allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting…. It's very real…. It's very strong…………..