Religion, Conflict and Violence
The sceptical opinion of the British towards religion could be driven also by the fact that many conflicts currently occurred in our world are emanated from religion or have a religious flavour in it: terrorism, civil wars, inter-religious proselytization, etc. A BA political science student once asked me: why is so many violence and conflict in the name of religion? I gave her a rather cliche answer:
The fact of the matter is it’s not religion that has caused many conflicts along history lane. Religion is quiet symbolized by its quiet holy books. It’s the religious followers, or to be exact the religious leaders or non-religous leaders claiming to be ones, who mix their greedy-lustful ego with religous flavor.
Religion is holy, pure and peaceful. Any religion: be it Islam, Christianity, Judaism, etc. Ironically, it’s because of its purity and holiness that many rogue people feel safely hiding behind it. And that’s exactly what’s happening and prevalent in todays world.
Make no mistake, when I say inter-religious conflict, it’s not only confined to violent physical conflict, it includes also the conflict which comes from blind religous-driven or money-driven ego of particular writers and/or bloggers who spread inter-religous hatred in their writings, elegantly or harshly. To some extent, these people are more dangerous because they drive your mind toward the same feeling or at least inter-religous misunderstanding. Sound people will rubbish such kind of writings or blogs. It’ll lead you nowhere.
A good Muslim will never attack their brothers and sisters of other faiths. Likewise, for a good Christian and Judaism. A good Christian will most likely be a good friend of good Muslim and Judaism and so forth. The main purpose of any religion is to purify your heart from any evil feeling: hatred, domination, and conflict. Any evil acts carried out by any particular religious followers in the form of physical or non-physical violence (like writing a hatred piece) in the name of religion is self-contradictiory in itself.