Religious hatred/peace/info.

Religions' role in reducing
religiously inspired conflicts

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Background:

We received a particularly interesting Email on 2002-MAY-28 -- one of about a hundred on that day. A visitor to our site suggested that the world's religiously-motivated civil conflicts, mass murders and genocides are caused by certain "dark religions" that promote hatred. The implication is that peace will come if we search out, carefully watch, and perhaps restrict the activities of these evil groups.

We disagree. We feel that the most effective way to reduce inter-religious and intra-religious disputes is for the major religions of the world to give greater priority to the teaching of universal human rights. We feel that leaders of the main religions -- Christianity and Islam -- are contributing to regional conflicts. If they were to emphasize human rights more than they currently do, they could make a major impact towards world peace.

The following is our group's thoughts on conflict reduction. Unlike almost all of the other essays on this web site, this one does not present all points of view. It advocates one point of view -- ours.

Which religions are causing most of the conflict?

There is a growing awareness that religions play a major role in the world, promoting both enormous good and profound evil.

Major religiously-motivated conflicts have recently occurred in: Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Cyprus, Nigeria, Sudan, Middle East, Iraq/Iran, Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, etc. It is worth noting that that the main religious involved are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The strife is not caused by small, obscure, hate-motivated, evil religions. It is seen in countries where the vast majority of the population follow one of these major world religions:

It is reasonable to expect that Christians and Muslims would be responsible for most of the world's religiously motivated violence. After all, most people in the world follow one of these two religions.

The problem, then, is some serious defect in the world's main religions.

Sources of the conflicts:

We believe think that a main source of inter-religious and intra-religious conflict it is the way in which religions teach their Ethic of Reciprocity. This is the code of behavior taught by almost all faiths. It states that we must treat others as we would wish to be treated ourselves. In Christianity, this is caused the Golden Rule. Some examples from the world's largest religions are:

Almost all religions teach that one's primary responsibility is towards their one or more deities. Of lesser importance is how one reacts to fellow believers as described in their Ethic of Reciprocity. Even less stress is given to treating persons from other faith groups, traditions, or denominations in the same religion. Finally, the treatment of people of other religions is often virtually ignored. We feel that the universal application of the Ethic of Reciprocity should be taught. In Christianity, Jesus' parable about the Good Samaritan is a good place to start.

A second source of inter and intra-religious conflict is the binary thinking found in so many faith groups. Too often, groups teach the principle of extreme particularism -- the belief that one's own faith group possesses all of the truth, as revealed to them directly by God. Other faith groups in the same religion and other religions worship demons and are led by Satan. The end result is fear of and contempt towards other faith groups and religions. In extreme cases, this can escalate to include genocide.

Two alternative teachings are:

These concepts lead to greater inter- and intra-religious peace.

Why is the Ethic not applied to non-believers?

There are certain factors present in Christianity, Islam and many other religions that exacerbate the tendency to restrict the Ethic to fellow believers rather that apply it also to followers of other religions. Some are:

One result is that a small percentage of Christians who are violent, radical, and fundamentalist treat Muslims as sub-human. They have even promoted wars of mass murder and genocide against them, as in the recent cases of Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo. Also, a small minority of Muslims who are violent, radical, and fundamentalist treat Christians as sub-human. They have promoted wars of mass murder and genocide against Christians, as in the case of the Sudan, East Timor, and the World Trade Center. Similarly, we have Jewish-Muslim, Muslim-Jewish, Hindu-Muslim, and many other combinations of inter-faith conflict throughout the world. We also have intra-faith conflict such as is caused by Roman Catholic - Protestant hatred among Christians in Northern Ireland, and Sunni- Shi'ite hatred among Muslims in Pakistan, Iraq, etc.

The solution:

We are reluctant to propose a solution to eliminate religiously-motivated conflict. Groups with infinitely greater knowledge and intelligence have been working on this problem for decades. However, lack of knowledge and intelligence never stopped us in the past. ;-)

Our basic hypothesis is that:

We recommend the following actions:

Until the religions of the world realize that they are a main cause of hatred, strife, crimes against humanity and genocide, the slaughters will continue unabated. Since predominately Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu countries all have nuclear weapons, the need for religious tolerance is urgent.

Examples:

Abstract words are fine. But concrete examples might be more useful. Almost all of our visitors come from the U.S., so we will select six American examples. The first three indicate how followers of one religion supported followers of another when they were being persecuted. The second three describe incidences where religious and political leaders remained silent when they could have spoken out in favor of tolerance.