REDUCING RELIGION-INSPIRED CONFLICTS
AND GENOCIDES WITH THE GOLDEN RULE

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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 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 the two leading religions of the world:

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.

A source 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 -- 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 one or more deities. Of lesser importance is how one reacts to other people as described in their Ethic of Reciprocity. Unfortunately, the Ethic is often interpreted by the laity as applying mainly to fellow believers, and not necessarily to followers of other religions. This is a fatal flaw which leads to inter-religious and intra-religious conflict. Sometimes, this escalates to include genocide.

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:

The end result is that a small percentage of Christians treat Muslims as sub-human. They have even promoted wars of mass murder and genocide against them, as in the recent cases of Bosnia and Kosovo. Also, too a small minority of violent, radical, Fundamentalist Muslims treat Christians as sub-human. They have promoted wars of mass murder and genocide against them, 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.

The solution:

We hesitate to put forth a solution for world peace. Groups with far greater knowledge and intelligence are working on this problem and developing different resolutions to religiously-motivated conflict. However, lack of knowledge and intelligence have 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, and genocide, the slaughters will continue unabated. Since Christian, 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.

Copyright © 2002 to 2006 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Originally written: 2002-MAY-28
Latest update: 2006-SEP-07
Author: B.A. Robinson