Misuse of Religion


"And an old priest said, Speak to us of Religion,
And he said:
Have I spoken this day of aught else?
Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor reflection,
but a wonder and surprise ever springing in the
soul, even while the hands hew the stone of tend
the loom?
Who can separate his faith from his action,
or his belief from his occupations?
Who can spread his hours before him, saying,
'This for God and this for myself; This for my soul,
and this other for my body?'"

--Kahlil Gibran

As our civilization reaches its peak, it's obvious that it was created to destroy itself. Our past is the biggest proof of this theory. Through the centuries, mankind has been trying to destroy itself. World War I and II were just the manifestation of this destruction. Everything after these wars has been devoted to producing the most efficient weapons for so called "protection". Why put an end to life? Why destroy the only thing we have? What happened to God's Ten Commandments? Religion was created to help mankind overcome its fears and negative aspects. But man wouldn't be man if he didn't alter his course. Individual believes were merged to organize religion, which has been moved away from individuals whom it belongs. Politicization of organize religion has caused "eternal" struggle for separation church of state. However, separation has never happened despite persuasions; Church influence has been hidden inside of political systems. Despite its peaceful nature, organize religion has been modified through the centuries, and it has become one of the most dangerous reasons for killing, destruction and quarreling about the separation church of state and church's role in politics.
Artifacts found in the trash heaps of ancient groups of people or tribes, supports the hypothesis that most if not all of these tribes had some form of religion. Why is this? Clearly, they had a need for one. Life was very threatening and they felt that some of these treats came from some superior beings, some of whom dwelt in the sky. They therefore tried to figure out how to placate these Gods by performing rituals. Whenever a threat eased or disappeared after performing a ritual, they assumed that it was due to the ritual. Whenever a threat did not ease or disappear after a ritual was performed, they tried to modify it. These rituals and associated totems became embedded in each culture. In many cases these rituals required animal or human sacrifices.
As an example, an Incan ice maiden who lived circa 1500 A.D. was discovered (May 1996) on a 20,000 foot Peruvian peak. It is believed that this adolescent girl, decked out in her best fineries was sacrificed to a God in the heavens. She was sacrificed by a blow to the head. The shamans must have felt that if this girl was sexually attractive to them, the god or gods would also have similar feelings.
The priests of ancient Sumer must have had similar feelings about where some of theirs Gods resided because, in the absence of mountains, they built very high zygoraths. Each spring they placed a young maiden in a temple on top of each zygorath. This was done as a plea for a bountiful harvest. They had many Gods each of whom dwelt in a different place and had different place and had different responsibilities. Even the Greeks, and later the Romans, embellished this theology. They thought that all of the events that they witnessed in the nighttime sky or heavens were caused by gods moving sun and that what they know were constellations. Therefore, they sacrificed young people to satisfy God's will.
Most of the ancient groups or old tribes experienced phenomena that they couldn't fathom and came up with hypotheses to explain them. These involved anthropomorphic gods of some kind. They tried to influence these gods with rituals that made sense to humans. For example, since the males enjoyed making love to beautiful young virgins, they felt that a specific god would also. They therefore sacrificed beautiful virgins to the various gods. Did it work? They thought that it did. If they didn't, they wouldn't have continued doing it for so long. This was sunrise of our civilization, but still, it was a brutal way of implementing an old kind of religion. Many years later, the general public opinion is that we have overcome this barbarism, but have we?
Later, when Christianity came along, it was still assumed that God was "up there" in Heaven. Christianity was new religion, and in time, it was accepted by most of the people in the Old World. Christianity became a very powerful and very important aspect of everyday life. Moreover, Christians turned the church into a powerful political, economic and social institution. The church had the power to rule the mob, to collect taxes and to make law in the name of God. Furthermore, they gave the pope full veto authority over all decisions of the church council, so the council became men of straw. In one word, they became puppets.
All powerful institutions always have opponents. It was just matter of time. To protect the church's interests, all people who didn't obey the rules or didn't pay taxes were prosecuted. For this reason, member of the Roman Catholic Church made a tribunal, called the Inquisition, for the discovery and punishment of heretics. They punished all non-believers and scholars who made controversial progress in science. Most of those people were innocent, but the church wasn't taking any chances. To save the power and prestige, they executed almost anybody who was accused.
Now we scoff at such ignorance, but the church officials called older religions paganism and their stories myths. Like Christian parables though, these myths were handed down from generation to generation and accepted strictly on faith. Faith, by definition eschews logic and reason, otherwise it wouldn't be faith. Christianity just like Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and other religions, is also accepted on faith. So, calling old religions primitive ones and pagan is quite arrogant. The church overstepped its authority. It was a questionable interpretation of religion, and ever more, they broke God's Ten Commandments. This may all sound trivial but many people have been killed because their concept of God was different from someone else's.
Today, we call old Christian church barbarian, but nothing has changed since. Moreover, most of the today's religions follow the example of prosecution, and we can find this example in almost every country in the world. Of course, it is not so obvious as before, but every country has problems with fanatic religious groups. There are a thousand examples where religion was the main reason for fighting. I can mention only a few: the war between Israel and Egypt, the continuing struggle for land between the Jews and Palestinians, the struggle in Northern Ireland, then war in Afghanistan, Former Soviet Republics Chechnya and Yermenia, quarreling in India, war in Bosnia, and many more. These are only some of many examples of religion influencing conflict.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish synagogue, by the Roman Catholic Church, by the Greek Orthodox Church, by the Islamic Mosque, by the Protestant church, nor by any church or template that I know of. Most of them became corrupted and turned into institutions. Religion is not the institution of the temple, church, mosque or synagogue. Institutions are used to manipulate people, and they teach that we should love only people that are same religion as we are. Is that following the golden rule of loving thy neighbor as thyself? I do not think so.
I'm from the mixed marriage. My mother is Orthodox, my father a Muslim. By this scenario, where do I belong? Probably nowhere. However, my parents were so careful not to emphasize this difference, which I couldn't tell for the rest of my family. War in Bosnia forced me to side myself on one side, and I was forced to be something that I did not want to be. A rebel as I am, I forced my self away from those individuals, and away from the religion. That was the only way out. But the war itself and atrocities by the Orthodox Serbs, showed me the other choice I had, Orthodox religion. At the time, not a good choice. So, I had to leave, away from those who would like to enforce religion in the name of God and 'money' (sometimes these two words have the same meanings). Now, building my new life, I am seeing the same thing happening to me here in the land of freedom and democracy. So how do I fit the religion in my life? Well, very hard, but I'm finding my way.
Why put an end to life in the name of religion? It's just a simple question. If our civilization continues with this practice, we will destroy ourselves. Today's interpretation of religion is wrong, and we should return to old beliefs and try to rebuild duties require doing justice, loving mercy, loving your neighbor, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creature happy. I am not saying that all templates are bad, but we should avoid those which are turned to institutions because they grow into cancer that afflicts our civilization.

" And take with you all men:
For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their
hopes nor humble yourself lower than their despair.
And if you would know God be not therefore a
solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him
playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking
in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and
descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising
and waving His hands in trees. "

The Price of Democracy

Democracy, while it can be beneficial, may also be complicating and difficult to balance when associated with the economy. This paper will discuss the relationship between the health of a democracy and the economic prosperity. Also covered in this paper will be the distribution of the wealth in a democracy and the justice of it. And finally, how to appropriately balance the wealth in a democracy.

In the world nowadays, the health of a democracy seems to be directly related to the economic prosperity. The reason behind this is the more wealth there is in the economy, the more likely it is that the people of that particular nation will be more satisfied with there government, thus the healthy democracy. The better off the democracy is obviously the people will most likely be better off as well just adding further to the wealth of the economy. And equally the prosperity of the economy affects the way that the people feel about their government again bettering the relationship between the two.

If wealth is an essential requirement of democracy, an unequal distribution of wealth imperils the democratic process. The way that this works is when there is too much wealth, the poor feel unsatisfied with their government because they are so impoverished while others are extremely wealthy, therefore they feel that they do not have a say in their government which is supposedly "led by the people" including the poor. When this happens the wealthy end up basically having more power because of their social class and therefore has more control in the government, which then ends up being unfair.

Finally, uncontrolled wealth has in the past and still today promotes injustice, while controlled wealth has limited freedom. A proper balance perhaps might be to establish a limit in the maximum amount of money an individual may have. Although this may put a little bit of a limit on that individuals freedom, the government obviously couldn't make the amount so low that it would take away drastically from there wealth. With the limit on an individual's wealth, injustice among less fortunate individuals would be less then before. The lower poor class would then feel that at least an effort is being made to help take away from the injustice, causing them to be at least a little bit more satisfied.

In conclusion, the health of a democracy is directly related to the prosperity of the economy by the relation of the satisfaction of the people with both. Also unequal distribution of wealth will also cause major problems in the democratic process. And finally there are ways to control the wealth of an individual while still leaving plenty of their individual freedom. Although the relations with a democracy and the economy may be confusing, they are quite imperative!

Was the Cause of September 11 Islam or Foreign Policy?



George W. Bush has taken a stand on the true nature of Islam, calling it, for instance, a "religion of peace." As strange as this is to hear from the president of the United States, Bush's declarations have given rise to a good deal of useful public discussion about Islam. Unfortunately, this discussion has too often accepted the confused terms of the president's rhetoric: Is there, or is there not, something wrong in the nature of Islam? Salman Rushdie ("Yes, This is About Islam," New York Times 11/2/01) and Jonathan Ebel ("Territory is Not Mind," Sightings 11/15/01) both make some useful points in the process of taking up the question, but somehow leave standing the president's fundamental misconception that a religion has an essence.



Surely it is not fair to say that September 11 is "about" Islam. Violent hatred and intolerance can be adduced in too many corners of the religious world to imagine that it comes, simply, from the doctrines of one holy book or another. At the same time, it is difficult for me to blame Salman Rushdie, especially, for perceiving something within Islam today that is prone to violence. His non-violent, literary attack on Islam was, after all, taken by some Muslims to justify very real threats to his life. And, he marshals some reasonable evidence that many Muslims do believe that Islam is on board with the September 11 terrorists.



Still, we ought not to declare that September 11 is "about" Islam, especially if this means that we ignore "foreign policy, humanity, global society, and the just ordering thereof"-- which Ebel says are obviously what September 11 is also "about." Ebel's list implies that a larger, broader causal story needs to be told, rather than simply to say that Islam gave us the horrors of September 11. I agree wholeheartedly. Believing too simplistic a causal story carries both moral and practical flaws. If Islam itself -- or something in its nature -- was the cause of the attacks, we could only prevent further attacks by preventing further Islam. In this way, such a simplistic belief would tend to sanction persecution if not genocide against Muslims. From a practical standpoint, we will have to understand the details of the real, long-term causal story if we wish to minimize the threat of repeated terrorism in America.

But when we deny that Islam has violence at its core, we must also deny simple dichotomies. The president's words suggest that either September 11 is "about" Islam or it's not; either Islam is a religion of violence or Islam is a religion of peace. This is wrong.



Religions do not have unchanging natures. They are (among other things) complex social organisms that exist in history. Thus, while they are molded by that history, they mold it back in turn. When we focus on social forces that affect the development and transformation of peoples, therefore, we always remember that religions are a crucial part of that causal story. While multiple social forces contribute to the development of religious movements, those religious movements often then become forces within society. There is no essence in Islam that makes it unavoidably violent; but there is violence in Islam today.

Whatever September 11 ought to be "about," the fact that the question continues to be asked provides a teaching opportunity. Millions of Americans who for decades have done without lessons in history and foreign policy want to know, now, what might have brought us to this point. Of course, the particulars of the history of the Middle East will be a crucial part of this education. But scholars of religion also ought to be able to provide a more general understanding. For instance, what forces enter into the development of violent religious movements, and what might be done to mitigate such development?



Is it too fantastic to imagine that this kind of education might reach a segment of the voting population large enough to affect American policy? Right now our military is engaged in a "war against terrorism." If America and the international community can also engage other forces that will allow Islam--and other religions to take paths of peace, we must.

Post your essays here