Showing posts with label religious violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religious violence. Show all posts

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Is no "religion" free of violence against "others"

I recently wrote "Criminals hiding behind religion" and "Saints to emulate", about the good and bad done in the name of religion.  Included the Dalai Lama in the second article as a Buddhist to emulate, but even though I knew there were Buddhist terrorists, I didn't take the time to note when and where they were doing their dirty work.

Today, Nicholas Kristof reminded me of where: Myanmar.  See "Obama success or global shame". 

Sometimes these "Buddhists" seem to be in butchery contest with those defilers of the name of Mohammed, Boko Haram.  The Dalai Lama has called for an end to this corruption of Buddhism, but he seems to be having as much effect on reconciling differences as Mahatma Gandhi did on violent Hindus and Muslims.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and violence

"But we must ask a question only Muslims can answer: What is going on in your community that a critical number of your youth believes that every American military action in the Middle East is intolerable and justifies a violent response, and everything Muslim extremists do to other Muslims is ignorable and calls for mostly silence?"
- Thomas Friedman, "Judgment not included", New York Times, 2013-04-27

But violence against others is not a Muslim "franchise".  People of all kinds of religious persuasions have turned to violence to promote certain distorted ends.

Christians practiced violence.  The Roman Catholic Church burned people at the stake for supposedly not conforming to the prescribed beliefs.  Torquemada of Spain had many torture devices to get people to admit to being Jewish.  Hitler was never ex-communicated from the Catholic Church.  Catholic Irish who planted bombs were considered heroes by many.  Michael Servetus was "burnt at the stake as a heretic by order of the Protestant Geneva governing council."

Jews have been killing more Arabs than Arabs have been killing Jews: since 2000,  6617 Palestinians vs 1,097 Israelis (including 1,447 vs 129 children).  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_conflict#Cost_of_conflict

Buddhists, supposedly a peaceful group, are attacking Muslims in Burma (Myanmar).  The recent riots of Buddhists against Muslims is only a part of centuries-long list of anti-Muslim events.

And all these perpetrators of violence seem to forget that a tenet of their religions is "to do unto others as you would have them do unto you."