In every war, both sides claim that God's on their side.
By Donald Kaul
Throughout the
centuries people have killed each other in vast numbers for the very best of
reasons — religion.
Oh they’ve done it for
other reasons too — money, politics, geography, skin color, revolution — but
never with more enthusiasm than when the cause was holy.
From the early
Christian martyrs to the Crusades to the bloody wars of the Protestant
Reformation to the genocides of the two World Wars and the Hindu-Muslim
conflicts, right up to the present time, when Muslims slaughter Muslims because
they differ on the legitimate successor to the Prophet Muhammad, religion and
war have commingled.
It never ends. The
9/11 bombers claimed to be committing a religious act when they murdered
thousands of strangers, and hardly a day goes by without a report of yet
another suicide bombing that adds to the carnage.
Meanwhile, the
killings go on unabated in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya.
In blaming religion
for all of this I’m being simplistic, of course. Religionists are as much
victim as perpetrator in these slaughters. The issues involved are complex and
varied.
But peel away enough
layers from each of those conflicts and you find a religious component. When
was the last time we had a war in which both sides didn’t claim that God was on
their side and, worse, believed it?
Even Communists, who
profess not to believe in God, construct a deified leader (Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi
Minh) to believe in.
Through it all I, a
non-believer, have taken solace in the fact that there was Buddhism. You can
argue that it’s not a real religion, but it certainly is a coherent system of
belief and it doesn’t condone war. That’s what I thought.
Now I find out that Buddhists are accused of
killing Muslims in
Burma.
I don’t know why. I’m
sure they have a good reason; people who kill people of a competing religion
always have a good reason. But it’s disillusioning.
To me, the warlike
nature of religion is the greatest argument to be made for the separation of
church and state. We’ve got people all over Washington clamoring for more
religion in our government.
“Let’s put God back in
the schools,” they say.
Let’s not. The more
religion you have in government, the more wars you have and the more popular
they are. It’s the nature of the beast.
A democratic
government in a pluralistic society must be inclusive and tolerant of the views
of others.
The religious instinct
is exclusive and suppressive of the views of others.
I don’t care what
religion you pick — Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Muslim, Hindu — as you move
along the spectrum of their beliefs, the more fundamentalist you get, the more
intolerance you find, and the less desire to accommodate those who disagree
with them. Fundamentalists know they’re right and you’re wrong, and they have a
book to prove it so don’t argue.
As soon as the Muslim
Brotherhood took control in Egypt, I knew the revolution there was doomed. The
Brothers immediately went about setting up a repressive Muslim state, which in
turn ignited a counter-revolution.
We tend to think of
democracy as an unadulterated good. As Egypt proves, democracy without respect
for the rights of minorities can be just as ugly as a dictatorship.
A wise man once said:
“An evil man can do evil things for evil reasons — that’s his nature — but when
a good man does evil things it’s almost always for religious reasons.”
Amen to that, brother.
OtherWords columnist
Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. OtherWords.org