Religious Fanatics Threaten The World!

[Brother Jeff]

I found this article on elibrary.com.

 

Date: 10/22/2001; Publication: Africa News Service

 

Let Us Be Honest, Religious Fanatics Threaten the World

 

Oct 22, 2001 (The Monitor/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) — Many countries today are rocked by religious violence. In Nigeria, there are frequent bouts of Muslims and Christians butchering each other.

 

In Indonesia, Muslims and Christians have in their thousands in eruptions of religious madness.

 

The rebellion against Khartoum by the southern populations has the same undertones of Muslims vs. Christians and “animists”. In Kenya and Zanzibar, we have seen similar tensions.

 

The world’s single biggest terrorist attack, plane hijack and bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on Sept.11 that killed nearly 5,500 people, was carried out by extremists who said they were dying in order to go and meet their Creator Allah.

 

Because of the fear of proliferating a “war of civilisations” or a “battle between Islam and Christianity”, and the need to appear politically correct, everyone is falling over themselves denying that this has anything to do with Islam vs. Christianity.

 

In the strict sense, it might not. However, what it tells us that the very sensible idea of separating religion and state, and the reality that democracy works best when its based on secular principles, are under challenge.

 

The mistake most governments, intellectuals, and policy institutions made was to think that because secularism was the enlightened way, religion didn’t matter. Not enough resources have been spent studying the world’s various religions. There aren’t enough specialists out there who have developed tools that will give early warnings to law and order institutions that a religious dispute is about to erupt into violence. As a result, you have a country like Nigeria hopelessly convulsed by religious butchery every couple of months.

 

Even at some of the best universities in the world, there is very little work in the strategic implications of religious fundamentalism. We see Hindu fundamentalism growing in India, Islamic fundamentalism in dozens of countries, Christian fundamentalism in scores of countries beginning from the USA, through to Africa.

 

We make a deadly mistake if think that religious extremism doesn’t threaten the world, and if we assume that hard-line versions of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism will not end in a catastrophic conflict one of these days. We can prevent it by studying the character of religious extremism and adopting strategies for dealing with it.

 

END OF ARTICLE - BEGINNING OF JEFF’S COMMENTS

 

We face the frightening possibility of extinction if we do not finally come to our senses as a species and do whatever it takes to STOP THE RELIGIOUS MADNESS in the world. Isn’t it about time that humans stopped believing irrational religious bullshit and taking it so seriously? Isn’t it about time that we stopped killing our fellow human beings over our conflicting religious bullshit? Isn’t it about time that folks who share belief in THE SAME religious bullshit stopped killing each other over their differing interpretations of THE SAME LUDICROUS RELIGIOUS BULLSHIT?

 

The following is Mankind’s Obituary, as I see it, if we do not FINALLY come to our senses and stop believing in gods and sky kingdoms and invisible undead risen saviors who live in the sky and loving flaming torture chambers for unbelievers in our chosen religious bullshit and talking snakes and talking donkeys and flying people and dead people coming back to life and “inerrant” plainly and obviously very errant and imperfect holy books and on and on and on and on ad nauseum with the outrageous claims and patently absurd BULLSHIT that otherwise intelligent people honestly and uncritically believe to be true with NO EVIDENCE to back up most, if not all, of their claims.

 

RELIGION = 100% BULLSHIT

 

Mankind’s brief frighteningly possible “Coroner’s Report” at the hands of Religion:

 

Patient: Mankind - Homo sapiens sapiens

 

Cause of Death - GOD Contributing factors - Millennia of religious insanity complicated by religious fundamentalism and religious fanaticism

 

Death preventable? - YES

 

Unless religious fundamentalism and fanaticism give way to reason, rationality, and common sense in the minds of men and SOON, I submit the following obituary for Mankind, although there will be nobody left to actually write it if it should become a reality:

 

And it came to pass that the fears of rational people the world over for centuries were finally and tragically brought unto fruition. Those who were in a position to address the dangers of religious fundamentalism and fanaticism in the world and do something about it for the safety of the world at large failed to do so, and Mankind - who created god in his image - annihilated himself in god’s name.

[Guest eejay]

Boy...did you hit the nail on the head right on. Here we live in a country who would not elect an atheist president, yet a x-tian president is just going to keep this stuff escalating at a frightening pace. Like yourself Jeff, I would also like to see religion wiped off the facr of the earth. Don't see how it will happen though.

[Vigile]

Just to play devil's advocate, what makes religious disputes more dangerous and/or more prevelant than your typical border disputes, resource usage disputes, consolidation of power, imperialism, etc... How many religious disputes are framed as such, but are really about something much more basic?

 

911, for example, is easily labeled a religious dispute because its perpetrators were Muslims committed to Jihad. But a very good argument can also be made that the Saudis involved were using gorilla war tactics to fight back against US occupation and US support of a monarchical dictatorship in their country. Sure they framed it as an act of Jihad, but in realistic terms they didn't strike at a country for its religious beliefs but for a much more fundemental reason; a reason that many non-muslim Americans can relate to. American revolutionaries, while not cloaking their fighting in the name of Jihad, fought the British for many of the same motivations that the 911 instigators struck at the US.

 

The point is, these issues are never so black and white as they are commonly accepted to be. I think labeling all wars that have religious cloaking as "holy" wars makes us look closed minded to the many reasons that people fight and kill one another. Religion can be blamed for a lot of problems in the world, but without it I seriously doubt the world would be much more peaceful as religion isn't mankind's only ugly quality.