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Kommentar zu den Anschlägen in London
Soziologie-Professor aus Bethlehem meldet sich zu Wort
Wars of Religious Fanatics & the Challenge to Monotheistic Religions
The London bombings clearly illustrate that a war is going on. This war is fuelled on the one side by religious fanatics who use, really abuse, religion for their own misled conception of the world as one divided between the righteous and those outside the bound of righteousness. Political and other differences with the non-righteous justify, in these fanatics’ eyes, mounting massive attacks to specifically drive the point home to their adversaries that there is no geographic or time limit in the ongoing war.
But the fanaticism of these religious zealots on the Moslem side is met with fanaticism on other religious sides. Thus the portrayal by some Christian groups, particularly in the United States, of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the War on Terror, as also driven or motivated by the sort of “Onward Christian Soldiers” hymns does contribute to the perception of these wars as primarily religious. In the Arab-Israeli conflict, there are influential forces on all sides that reduce the conflict to religion, oblivious to the national, political, economic, strategic and other considerations. Some Christian Zionist and other Christian Right groups would pray and actively hope for Armageddon, the biblical end of days heralded by the second coming of Christ, irrespective of the human, environmental and other costs to Christian, Moslem and Jew. In their zealous support for Israel, these Christian fundamentalist groups are willing to sacrifice everything and everybody for the fulfillment of the biblical prophecy of Armageddon. On the Jewish side, religious fundamentalists, particularly settler groups, have their own wars motivated by religion and its prescriptions. The Jewish populating of the “Promised Land” makes all other rights irrelevant. That the land is populated by Arab Palestinians is beside the point; the important thing is that Yahweh’s Will be done, irrespective of the damage inflicted on neighbors and their rights.
Islam, Christianity and Judaism have a serious problem as they have allowed fringe and not so fringe groups among them to set the agenda. The world today, particularly in its religious “monotheistic” component is in deep crisis: the London bombings are unfortunately one tragic example; the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan another and the situation in Palestine a third. Other examples of horror and terror could be added irrespective of the monotheistic religious background of the perpetrators. The argument often propounded that the common Abrahamic roots of these three religions would supposedly help us overcome our differences may in fact be a fallacy. While the solutions to our various complex problems and issues definitely lie in political, economic and strategic venues; yet believers of monotheistic religions have not done enough to distance their religions from the use of violence and terror in their names. Monotheistic religions are in need of a grand strategy of education and socialization aimed at mutual understanding away from violence and terror: religious establishments may not be willing to cooperate on the development of such a strategy. Believers who are out there in the public, civil, secular, business and other spheres are invited to challenge their religious establishments towards contemplating work on this grand strategy. Wars and military intervention would not secure peace, democracy and reconciliation among adherents of the monotheistic religions; terror attacks would only add to the polarization and stereotyping already out there. We, who still believe in the moral, religious, ethical power of our respective religions, should move to stop the cycle of senseless violence and war.
Dr. Bernard Sabella
Executive Director
Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees
Middle East Council of Churches
Associate Professor of Sociology
Bethlehem University
Jerusalem
July 8, 2005
