Recent terrorist attacks including the Peshawar school massacre and, this week, the attack on the Parisian satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo have once again brought to our inescapable attention the threat of supposed religious extremists.
These most recent acts of terrorism have been carried out by so-called Islamist’s, referred to as such due to their insane believe that what they are doing fulfills some almighty act of faith. Such acts have established a connection in the public consciousness between religion and terror. This is a grossly inaccurate link that falsely influences people’s understanding of religion and faith.
Such terrorists claim they carry out these horrifying acts of murder in order to please their respective deity. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that they are wrong in this belief. What they do, they do for hate.
Religion is so many different things to so many different people but ultimately it’s about – excuse the cringe – love. Count the mentions of ‘love’ compared to ‘hate’ in any religious text and I think you know which one comes out on top, by a long way.
So do not be fooled into thinking that these terrorists carry out these acts because of religion. These are hateful people, for whom perhaps life has been hard. But life is hard for most people – fortunately the absolute majority of the population find better ways of dealing with it.
The overwhelming minority use religion as an excuse to spread the hate that drives them. That does not mean religion is to blame. You can use a hammer as a weapon, but it’s not meant to be used in this way – it’s meant to build.
In the wake of these attacks, many people have jumped on the anti-religion bandwagon, claiming ‘we wouldn’t have these problems if it wasn’t for religion’. I’ve even heard the lyrics to John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ flung around to suggest we’d all live in some sort of utopia if it there was no such thing as religion.
This is not the case. I could harp on about how the universe wouldn’t exist without religion and God, but that’s a debate for another time. Religion is responsible for so much good in the world, it is only the insane that use it as a weapon of terror. Religion is many things, but it is not terror.
If there were no such thing as religion, these terrorists would find another excuse to commit atrocities and spread hate. They are insane. No sane person walks into a school and guns down 141 children and teachers. No sane person murders another because they drew a cartoon. You can’t take an insane persons reasoning seriously, so don’t take let yourself be fooled by their supposed believe that they do what they do for religion.
The attacks in Paris this week have sadly led to a flurry of revenge attacks against Muslims. This is a immediate example of terrorism fulfilling it’s purpose of spreading hate. It’s not always that obvious. Religious and ethnic tolerance has improved markedly in the last century, but such attacks can damage this progress by pitting communities and groups against each other and driving them apart.
These are difficult and highly sensitive times to be living in a multicultural society. There is so much good in the world, but there is also evil. It is the evil that are responsible for these attacks, the evil and their hatred for people, life, and religion. Don’t let them win.
The Beautiful Games (and Other Things) 