World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 938

against religion. A religion must not become a pretext for conflict and violence. Religion and peace go together. To wage war in the name of religion is a blatant contradiction. Peace stands on the pillars of love, compassion, brotherhood, truth, freedom, justice and solidarity. No religion is against these principles. Violence, terrorism, the taking human lives and destruction of the properties are condemned by all genuine religions of the world. They are acts opposed to essence of every religion.
A true follower of any religion is known by his kindness, compassion, love towards others and entire mankind, environment and by positive promotion of solidarity among people, cultures and religions. To the extent to which a person hates others and adopts violent measures against them, to that extent that person is not good member of any genuine religion.
Some times, conflicts caused by ethnic rivalry, racial tensions, and quarrels over land and economic reasons are dubbed as conflicts caused by religions, which is wrong and malicious. Again, in several occasions, unscrupulous politicians use religions for their own ends and create dissensions among the people of different communities, so that political points can be made. When religion has been abused and exploited, people turn around and blame religion. Generally, common people of different religious communities love peace and harmony. They do not want disturbance in their daily life. But we are experiencing that it is some politicians and thugs who promote the violence and make systematic campaign to spread hatred against people of other religion. This is the sort of abuse of religion that all true religious followers have to strive to avoid. It also follows that followers of any faith must not allow themselves to be involved in acts of violence by people who have hidden agenda and not become tools in the hands of politicians. Mr. Kofi Annan, the Secretary general of the General of the United Nations rightly pointed out to the assembly of the Millennium World Peace summit of Religions and spiritual leaders: "Religion is equated with light. But we all know that the practice of religion can have its dark side too. Religious extremism has too often oppressed or discriminated against women and minorities. Religion has often been yoked to nationalism, stocking the flames of violent conflict and setting group against group. Religious leaders have not always spoken out when their voices could have helped to combat hatred and persecution or could have roused people from indifference. Religion is not itself to blame, the problem is usually not with faith, but with the faithful".
Generally, action leading to tension, violence and war can be traced to some psychological problems, such as pride, intolerance, and the egoism of the individual or group, greed, envy and revengeful attitude.
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