Comments on Don’t blame religion by Theo Hobson 15/08/05
It is not the belief in an afterlife that is the problem, it is the absolute belief in God, the Fuhrer or the working class or whatever else. Once you have that belief it is a short step to being willing to kill those who are not part of the group.
George Bush’s ‘if you are not with us you are against us’ attitude is the basis of all religious violence and oppression through the ages.
The current spate of Islamic violence is not an odd aberration. This is what the religious do, and have done, for thousands of years.
Jeff Tyler
What a load of waffle! Surely the author, as a self-confessed liberal Christian, is mature enough to admit that, given as he says there are many strands and degrees of belief in each faith, there are extremists in each who are liable to do unpleasant things in search of the promised afterlife which they DO believe literally. History after all provides plenty of examples, and yes, Christianity is one of the worse offenders….
Anyway, in the context of terrorism, what makes literal belief in the Muslim afterlife uniquely dangerous is the belief that you can go directly to it by killing, something which is absent from all the other great religions.
It is time we stopped pussy-footing around and pretending that they are all the same! Wherever there is serious religious conflict in the world today, and unfortunately in the 21st century, there still is a fair deal, why is one of the participants always the Muslims? Whether it is with Jews, Hindus, Christians or Buddhists, there is something in the Islamic faith which is more intolerant of others to the point of being prepared to kill.
Twenty years ago my politics final paper set a question ‘Religion has been the cause of the greatest suffering in human history – discuss’ – twenty years later I am still proud of my 14 side essay responding essentially ‘Yes’ !
Mark Solomon
The article on the irrelevance of beliefs in heaven to suicide bombings was cogently argued.
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