L

ately everybody seems eager to outdo each other in denying any connection between violence and religion.

They even proclaim that violence has no religion. That may be true, but does religion have no violence?

Violent people do have religions and often they are violent because of religion.

As a fact, religious violence has been around for a long time. The crusaders and the conquistadores committed their atrocities in the name of their God. The inquisition burned heretics alive.

Numerous “holy” wars were waged: All of this to spread the word of God, as if God was powerless to do so Himself. Guns and gospel often go together.

More recent are the IRA bombings and the various attacks against the Ahmadis in Indonesia.

Religions may preach love and peace, but this is love, peace and cohesion among their members, not towards fellow humans who happen to think otherwise.

This Solo bomber was certainly targeting his victims religiously. If he wanted only to maim, he would have detonated himself in a busy market-place, not at an almost empty church.

Why is everyone so afraid to call this mayhem religiously motivated? Is religion so sacred that not any wrongdoing may be associated with it? Only God is holy, not any grouping of often misled people.

Not before we stop denying what the real reason of this ever recurring mayhem is, will we be able to come to grips with the actual problem and try to hope to correct it.

Curiously, it seems that non-monotheistic religions are much more tolerant of each other. Hindu and Buddhist temples exist side by side in Central Java, indicating that the one was erected not by first demolishing the other, as has happened in Jerusalem and Ayodya.

Klentegs observe Sam Kauw, or Three Faiths, where altars for Buddhist, Taoist and Confucianism stand next to each other under one roof.

Worshippers carry out their rites side by side. There is no quarrel among them, no iconoclasm, no witch-hunts such as those of the Inquisition.

Hadi
Surabaya