Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph.
That is a kind of liturgical recitation of how it began,
in what is now Iraq, Syria, and Turkey: Mesopotomia.
That is where it is still going on: in Iraq and Syria, and Turkey,
and all of the places that claim Abraham as their own.
If you want to know what is going on in those places today,
you need to remember Abraham, and Moses and Aaron, and Jesus and Peter and Paul. You need to remember Israel and the Caananites, Mohammed, Catholics and Protestants, other Hundred Years Wars, and what religion has to do with what it means to be a society.
It is too simple to say that religion is the root of much of the butchery of human history, but whether it is at the root, or is the root, or is just there, it seems altogether too eager to be a participant, too involved to be granted pardon.
Religion is the way people celebrate and solidify what they think society should be. It is the way children are taught what it is to be a Jew, or a Christian, or a Moslem. It is the way people are taught how to be a Catholic, or a Protestant, or a Sunni or Shiite. Women should sit over there, and the men on this side. Women should keep their faces and heads covered. This is how families should be organized. This is what men should be like. Don't eat pork or crustaceans. Don't eat meat on Fridays. Don't work on Saturdays, or Sundays, or some other Holy Days. Don't marry people who eat pork, or who think there are two gods, or no gods. Do not drink alcohol, or coffee. Do not allow Protestants, or Catholics, or Muslims or atheists to vote. Change your religion, or lose your head.
Jesus was a Jew who believed that some great judgment was imminent, and who called for people to repent. They didn't. Instead, they killed him. And there you had the beginning of a pointless, centuries-long animosity between Jews and Christians.
Millions of Jews were killed before and during World War II just because they were Jews: maybe also because they were often successful in business and banking. They became successful in banking because, for centuries, they were not allowed to own real property.
In the 1400s and 1500s, the growing tension between western Europe and eastern Europe and Asia ripped Europe apart. In western Europe, the people who rebelled were called Protestants. Those loyal to the Bishop in Rome called themselves Roman Catholics. They began to kill each other. They did a pretty nasty job of it.
Mohammed lived about 600 years after Jesus did, and lots of people in the near or middle East--the other side of the Mediterranean--called him a kind of Messiah. And now, almost on schedule, about 600 years after the Christians tore themselves apart, Muslims are doing something similar: Sunni, Shia, Kurds, and others. They are doing a pretty nasty job of killing each other, too.
Why? They are trying to figure out what kind of a society they want to be. Like Catholics and Protestants, they do a shorthand labeling, and shoot whomever they consider to be infidels or heretics. Osama bin Laden was one of those guys. He represented a particularly Arab kind of strict orthodoxy, the kind ISIL represents. Iran, Persian rather than Arabic, is also Muslim. The Muslim world is doing pretty much what the Christian world did at a similar period in its life. The Muslim world does not want to be European. That is what the Arab Spring is about, partially. And partly, it is what kind of Arab world.
We should expect that they will do as Christians did before them: go to war with each other, all of it in the name of God (or Allah, if you wish). We should not expect them to be any kinder about it than Christians were, and often still are. Protestants and Catholics. Orthodox, too. Shia and Sunni and Kurdish partisans.
Maybe we could all get together and sing, "How Great Thou Art", or "Cum-by-hjeah, My Lord".
It is a terrible thing when people think they are absolutely right; that God is on their side.
That is a kind of liturgical recitation of how it began,
in what is now Iraq, Syria, and Turkey: Mesopotomia.
That is where it is still going on: in Iraq and Syria, and Turkey,
and all of the places that claim Abraham as their own.
If you want to know what is going on in those places today,
you need to remember Abraham, and Moses and Aaron, and Jesus and Peter and Paul. You need to remember Israel and the Caananites, Mohammed, Catholics and Protestants, other Hundred Years Wars, and what religion has to do with what it means to be a society.
It is too simple to say that religion is the root of much of the butchery of human history, but whether it is at the root, or is the root, or is just there, it seems altogether too eager to be a participant, too involved to be granted pardon.
Religion is the way people celebrate and solidify what they think society should be. It is the way children are taught what it is to be a Jew, or a Christian, or a Moslem. It is the way people are taught how to be a Catholic, or a Protestant, or a Sunni or Shiite. Women should sit over there, and the men on this side. Women should keep their faces and heads covered. This is how families should be organized. This is what men should be like. Don't eat pork or crustaceans. Don't eat meat on Fridays. Don't work on Saturdays, or Sundays, or some other Holy Days. Don't marry people who eat pork, or who think there are two gods, or no gods. Do not drink alcohol, or coffee. Do not allow Protestants, or Catholics, or Muslims or atheists to vote. Change your religion, or lose your head.
Jesus was a Jew who believed that some great judgment was imminent, and who called for people to repent. They didn't. Instead, they killed him. And there you had the beginning of a pointless, centuries-long animosity between Jews and Christians.
Millions of Jews were killed before and during World War II just because they were Jews: maybe also because they were often successful in business and banking. They became successful in banking because, for centuries, they were not allowed to own real property.
In the 1400s and 1500s, the growing tension between western Europe and eastern Europe and Asia ripped Europe apart. In western Europe, the people who rebelled were called Protestants. Those loyal to the Bishop in Rome called themselves Roman Catholics. They began to kill each other. They did a pretty nasty job of it.
Mohammed lived about 600 years after Jesus did, and lots of people in the near or middle East--the other side of the Mediterranean--called him a kind of Messiah. And now, almost on schedule, about 600 years after the Christians tore themselves apart, Muslims are doing something similar: Sunni, Shia, Kurds, and others. They are doing a pretty nasty job of killing each other, too.
Why? They are trying to figure out what kind of a society they want to be. Like Catholics and Protestants, they do a shorthand labeling, and shoot whomever they consider to be infidels or heretics. Osama bin Laden was one of those guys. He represented a particularly Arab kind of strict orthodoxy, the kind ISIL represents. Iran, Persian rather than Arabic, is also Muslim. The Muslim world is doing pretty much what the Christian world did at a similar period in its life. The Muslim world does not want to be European. That is what the Arab Spring is about, partially. And partly, it is what kind of Arab world.
We should expect that they will do as Christians did before them: go to war with each other, all of it in the name of God (or Allah, if you wish). We should not expect them to be any kinder about it than Christians were, and often still are. Protestants and Catholics. Orthodox, too. Shia and Sunni and Kurdish partisans.
Maybe we could all get together and sing, "How Great Thou Art", or "Cum-by-hjeah, My Lord".
It is a terrible thing when people think they are absolutely right; that God is on their side.
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