Religious intolerance; who is to blame?

[Khandro]

Does religious intolerance stem from the teachings inherent within different teachings, or from the manipulation of those teachings by politicians and clerics?

[Khandro]

ludwig; //If you remove the concept of a god from all of that - a divine being who can never be wrong - then the power to control evaporates.//
Though this is off topic, can you please give an example, to support this? Politicians continue to instrumentalize religion in order to support their control. Partition in India, is another example of religious peoples being manipulated by politicians with disastrous consequences. The polarisation we now see taking place between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, has been formed, not from within the religions, but from without by politicians.

[naomi24]

Keyplus, I can only presume you think Lennon's 'Imagine' is mindless too. No surprise there. That's religious intolerance for you.

//‘IMAGINE’ – JOHN LENNON

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one//


Personally, I can't see a lot wrong with that.

[ludwig]

// The polarisation we now see taking place between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, has been formed, not from within the religions, but from without by politicians.//

There's your example. If people hadn't already divided themselves into these divinely led rival gangs, there'd be nothing there for the politicians to manipulate. No key for them to start winding up.

I'm not saying religion is the only thing used to manipulate people - it's been done with race and patriotism as well - anything that can be inflamed with a rant here or a rousing speech there.

Strictly speaking I suppose religion isn't the problem. People's stupidity is the problem. Organised religion is just another a symptom of that stupidity.

[mibn2cweus]

Dictatorship or mob rule, these are the only alternatives to a governing body prepared to acknowledge, respect and defend individual rights and liberty, an ideal that will never be realised until people learn to respect themselves. The erosion of self-respect and the acknowledgement of personal responsibility is the first step and essential key to provoking anarchy and establishing a dictatorship and nothing has proven more effective in eroding self-respect than religion. Intolerance is an inevitable consequence of attempting to abide by an intolerable 'moral' code, one that teaches sacrifice of the individual to an undeserving mob and that justice is only to be realised beyond the grave, to be meted out by the most mindless, barbaric, ruthless, arbitrary dictator of them all, ones own imagination unfettered by the constraints imposed by reality.

[ludwig]

It's a bit like the 'guns don't kill people, people kill people' debate isn't it?

You're saying religion doesn't cause intolerance, politicians do. The fact remains tough, if there were fewer guns in circulation there'd be fewer people getting shot, and if there was no religion, there'd be less intolerance.
I sincerely believe that.

[ludwig]

^though

[ludwig]

I didn't use to believe it by the way. I used to think that if you removed religion from the equation, people would just find some other excuse to kill each other, and the amount of strife and intolerance in the world would remain about the same.

It's something I've changed my mind about over the last few years.

[Duncer]

I'm not so sure Ludwig. Greed, power and corruption would lead to a substitute for religion so that people could excuse their behaviour, not that I am defending religion.

[Ellipsis]

> if there was no religion, there'd be less intolerance

I agree that's probably true - although we can't be sure. Intolerance seems to be part of the human condition, not part of the the religious condition, but I believe that religion can act as an amplifier of intolerance (and sometimes of good things, too, e.g. charity).

It also seems harsh to tar all religion with the same brush.

* No religion, or no organised religion?
* Are all religions as intolerant as each other, or are some more intolerant than others?
* Are all practitioners of a given religion as intolerant as each other, or are some practioners more intolerant than others within the same religion?

John Lennon's pal George Harrison was a Hare Krishna follower (i.e. ultimately a Hindu), but you'd hardly call him intolerant.

To demand "no religion" would be intolerant in itself. Lennon didn't do this - his explanation of Imagine's lyrices was "If you can imagine a world at peace, with no denominations of religion — not without religion, but without this 'my God is bigger than your God' thing — then it can be true."

[ludwig]

// Are all religions as intolerant as each other, or are some more intolerant than others? //

No, they're not all the same. That's why I specifically referred to 'the inherent nature of some' religions in my first answer. To my knowledge Buddhism and paganism for example have not been used in the same way as Christianity and Islam to justify holy wars or other attrocities.

[Khandro]

//You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one//

[Khandro]

ludwig; //To my knowledge Buddhism and paganism for example have not been used in the same way as Christianity and Islam to justify holy wars or other attrocities.// Christ also did not ask people to kill one another, and neither did Mohammad.

[ludwig]

I've not studied the koran, so I'll have to take your word on Mohammed khandro, but I believe you're right about Jesus.

It does make one wonder then why so many have been persecuted, tortured and killed in the name of their gods. Can it really all be meddling politicians stirring up these peace loving religions from the outside?
How can it be so easy for these cynical agent provocateurs to do that when the religions themselves are so fundamentally peaceful? Why don't they just tell the trouble makers to go away and stop causing trouble?

I believe it's because the notion that 'we are the one true religion following the one true god' is a fundamentally intolerant one. It doesn't take much of a nudge from the outside to turn that into hatred and violence.

[ludwig]

I don't think it's possible to ban religion either. It's like when Margaret Thatcher tried to ban coal mining in the 1980s. All she did was force it underground.

[ludwig]

^ Sorry, I got bored being serious. I can't keep it up for very long - or the seriousness for that matter.

[jake-the-peg]

There are also numerous religious attrocities not from intolerance but superstition

Witches, Human Scarifices

Even Budhists conducting human scarifices in the 1850s apparently

http://listverse.com/...the-name-of-religion/

[Khandro]

Excellent post ludwig, I too am not a Koranic scholar, but according to the 'Muslim Access' website; 'Muslims are often questioned, "Did not Muhammad call on all Muslims to kill the infidels?" The answer is absolutely not!' and it goes on to explain why :

http://www.muslimacce...kill_the_infidels.asp

[jomifl]

Mohammed may not have asked muslim's to kill infidels but he gave them 'carte blanche' to kill them if they wanted to, for example to take their possessions or slaves etc.

[argorstran]

Is the question solely about religious intolerance or intolerance in general ?
I think that politics and journalism are responsible for far more intolerance than religion is .

[naomi24]

Khandro, The question ‘Did not Muhammad call on all Muslims to kill the infidels?’ is rather misleading – but coming from a Muslim who is desperately trying to reinterpret the text of the Koran in order to make it more palatable, that’s no surprise – it’s common practice. Before you get too excited by your astonishing discovery, I would encourage you not only to read the book for yourself, but to consider that Muslims don’t believe that Mohammed (who, incidentally, was a war-monger) wrote the Koran – but believe that it is the direct and infallible word of God - and therefore whilst Mohammed may not, in their opinion, have used the Koran to encourage people to kill the infidel, Allah certainly did. Sneaky!

Similarly with Jesus. Whilst I don’t recall any record of him telling people to kill, he wasn’t the man of peace his followers would have us believe. He said he hadn’t come to bring peace but a sword, he said he had come to set man against his father, he told his disciples to buy weapons, and he was executed on a charge of insurrection – in other words, he was a trouble-maker.

I see you conveniently ignored my reference to the Promised Land – and as for John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, of course it’s mindless. Silly me.