2008 Woodie Awards
Column offered skewed view of religion
Issue date: 10/26/07 Section: Rocket Letters
To the editor:
In "Opium of the people nothing more than a safety blanket" (Oct. 19), Ms. Wells-Pratt's has written a good, interesting article with some rightful, provocative thoughts. However, one can take issue with some of what she wrote.
Bill Mahler makes a good humorous dig by implying that the flying of planes into buildings on Sept. 11 was an Islam-justified, faith-based initiative.
However, one can't infer, from this tragedy, the likelihood that any other religious group would think or do such murderous, destructive, hell-raising activity.
It is interesting to note that in Islam itself, the Koran condemns suicide and the killing of innocent people.
Usama bin Laden had to search around to find one imam radical enough to give him a fatwa to justify those two hideous, anti-Koranic actions. From a Christian perspective, it's a real leap of faith from Mahler's little joke to infer that any good practicing Christian in this country (no matter how fundamentalist) would think that their "Love your neighbor/Thou shalt not kill" religion would justify killing thousands of innocent people in the name of religion.
It may be easy to accept at face value the glib myth that more people have been killed in the name of religion than any other reason. But this statement doesn't stand up under closer scrutiny.
As an example, look at all the wars the USA has been involved in: the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, WWI and WWII (with their tremendous loss of life), the Korean War, Vietnam, the first Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Religion is not the primary, nor even a secondary cause, of any of these wars.
They, like most wars, were fought primarily for political, economic, territorial, tribal, and power-struggle type of reasons.
This is true for most wars involving the great power nations such as England, France, Germany, Russia, and China.
It is a grossly inaccurate oversimplification to say that many more people were killed in places like Northern Ireland because of religion than in all the world's wars for secular, non-religious reasons.
Even in the Middle East where the apparent pretext for fighting is religion, often the real, stronger underlying causes of conflict are economic and political control of the land and water rights.
These less obvious causes are often much more important than any theological differences.
Steve Miller
SRU alumnus, 1992
In "Opium of the people nothing more than a safety blanket" (Oct. 19), Ms. Wells-Pratt's has written a good, interesting article with some rightful, provocative thoughts. However, one can take issue with some of what she wrote.
Bill Mahler makes a good humorous dig by implying that the flying of planes into buildings on Sept. 11 was an Islam-justified, faith-based initiative.
However, one can't infer, from this tragedy, the likelihood that any other religious group would think or do such murderous, destructive, hell-raising activity.
It is interesting to note that in Islam itself, the Koran condemns suicide and the killing of innocent people.
Usama bin Laden had to search around to find one imam radical enough to give him a fatwa to justify those two hideous, anti-Koranic actions. From a Christian perspective, it's a real leap of faith from Mahler's little joke to infer that any good practicing Christian in this country (no matter how fundamentalist) would think that their "Love your neighbor/Thou shalt not kill" religion would justify killing thousands of innocent people in the name of religion.
It may be easy to accept at face value the glib myth that more people have been killed in the name of religion than any other reason. But this statement doesn't stand up under closer scrutiny.
As an example, look at all the wars the USA has been involved in: the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, WWI and WWII (with their tremendous loss of life), the Korean War, Vietnam, the first Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Religion is not the primary, nor even a secondary cause, of any of these wars.
They, like most wars, were fought primarily for political, economic, territorial, tribal, and power-struggle type of reasons.
This is true for most wars involving the great power nations such as England, France, Germany, Russia, and China.
It is a grossly inaccurate oversimplification to say that many more people were killed in places like Northern Ireland because of religion than in all the world's wars for secular, non-religious reasons.
Even in the Middle East where the apparent pretext for fighting is religion, often the real, stronger underlying causes of conflict are economic and political control of the land and water rights.
These less obvious causes are often much more important than any theological differences.
Steve Miller
SRU alumnus, 1992
