[todaysdate]
By Mark Azzara
The blood-letting in the Middle East is an egregious example of the depths to which humanity can sink in the name of religion, and the howls of protest are more than justified.
But in the midst of our genuine anguish I must add a necessary word of caution. This is not the first time we have seen this kind of brutal behavior — and it won’t be the last.
In fact, what the Imbecilic Slaughterers in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are doing in the name of Islam – oops, make that Sunni Islam, since they’re killing Shiite Muslims – is nothing out of the ordinary for humanity.
Does anyone remember the war in the Balkans during the 1990s, when Serbian Orthodox Christians, Croatian Catholics and Bosnian Muslims slaughtered each other? Investigators are still finding the mass graves.
Has the world forgotten the violence in Northern Ireland, where Catholic and Protestant Christians turned their portion of the United Kingdom into a killing field?
Does anyone recall the atrocities of apartheid, created by the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa?
For those who think this sort of stuff only happens elsewhere, let us recall the execution of “witches” ordered by Christian clerics in Massachusetts during colonial times and the slaughter of African-Americans in the South by the supposedly Christian Ku Klux Klan for more than a century.
For those who think this is a new phenomenon, I suggest you Google the Inquisitions. Or the Crusades.
If history is boring, consider what else we have on our plates today.
In the 1940s Muslims and Hindus joined to end British tyranny in India. But rather than live together, they separated into predominantly Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan and Bangladesh, thus enshrining their own brand of religious intolerance, made all the more tantalizing because of competing nuclear arsenals. Recent skirmishes in India’s Kashmir region have pushed Hindus and Muslims closer to war than they’ve been in a long time.
And let us not forget the blood-thirsty hostilities that occupy Muslims and Jews in and around Israel.
If we are more appalled by these episodes than we have been in the past, it’s simply the result of seeing murder played out, live, on instant-access media. And if you think you’re appalled, consider for a moment what God’s reaction is.
Murderous religious fanatics say they are defending their religion by killing those who don’t worship God correctly or at all, which only goes to prove how little we know of God. Whoa! What do you mean, “we?”
If we really knew God and asked Him how to deal with our hatred, He would say things like, “Let me place my laws within you and write them on your hearts so that you can love one another as I have loved you.”
And our reaction would probably be something along the lines of, “To hell with that! Be realistic, God, and give us a military solution.” That’s what biblical Jews wanted from their messiah to defeat the Roman Empire. Well, they didn’t get it. And even to this day we don’t get it.
The philosopher George Santayana got it. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” he said.
As governments do their inept best to tame this latest beast, we should remember that every time we resort to military solutions, the solution we impose becomes more and more costly while, at the same time, being less and less effective.
Doing things the way we have always done them will keep all our bureaucrats, legislators, military commanders and government contractors occupied until … well, until The End. And that’s when we’ll all find out who’s going to hell and who (if anyone) isn’t.
