Sunday, July 8, 2012

Religion: Conflict and Harmony

Those who use religious rhetoric to ignite, maintain or exploit differences amongst different groups manage to influence many of us from time to time. Off course, our own biases and worldviews may provide a ground to flourish those ideas as well. Using religious teachings and principles to facilitate conflicts is one the biggest tragedies of the human history.

Most of us know that no holy scriptures of any religion encourage human slaughter, no not even Islam, as many people in the West believe. In fact, Islam, the religion that Prophet Mohammad brought about is primarily about peace and service to the almighty. Islam comes from Arabic words ‘Salm’, which means peace, and from 'Silm', which means submitting your will to Allah – the Almighty God. Chapter 5 and verse 32 of Holy Qur’an clearly says that killing an innocent is a sin. Similarly, foundations of other major religions around the world are based on truth, peace, love and forgiveness themes.

We need to focus on the founders of our religions, their life styles and the holy scriptures that came out as a result. It is the rhetoric, doctrines, popular assumptions are what leading general public and therefore it is easy to base a conflict on religious grounds. If people were well aware of what their holy book and the holy book of the ‘other’ says, conflicts based on religions would never succeed.

Recently, I explored peaceful themes in the holy scriptures of Islam, Hinduism and Christianity and I found out that all these religions talk about one God. Hinduism has about 330 million deities but they are the extension of ONE ultimate reality (Chandogya Upanishad 6 : 2 : 1; Rigveda 1 : 164 : 46). I strongly believe that all major religions come from the same source. It is like one father with many children.

It is normal and perfectly ok for the children to find their own ways and have conflicts. However, if we use violent ways to resolve those conflicts or humiliate each other, it DOES hurt our Father. A loving father is happy when he sees all his children prospering and getting along well. God wanted us to be different and that is why He has given us the right to choose our religion, our life style and our preferences.

There are innate differences like race and then there are differences because of the choices we make and God wants it like that. If not, he would have just created bunch of robots! He wanted the human race to have diversity like the colors of a rainbow, the different musical notes, and variety of different flavors and fragrances.

When we are upset because of the differences, take a moment to appreciate those differences. Our differences are valid and were made for a perfect harmony. Learn to enjoy them rather than judging them or getting mad at them. Let us come together to be a rainbow full of hope, a calming symphony and a beautiful bouquet for our creator!

4 comments:

  1. a great post, anjana. i think being able to teach our future generation how to honor differences and coexist harmoniously is crucial. the innate need to be right has to be tempered with tolerance and acceptance. the greatest tragedy of our times is that with all the information and data at hand, we are still incapable of seeing beyond the games that god-brokers and politicians play in the name of religion.

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  2. Yes, you are so correct, Subhorup! Thanks for dropping by..

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  3. I support your efforts to promote tolerance among believers in different religions.

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  4. Thanks!We need to go back to our holy books and find the truth in them

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