When Religion Turns Brutal

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A recent news story says that leaders of ISIL, which claims to be the Islamic State, often throw people they suspect of being homosexual from the tops of tall buildings in the cities they control.
 

An Associated Press story describes such an execution after a brief “trial” by an ISIS judge, held on a street before hastily-gathered bystanders in Palmyra, Syria. It says the death penalty for being homosexual comes from the Hadith, or sayings of Muhammad.

“The Islamic State group bases its punishment on one account in which Muhammad reportedly says gays ‘should be thrown from tremendous heights then stoned,’" the story says. One of the men in the execution described was, in fact, alive after being thrown off the four-story building and was subsequently stoned.

Characteristic of religion?

Skeptics searching for God may believe that all this violence is characteristic of religion, which somehow is inherently violent, or that it is strictly an “Islamic” thing. If the later, you should recall the brutality of Christians against Muslims and other Christians in the Middle Ages and the current violence among people of various religions in many parts of the world.
 

The executioners in Palmyra are fundamentalists, the kind who distort every religion by taking ancient texts literally without bothering to place them in context. They seek a false simplicity to excuse themselves from thoughtfulness. They make no distinction between the basics of a religion, which can never change, and the beliefs and practices that are dependent on each culture and age.
 

It’s true that as long as there has been religion, people have been using it to justify violence and brutality. But millions of Russians killed each other mercilessly during the Stalin era; Germans killed a large part of the Jewish population of Europe before and during the Second World War; and as recently as the mid-70s the Khmer Rouge wiped out nearly a quarter of the Cambodian population.
 

We don’t believe all Russians, Germans and Cambodians are bad. All those atrocities were perversions of what it means to be Russian, German or Cambodian. That’s why it’s important not to ascribe to all people in a group – like Muslims or Jews or Christians – the characteristics of a small, perverted group.
 



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A corps of young British Muslims have a web site called www.isisnotinmyname.com. As the name implies, members want ISIS to stop saying they are committing their atrocities in the name of Islam.

The group, addressing ISIS, takes this stand “because it’s totally un-Islamic. Because you abuse hearts and minds. Because you have no compassion.”
 

It’s hard for Americans to shake the idea that Islam is inherently violent. According to the

Washington Post, “Pew studies show that since the 9/11 attacks, Americans have become far more likely to think that Islam encourages violence more than other religions might. A Pew survey in March 2002 found that 25 percent of Americans held that view, and the number reached 50 percent by September 2014.”
 

The newspaper quotes Terry Cormier, who wears the head scarf known as the hijab, about hostility toward Muslims. It was intense after the carnage in San Bernardino, she said. “But I really think that if people would just get out there and talk to a Muslim person, they would see that they are human just like you. We’re just as upset about what’s going on and how people are being hurt. It’s devastating to us as well.”
 

All major religions anti-violence

People searching for God must try to be God-like in their views, resisting attitudes that condemn groups of people for the actions of individuals or small groups. Though some members of religions become brutal, all major religions are anti-violence.
 

Pope Francis addressed this subject on a recent trip to Albania, a Muslim-majority country that also has large numbers of Catholics and Orthodox Christians whom Francis praised for living in “a climate of respect.”
 

“Let no one consider himself to be the ‘armor’ of God while planning and carrying out acts of violence and oppression.” the pope said. “May no one use religion as a pretext for actions against human dignity and against the fundamental rights of every man and woman, above all, the right to life….”