RELIGION: Egyptian democracy and religious clashes...

Image via Wikipedia

In my last blog, I was talking about the growth in secularization and gave as one reason, the growing realization that many religion(s) have a dark and harmful side.

Take the case of Egypt’s Muslims and Coptic Christians. Coptic Christians are a minority in Egypt but they number in the millions (15%).

A rumor was spread that a Christian woman married to a Muslim man was abducted ostensibly because she wanted to convert to Islam?

Gangs of Muslim youth, after being incited by ultraconservative Muslims, went out to torch Christian churches and kill Christians. When the dust settled, 12 people were dead and hundreds injured on both sides. The Christians can also be instigated and rampage through the streets looking for Muslims to kill.

Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian dictator did not stand for sectarian violence but since he was deposed, the ugly head of religious intolerance has risen again.

How many thousands have died in the name of religion in our history and continue to die as we speak and it does not have to be clashes between different religions (Christian vs. Muslim) but can occur between Muslims (Shiite vs. Sunni). It does not take much to incite a crowd over perceived slights to their religion.

I am always amazed that people would justify killing a fellow human in the name of their religion / god.

True, many of those rioting are youth from the slums which probably makes them poor, ignorant and easily incited but they are incited by adults with an agenda and that agenda is usually to gain power and control through religion; remember bin Laden?

Religions in the United States can peacefully co-exist and have for hundreds of years but it was not easy to reach that state and still requires a lot of work today as many Christian conservatives try to dominate our government and impose their religious ideology on the rest of us; at least we are not killing ourselves over religious issues.

We are the best example of religious tolerance in our world today albeit not a perfect example.

With the advent of what is being called the “Democratic Spring” in the Middle East, religion will play a huge role and if not controlled by a democratic but strong government, will end up like the murderous theocracy in Iran.

I guess I should be happy that a revolt by regular citizens in the Middle East is at least happening and that those people have had enough and want to try a little freedom and with that, hopefully some prosperity after all these years.

The people in the Middle East deserve a new life, a life with a future, so I hope they will resist and not allow religion to doom them once again to a dark reality with no hopes for a better future.

Related articles

• Egypt cracks down on Muslim-Christian clashes (ctv.ca)
• You: Religious conflict becomes the biggest enemy of Egypt's revolution (latimes.com)
• Muslim mobs attack Christian churches (moretinythoughts.wordpress.com)
• EGYPT: Religious conflict becomes the revolution's biggest enemy - Los Angeles Times (news.google.com)
• Egypt: the two women at the centre of the clashes (telegraph.co.uk)
• Muslim extremists burn down another Coptic Christian church in Egypt (cifwatch.com)
• Christians, Muslims clash in Cairo (edition.cnn.com)

RELIGION: Major in secular studies?

Image via Wikipedia

Reading my New York Times on this fine, sunny Mother’s Day, I come to an article written by Laurie Goodstein entitled: PITZER COLLEGE IN CALIFORNIA ADDS MAJOR IN SECULARISM, May 8, 2011.

Now we all know that the United States is very, very religious but I have been hearing more and more about people saying “they have no religion”.  In fact, that number has doubled in the last 20 years to about 15% of the population, still small but growing.

It appears that Pitzer will be the first school in the country to offer a major in secular studies. They have to quickly underline that this will not be an “anti-religious” course as any religious course should not be thought of as against non-believers; studying belief is just as valid as studying non-belief.

The designer of the curriculum, Phil Zuckerman, is very interested in knowing why some people are non-religious and I am too. He said that in some countries huge amounts of people call themselves just atheists (Czech Republic, Scandinavia, etc.) why?

He also said that Canada is undergoing a huge wave of secularization, why?

I have always maintained that humans have a religious gene in their DNA so the invention of religion was predestined from the very beginning; we need religion to explain what we cannot explain.

Maybe now some people are seeing how much damage religions can do (seeing the bad side of religion) and maybe they are intellectually insulted by the premise of religion and would rather explore the universe on their own, just using the facts available?

Is this the beginning of a new era of human history? Gee, I hope so…

Related articles

• Misinformation and Facts about Secularism and Religion (secularnewsdaily.com)
• The Death of American Civil Religion (And why it's a good thing) (livegenerously.wordpress.com)
• Religion in America. (jwitness.wordpress.com)
• Author Interview: Breaking their Will (new.exchristian.net)
• Secularism & Religionism (socyberty.com)
• Religion continues to impact voter decision, MU study finds (eurekalert.org)
• Should the Devout Be Excluded from Politics? -- Sightings (pastorbobcornwall.blogspot.com)

OSAMA bin-LADEN IS DEAD... Hallelujah!

Image via Wikipedia

What a surprise this morning as I awakened; Osama bin Laden was finally killed.

We could have killed him a long time ago when we had him corned in Bora Bora, Afghanistan but alas our brilliant President Bush decided to call our troops away from capturing or killing Osama to go invade Iraq for whatever reason.

This brainless move on the part of Bush allowed bin Laden to escape our grasp and strengthen his al-Qaida organization and kill a bunch more innocent people; I hope Bush can sleep at night.

Anyway, today the world is a better place without bin Laden. Some say he was no longer an active leader in al-Qaida and was only a symbol and I disagree with that and judging by how big the compound was where he was hiding, how well defended and all those computers there, I think he had a huge role in the terrorist organization; too bad that bin Laden had time to destroy all the hard drives in the computers because they were probably laden with names and places we could have used to wipe out the organization.

Maybe some of our computer whizzes can still get some names off those drives.

Puzzling and potentially problematic is that bin-Laden’s compound was only 2 hours from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad; one would think that someone should have noticed him that close to the capital…hmmmmmm.

Glad we did not bungle the operation by getting others involved. One helicopter was lost which reminded me of Carter’s failed attempt at rescuing the hostages in Iran; can’t wait for the details to come out.

I do know they dumped him into an ocean somewhere which is very smart just hope they got all the evidence they needed to prove to the world that it was really him and that he was really dead.

The fact that the Navy Seal Team Six went into a foreign country to kill Osama signals to the world and other bad guys, that we are willing to go anywhere at anytime to kill terrorists; you cannot hide forever.

What impact will Osama’s death have? Well, it can only make President Obama look better in the eyes of Americans make the CIA look half-way competent, makes Republicans like Palin and others, who did not mention the president’s role in this affair, even more stupid than they are already and maybe, just maybe it will demoralize al-Qaida operatives and the whole organization to get sloppy and therefore more vulnerable.

Some are already bracing for the “revenge” attacks on us but I am skeptical many will occur.

I think Osama’s death is good for Islam and all the Muslims trying to distance their religion and themselves from what the world calls “Islamic Terrorism”.

For now, let’s just be happy we got him.

Related articles

• Osama Bin Laden dead: How dangerous is Al-Qaida without him? (slate.com)
• Al-Qaida head Osama bin Laden is killed (The Newsroom) (worldscientists.wordpress.com)
• U.S. Kills bin Laden in Intelligence-driven Operation (yubanet.com)
• Osama bin Laden operation was joint American, Pakistani effort (nj.com)